"Amphibious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... others a soaring eagle, emblematical, no doubt, of the valiant and high-flying qualities of the inhabitants, so after mature deliberation a sleek beaver was emblazoned on the city standard as indicative of the amphibious origin and patient and persevering habits of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... just off the Hoe in Plymouth Sound, as pretty a craft as any sailor need care to look at. Plymouth was an amphibious sort of a place even in those days; and there was not a landsman who had ever been in blue water that, having once caught sight of the saucy Tonneraire, did not stop to stare at and admire her as he crossed the Hoe. Some, indeed, even ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... amphibious creature, of a spherical form, rolling with great velocity along a pebbly beach, is the next object of interest, but is presently lost sight of in a strong current setting off from the angle of an island. After this there are three or four pages descriptive of various lunar scenes and animals, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... shaped stick, is to a man with an eye for games. The artists who drew these illustrations, draw anything instinctively. Years of practice will never make the faces of a pretty girl that I draw look less like an amphibious cow. But I have frequently given performances of two hour's duration without any previous practice whatever, beyond a quick rehearsal to see that all the various properties are in their correct places, ready at hand when wanted. I do not want the person ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson
... wind above. It came to my ears as a muffled roar. Now and again feet stamped overhead. An endless creaking was going on all about me, the woodwork and the fittings groaning and squeaking and complaining in a thousand keys. The hunters were still arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces, flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... understood, then, that this big movable trunk, the head of which, when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof, is made to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to the river; for the elevator is an amphibious institution, and flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the appearance of this lacustrine and amphibious dwelling was striking, and not without a certain rude and massive grandeur, its grounds and possessions, through which the brother and sister were still picking their way, were even more grotesque and remarkable. Over a space of half a dozen acres the flotsam and jetsam ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... like to put him to the proof; you would suffer too much," replied the rector. "All Guerande is turned upside down about Calyste's passion for this amphibious creature, who is neither man nor woman, who smokes like an hussar, writes like a journalist, and has at this very moment in her house the most venomous of all writers,—so the postmaster says, and he's a juste-milieu man who reads the papers. They ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... a line of his own Southeastward over fields and ditches, favoured by a round horizon moon on his left. So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open.' The sharpness of his eyes was divided between the sword-belt of the starry Hunter and the shifting lanes that zig-tagged his course below. The Downs were softly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with increased rapidity, and ere Popanilla had recovered himself sufficiently to make even an ejaculation, he found himself at the side of a quay. Some amphibious creatures, whom he supposed to be mermen, immediately came to his assistance, rather stared at his serpent-skin coat, and then helped him up the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... water, and delights in floundering about in the mud. It can swim and dive also admirably, and will often remain underneath the surface for many minutes together, and then rising for a fresh supply of air, plunge down again. It indeed appears to be almost as amphibious as the hippopotamus, and has consequently ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangular district, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, the country is even more amphibious than the rice coast. Everywhere in fact the soil is too waterlogged for tillage except close along the Father of Waters himself and his present or aforetime outlets. Settlement must, therefore, take the form of strings of plantations and farms ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sheet-lightning announced a second tornado. We sighed for more vivid flashes, but after twenty minutes they dimmed and died away, still showing the "bush"-silhouette on either side. The tide rushed out in strength under the amphibious forest—all who know the West Coast will appreciate the position. It was impossible to advance or to remain in this devil's den, the gig bumped at every minute, and the early flood would probably crush her against the trees. So we dropped down ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... widen till it was about one hundred yards across, their work became easy. Carried along at a speed of two or three miles an hour, they now saw that the water and the banks they passed were literally alive with reptiles and all sorts of amphibious creatures, while winged lizards sailed from every overhanging branch into the water as they approached. They noticed also many birds similar to storks and cranes, about the size of ostriches, standing on logs in the water, whose ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... as he had sometimes watched, at the Aquarium, the celebrated lady who, in a slight, though tight, bathing-suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of water which looked so cold and uncomfortable to the non-amphibious. He listened to his companion to-night, while he smoked his last pipe, he watched her through her demonstration, quite as if he had paid a shilling. But it was true that, this being the case, he desired the value of his money. What was it, in the name of wonder, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... Great Spirit with power and capabilities to catch the former. Some of the stories which old mountaineers occasionally inflict upon an inquisitive traveller are somewhat startling; nevertheless, what this amphibious animal really performs is truly astounding, and oftentimes the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... spirit was exactly to their liking, and they worked for him as they would have worked for no man else. As they approached the Long Saut, rain fell in torrents, and the Governor, without his cloak, and drenched to the skin, directed in person the amphibious toil of his followers. Once, it is said, he lay awake all night, in his anxiety lest the biscuit should be wet, which would have ruined the expedition. No such mischance took place, and at length the last rapid was passed, and smooth water awaited them ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... chap as owns the ferrets," said Bob, in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. "He lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a rot-catcher nor anything, I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... neighborhood in 1638 an enormous reptile was seen "quoiled up on a rock at Cape Ann." He would have fired at him but for the earnest dissuasion of his Indian guide, who declared that ill luck would come of the attempt. The sea-serpent sometimes shows amphibious tendencies and occasionally leaves the sea for fresh water. Two of him were seen in Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, in 1892, by four men. They confess, however, that they were fishing at the time. The snakes had fins and were a matter of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... it would be ruined by water, the crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the ground were located beyond the great lake. I did ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... down to die. Then if a bit of the future, too, could for a moment be unveiled, and one might watch the first ship glide majestically and silently into the canal and away into the jungle like some amphibious monster. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the landsman who enjoyed nominal exemption and the seaman who enjoyed none, there existed a middle or amphibious class of persons who lived exclusively on neither land nor water, but habitually used both in the pursuit of their various callings. These were the wherry or watermen, the lightermen, bargemen, keelmen, trowmen and canal-boat dwellers frequenting mainly the inland ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... counting fathoms of rope. At last he was again sent afloat as senior lieutenant in a ten-gun brig, and cruised for some time off the coast of Africa, hunting for slavers; and returning after a while from this enterprising employment, he received a sort of amphibious appointment at Devonport. What his duties were here, the author, being in all points a landsman, is unable to describe. Those who were inclined to ridicule Captain Cuttwater declared that the most ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... an amphibious set, who could live on land truly, but were happiest when in or near the water. To fish and swim, row, trim the sail, and guide the rudder, were accomplishments they all could boast. A bold, hardy, merry set they were; and but for the schoolmaster's rod and the teaching of their pious ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... offshore anchorage only Airports: none; lagoon landings by amphibious aircraft from Western Samoa Telecommunications: telephone service between islands and to ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... drowning. But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck." The Passamaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet passed out of the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men and the lower animals. The amphibious maiden, who dwelt in the bottom of the river, could not be drowned by jumping into the stream; and it is evident that she only resumes her true aquatic form in escaping from her husband, who, it should be ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Ameriko. American Amerikano. Amiability amindeco. Amiable afabla, aminda. Amicably pace. Amid meze. Amidst meze. Amity amikeco. Ammonia amoniako. Among inter. Amongst inter. Amorous amema. Amount sumo. Amphibious amfibia. Amphitheatre amfiteatro. Amphora amforo. Ample suficxa. Amplify grandigi. Amplitude amplekso. Amputate detrancxi. Amulet talismano. Amuse amuzi. Anagram anagramo. Analogy analogio. Analysis analizo. Analyze ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... paid no attention to one another, swimming and resting in close proximity. They both had the same enemy, the jaguar. The capybara is a game animal only in the sense that a hare or rabbit is. The flesh is good to eat, and its amphibious habits and queer nature and surroundings make it interesting. In some of the ponds the water had about gone, and the capybaras had become for the time being beasts of the marsh and the mud; although they could always find little slimy pools, under a mass of water-lilies, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... try and escape as fast as we could, for the enemy was gaining on us, and it would be madness to await his attack. I was steering, and I exerted myself to the utmost to get away from the danger and to escape to the shore. But the amphibious beast was approaching so fast that he could almost seize us, when Lindsay, running all risks, fired his gun direct ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... departmental reports to national policymakers. Detailed and coordinated information was needed not only on such major powers as Germany and Japan, but also on places of little previous interest. In the Pacific Theater, for example, the Navy and Marines had to launch amphibious operations against many islands about which information was unconfirmed or nonexistent. Intelligence authorities resolved that the United States should never again ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... sky. A day to sit on shady banks upon yielding cushions of moss and heather, from whence you gaze on bright flowers blazing in the blazing sun, and rest your eyes again upon your book to find the lines swimming in a radiance of mingled green and red. A day that fills you with amphibious feelings, and makes you desire to be even a dog, that you might bathe and paddle and swim in every roadside brook and pond, without the exertion of dressing and undressing, and yet with propriety. A day that sends you out by willow-hung streams, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Philip inclined to the daintier exercises, fencing, billiards, riding; but Harry's vigorous physique enjoyed hard work. He taught all the household to swim, for instance. Jenny, aged five, a sturdy, deep-chested little thing, seemed as amphibious as himself. She could already swim alone, but she liked to keep close to him, as all young animals do to their elders in the water, not seeming to need actual support, but stronger for the contact. Her favorite position, however, was on ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... couple of immense dogs, male and female, half Newfoundland, half mastiff, which were celebrated for their sagacity, courage, and high-training. They were, in the most comprehensive sense, amphibious, and their home being near the sea, they spent many hours daily ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the most lubberly of the cutter's crew; they then gave him ten yards' law, when they started in chase, shouting amongst the bushes, and switching each other like the veriest schoolboys. I had walked some distance along the beach, pelting the amphibious little creatures, half crab, half lobster, called soldiers, which kept shouldering their large claws, and running out and in their little burrows, as the small ripple twinkled on the sand in the rising sun, when two men—of—wars boats, each with three officers in the stern, suddenly pulled ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... found again. If the dignity of Knight of the Shire is to be conferred, he cannot be pronounced a fit person to receive it. For whether, my Brother Freeholders, you look at the humbleness of his situation amongst Country Gentlemen; or at his amphibious habits, in the two elements of Law and Authorship, and the odd vagaries he has played in both; or whether he be tried by the daring opinions which, by his own acknowledgment, he has maintained in Parliament, and at public meetings, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... evidence of the fossil Paradoxides that creatures of this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, considering their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is only to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If we imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could take refuge in the sea, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... King of the Mice, after a minute's thought; 'but how is Slow-toes to get across the country in time? Animals like our amphibious host are best in the water; on land he might suffer from his own design, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... substantive, having no vocative, construed like a substantive, and governing the case of its verb."—Grant's Lat. Gram., p. 70. In the Latin gerund thus defined, there is an appearance of ancient classical authority for that "amphibious species" of words of which so much notice has already been taken. Our participle in ing, when governed by a preposition, undoubtedly corresponds very nearly, both in sense and construction, to this ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... amphibious animals which now inhabit this world then roamed through the watery waste to which this woman, in her fall, was now hastening. The loon first discovered her coming, and called a council in haste to prepare ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... valve of the foramen ovale, thus clearly manifesting that this current exceeds in force that in the right ventricle. Grant that the new function of respiration has furnished a new power, and this astonishing instantaneous metamorphosis from amphibious to mammalian life becomes perfectly intelligible, and the wisdom of the Creator is fully vindicated; showing that His work has ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard
... and shouted a few insults, then settled down to a quiet conversation. Fasimba was garbed in the same type of hideous and fear-inspiring outfit as Ch'aka, differing only in unimportant details. Instead of a conch, his head was encased in the skull of one of the amphibious rosmaroj, brightened up with some extra tusks and horns. The differences between the two men were all minor, and mostly a matter of decoration or variation of weapon design. They were obviously slave masters ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... Sans Souci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid business manner on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdam region, a highly interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping figure; whose name among strangers was King FRIEDRICH THE SECOND, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much loved and esteemed him, was VATER FRITZ,—Father ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... thought of the stage and chooses to produce that cumbrous nondescript, a "closet drama." Of such we do not speak, but glance and pass on. What laws, indeed, can apply to a form which has no proper element, but, like the amphibious animal described by the sailor, "cannot live on land and dies ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... sung in a low plaintive lullaby tone, ending with a sharp Yu! The prayer possesses a special interest, as it brings out several new points in the Cherokee mythologic theory of medicine. The "intruder," which is held to be some amphibious animal—as a terrapin, turtle, or snake—is declared to have risen up from his dwelling place in the great lake, situated toward the sunset, and to have come by stealth under the sick man. The verb implies that the disease spirit creeps under as a snake ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... aware that the inhabitants of the islands of Lake Tchad, like many other negro tribes, plunge with impunity into sheets of water infested with crocodiles and caymans, and without troubling their heads about them. The amphibious denizens of this lake enjoy the well-deserved ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... over into the water; from which he was promptly rescued by a human ladder, dexterously let down to him in sections, without a moment's hesitation, by his allies, who, like all Venetian boys of the populace, were amphibious animals, full of pranks. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... half of rough water, shook out their creases and touched up their hair on arrival, danced all the evening, and then paddled themselves home, whatever the weather. Most Bermudian girls, indeed, seem quite amphibious. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... am just returned from visiting the isles of Burano, Torcello, and Mazorbo, distant about five miles from Venice. To these amphibious spots the Romans, inhabitants of eastern Lombardy, fled from the ravine of Attila; and, if we may believe Cassiodorus, there was a time when they presented a beautiful appearance. Beyond them, on the coast ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... water near an island. In a moment the river was alive with nondescript craft, worked by amphibious creatures, half naked, swarthy, and grim, who rent the air with shrill, wild jargon as they scrambled toward us. In the distance were several hulks of Siamese men-of-war, seemingly as old as the flood; and on the right towered, tier over tier, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... turned loose her ships to prey on French commerce, and brought some three hundred prizes into her ports. It was the act of a weak Government, supplying by spasms of violence what it lacked in considerate resolution. France, no match for her amphibious enemy in the game of marine depredation, cried out in horror; and to emphasize her complaints and signalize a pretended good faith which her acts had belied, ostentatiously released a British frigate captured by her cruisers. She in her turn ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... The Romans were almost amphibious. They bathed themselves as often as seven times per diem; and young people of style passed a portion of the day, and often a part of the night, in the warm baths. Hence the importance which these establishments assumed in ancient times. There were eight hundred and fifty-six public baths ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... its present degree. The water deposits that were being made required thousands of centuries for their completion. At the beginning of the Quaternary period there were alive the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the rhinoceros with chambered nostrils, the mammoth. In fact, the mammoth swarmed. He delighted in a boreal climate. By degrees the reindeer, the horse, the ox, the bison, multiplied, and disputed with him his food. Partly for this reason, and partly because of the increasing heat, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... he should take away, and offered me the choice of several animals, which he always kept by him for that purpose. There were two white animals of the hog kind, a male and a female lama, three goats, besides several birds, about the size of a turkey, some tortoises, and other amphibious animals. He professed himself willing, in case I had any foolish scruples against mixing my blood with that of brutes, to purify my own, and put it back; but I obstinately declined both expedients; whereupon he opened a vein in my arm, and took ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,— The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown,— The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown,— The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his black mail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... isle of Salabat we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk;[56] its skin is so hard, that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... amphibious," replied Barker; "they take to the water like ducks. But I don't believe he has smelled salt water ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... harpies, with strange figures and stranger tones: some craving his charity, some snatching away his luggage, and at the same time bidding him 'never trouble himself,' and 'never fear.' A scramble in the boat and on shore for bags and parcels began, and an amphibious fight betwixt men, who had one foot on sea and one on land, was seen; and long and loud the battle of trunks and portmanteaus raged! The vanquished departed, clinching their empty hands at their opponents, and swearing inextinguishable hatred; while the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... himself with another that is fresh. He lives above the state of his body as well as his fortune, and runs out of his health and money as if he had made a match and betted on the race, or bid the devil take the hindmost. He is an amphibious animal, that lives in two elements, wet and dry, and never comes out of the first but, like a sea-calf, to sleep on the shore. His language is very suitable to his conversation, and he talks as loosely as he lives. Ribaldry and profanation are ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... assistance every other year. They were not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with; and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these amphibious Irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish! They tinkered and slopped around the shoals in the vicinity of the island, but they were never able to catch enough fish to keep themselves from starvation, much less to supply the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the region where the Ganges entereth the plains. The chaste Ulupi, taking her leave there, returned to her own abode. And, O Bharata, she granted unto Arjuna a boon making him invincible in water, saying, 'Every amphibious creature shall, without ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... unfrequently a general knowledge of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... caught fish. The Indian laughed at him, and told him that beavers ate flesh of no kind, but lived on the bark of trees, roots, and other growing things. "I asked him," said Smith, "if the beaver was an amphibious animal, or if it could live under water? He said that the beaver was a kind of subterraneous water animal, that lives in or near the water, but they were no more amphibious than the ducks and geese were—which was constantly ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... Englishman moved a stool to the table and took the glass of green-colored wine that Johnston pushed toward him. "Some scientists hold that the earth is filled with water instead of fire. Who knows where this blamed thing may not take us? Here is to a safe return from the amphibious land!" ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... characterized so many of his actions, and made off down the "sea-bank." Once he hid—vanished utterly would better express it—to avoid the passage of an eel-spearer, an inhabitant of the estuary almost as amphibious and mysterious as himself. Once he very nearly caught a low-flying snipe as he leapt up at it while cutting low over the top of the "bank"; and once—here he sprang aside with a half-stifled snarl and every bristle erect—he was very nearly caught by a horrible steel-toothed ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen. At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes' backbones, and other unsavoury missiles. Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in swimming under water, and diving for shells, even Max yielded the palm, declaring that he was ready to match himself against any land animal, but should for the future decline entering into a contest of that kind with amphibious creatures. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... imagined this lovely flower. A perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers. Besides these, I gather whatever else of beautiful chances to be growing in the moist soil by the river-side,—an amphibious tribe, yet with more richness and grace than the wild-flowers of the deep and dry woodlands and hedge-rows,— sometimes the white arrow-head, always the blue spires and broad green leaves of the pickerel-flower, which contrast and harmonize so well with the white ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the southern seas is, in many parts, so much warmer than that of our northern climes, that people may remain in it for hours without being chilled. Hence natives of the coral islands are almost amphibious, and our young hero, having spent much of his life among these islands, could swim for the greater part of a day without ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... oftentimes with a common flat; even the last would have been too slow for the usual rapidity of his motions. He seldom waited for more than a single canoe, along side of which his sorrel horse Ball,* was usually led into the river, and he floated over like an amphibious animal. The rest of the horses soon learned to follow instinctively. Where a canoe was not to be had, the general swam over frequently on the back of this uncommon horse. No leader, in ancient or modern times, ever passed rivers with more rapidity. His plans were laid, and his movements ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... Posilippo and where, thanks to a friendliest hospitality, he was to hang ecstatic, through another sublime afternoon, on the wave of a magical wand. Here, as happened, were charming wise, original people even down to delightful amphibious American children, enamelled by the sun of the Bay as for figures of miniature Tritons and Nereids on a Renaissance plaque; and above all, on the part of the general prospect, a demonstration of the grand style of composition and effect that ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... then, a whale is A SPOUTING FISH WITH A HORIZONTAL TAIL. There you have him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... husband, the iniquity of the accomplice as more diabolical than that of the principal? She found she could not answer this in the negative off-hand. The paradox was also before her that that incorrigible amphibious treasure of hers, whose voice was even now shouting to her more timorous friend from beyond the selvage-wave she had just contemptuously dived through—that that Sally, inexchangeable for anything she could conceive or imagine, must needs ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay were all hard facts. Occasionally, here and there, could be seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy, although the flat monotony of Duck Island was not inspiring, the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... aquarium, aqueduct, alluvial, alluvion, affusion, aquapuncture, alluvium, diluvium, anhydrous, enhydrous, amphibious, amphibian, aquiferous, aquiform, aquiparous, buoy, coffer, cofferdam, debacle, cataclysm, dehydrate, dehydration, irrigation, diluvian, douche, glairin, baregin, hydragogue, hydrant, hydrate, hydration, hydrated, hydraulicon, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... took nearly an hour's hustling and urging and galloping before the horses could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then only after old Roper had been partly dragged and partly hauled through the back-wash by the amphibious Jackeroo. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... philander, anthropos philanthropy *Archos chief, primitive archaic, architect *Astron star asterisk, disaster Autos self autograph, automatic, authentic *Barvs heavy baritone, barites *Biblos book Bible, bibliomania *Bios life biology, autobiography, amphibious *Cheir hand chiropody, chirurgical, surgeon *Chilioi a thousand kilogram, kilowatt *Chroma color chromo, achromatic Chronos time chronic, anachronism *Cosmos world, order cosmopolitan, microcosm *Crypto hide cryptogam, cryptology *Cyclos wheel, circle encyclopedia, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Civilis with Rome contains a remarkable foreshadowing of the future conflict with Spain, through which the Batavian republic, fifteen centuries later, was to be founded. The characters, the events, the amphibious battles, desperate sieges, slippery alliances, the traits of generosity, audacity and cruelty, the generous confidence, the broken faith seem so closely to repeat themselves, that History appears to present the self-same drama played over and over again, with but a change ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Carnivora in the last article, and now, before proceeding to the Cetacea, I will give a slight sketch of the marine Carnivora, of which, however, no examples are to be found on the Indian coasts. The Pinnipedia or Pinnigrada are amphibious in their habits, living chiefly in the water, but resorting occasionally to the land. There are some examples of the land Carnivora which do the same—the polar bear and otter, and more especially the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... have feared or valued British intervention of this character even in the most unfavourable conditions. It was because they looked for its effects rather in the threat than in the performance. They did not reckon for positive results at all. So long as such intervention took an amphibious form they knew its disturbing effect upon a European situation was always out of all proportion to the intrinsic strength employed or the positive results it could give. Its operative action was that ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... other man, doubtless this would have been so. But he was as nearly amphibious as a human being can be, and could dive and swim and hold his breath, yes, and see beneath the surface as well as the animal from which he took his name. Never did such gifts stand their owner in better stead than during the minutes of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... distinctly than our sailors with all their long practice; I do not know whether this depends on nervous sensitiveness or on the power of adjustment in the focus; but this capacity for distant vision might, it is probable, be slightly augmented by successive modifications of either kind. Amphibious animals, which are enabled to see both in the water and in the air, require and possess, as M. Plateau has shown,[533] eyes constructed on the following plan: "the cornea is always flat, or at least much flattened in front of the crystalline and over a space equal ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... trifling consideration they will successfully undertake feats which prove that they are almost as much at home in deep water as upon land, and when put to the test their strength and hardihood are extraordinary. Boys employed on beche-de-mer boats become almost amphibious. Some, as they swim and dive, collect the fish into a heap on the bottom of the sea until they have a parcel worthy of being taken to the attendant dinghy, alongside which they will come with arms so full as to restrict movement ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... is an amphibious bird, so well known to most people, that I shall only observe, they are here in prodigious numbers, so that we could knock down as many as we pleased with a stick. I cannot say they are good eating. I have indeed made several good meals of them, but it was for want of better victuals. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, 5 Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... tall rampire's artificial pride. Onward methinks, and diligently slow, The firm connected bulwark seems to grow, Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. While the pent Ocean, rising o'er the pile, Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile; The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, A new creation rescued from his reign. The ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... wretched arts adorn, Betray'd by man, then left for man to scorn; Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose, While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose; Whose outward splendour is but folly's dress, Exposing most, when most it gilds distress. Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race, With sullen woe display'd in every face; Who, far from civil arts and social fly, And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye. Here too the lawless merchant of the main Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain; ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... sentimental, but not a hippopotamus. If you doubt me consult any set of natural history pictures. The giraffe is shown with his long and sinuous neck entwined in fond embrace about the neck of his mate; but the amphibious, blood-sweating hippo is depicted as spouting and wallowing, morose and misanthropic, in a mud puddle off by himself. In passing I may say that I regard this comparison as a particularly apt one, because I know of no living creature so truly amphibious in hot weather as an open-pored ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... conducive to accuracy of observation, he saw enough to fully confirm his previous conviction that the swamp was the habitat of several forms of life hitherto unknown and unsuspected by naturalists. True, most of the creatures seen were apparently amphibious, their forms only partially revealed as they sported or fought in the waters of the lagoon; but transient glimpses were occasionally caught of others roaming about the patches of dry ground; while all were too distant for the watchers to obtain any very clear ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... a swim there," he said; "I don't claim to be amphibious, exactly. As you say, it's calm enough on the open water, but I don't think anything except a seal or a walrus or something of that kind could land on that rock. Not for me, thank you. I'll ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the microscope to be almost wholly composed of the remains of animals which formerly inhabited the ocean. On the other hand, the animal remains of the beds accompanying the coal are typically the remains of air-breathing, terrestrial, amphibious, or aerial animals, together with those which inhabit fresh or brackish waters. Marine fossils may be found in the Coal-measures, but they are invariably confined to special horizons in the strata, and they indicate temporary ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... "Amphibious!" exclaimed Roswell Gardiner, in an aside to Mary, as the stranger entered the room, following Baiting Joe's lead. The last only came for his glass of rum-and-water, served with which by the aid of the negro, he passed the back of his hand across his mouth, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... telling him what a dreadful place she considered the city for young men; and how she feared to bring her boy here. "The men here have no morals at all," said she, and added earnestly, "I've come to the conclusion that Eastern men are naturally amphibious!" ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... legion-fiend of creeping things; Terribly beautiful, the serpent lay, Wreath'd like a coronet of gold and jewels, Fit for a tyrant's brow; anon he flew Straight as an arrow shot from his own rings, And struck his victim, shrieking ere it went Down his strain'd throat, that open sepulchre. Amphibious monsters haunted the lagoon; The hippopotamus, amidst the flood, Flexile and active as the smallest swimmer; But on the bank, ill balanced and infirm, He grazed the herbage, with huge, head declined, Or lean'd to rest against some ancient tree. The crocodile, the dragon of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... young people will think I am telling them too much about swimming. But in the Boy's Town the boys really led a kind of amphibious life, and as long as the long summer lasted they were almost as much in the water as on the land. The Basin, however, unlike the river, had a winter as well as a summer climate, and one of the very first things that my boy could remember was being on the ice there. He learned to skate, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Colotes. Icles. Alcharates. Cychriodes. Jarraries. Arges. Cafezates. Ilicines. Spiders. Cauhares. Pharaoh's mice. Starry lizards. Snakes. Kesudures. Attelabes. Cuhersks, two- Sea-hares. Ascalabotes. tongued adders. Chalcidic newts. Haemorrhoids. Amphibious ser- Footed serpents. Basilisks. pents. Manticores. Fitches. Cenchres. Molures. Sucking water- Cockatrices. Mouse-serpents. snakes. Dipsades. Shrew-mice. Miliares. Salamanders. Stinkfish. Megalaunes. Slowworms. Stuphes. Spitting-asps. Stellions. Sabrins. Porphyri. Scorpenes. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... is hot, a favorite occupation for men and women is to sit half-submerged in the river, smoking vigorously "The Paraguayans are an amphibious race, neither wholly seamen nor wholly landsmen, but partaking of both." All sleep in cotton hammocks,—beds are almost unknown. The hammocks are slung on the verandah of the house in the hotter season and all sleep outside, taking off their garments with real sang froid. In the cooler season ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... often exhibit a scene that strikes the imagination more than this little desert in these depths of Western obscurity, occupied not by a gross herdsman, or amphibious fisherman, but by a gentleman and two ladies, of high birth, polished manners and elegant conversation, who, in a habitation raised not very far above the ground, but furnished with unexpected neatness and convenience, practised all the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... rated him severely, and was tempted to send him back. But Bossuet—a far greater casuist than she—decided that in these urgent cases one need hold much less to forms. They were contented with taking away the spurs from this amphibious personage; they pushed him into a confessional,—the curtain of which he was careful to draw before himself,—and they brought the Bavarian Princess, who, not knowing the circumstances, confessed the sins of her whole life ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... other one," ordered the burglar. "You might be amphibious and shoot with your left. You can count two, can't you? Hurry ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... limited within the boundaries of certain countries by the conditions of climate and soil; and some of the species prey upon each other. Linnaeus has divided them into six classes;—Mammalia, Birds, Fishes, Amphibious Animals, Insects, and Worms. The three latter do not come within the limits of our domain; of fishes we have already treated, of birds we shall treat, and of mammalia we will ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to get much if anything for teaching them. Yet neither was the former, in some respects, so easy as might have been expected. The offspring of man, in that locality, may be regarded as in some measure amphibious. Boys and girls equally, if not already in the sea, were, like young turtles, sure to be pointing towards it with an instinct too intense to err. I never met, indeed, with a race of beings believed, or even suspected to be rational, that, provided immediate impulses and inclinations could be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... those who brave The dazzling miracles of Mithra's Cave With its seven starry gates; ask all who keep Those terrible night-mysteries where they weep And howl sad dirges to the answering breeze. O'er their dead Gods, their mortal Deities— Amphibious, hybrid things that died as men, Drowned, hanged, empaled, to rise as gods again;— Ask them, what mighty secret lurks below This seven-fold mystery—can they tell thee? No; Gravely they keep that only secret, well And fairly kept—that they ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... nightly, to the uninitiated, A peril—not indeed like Love or Marriage, But not the less for this to be depreciated: It is—I meant and mean not to disparage The show of Virtue even in the vitiated— It adds an outward grace unto their carriage— But to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot, Couleur de rose, who's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... are going," I snarled, "I don't care. But I'm going to get under cover inside of ten seconds. I'm not amphibious." ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... enough at that moment, though it was quite still, and his sly eyes rested on his Prayer-book; for Sparks, the millionaire clothier, who had purchased Beverley, and was a potent voice in the Dollington Bank, and whose politics were doubtful, and relations amphibious, was sitting in the pew nearly opposite, and showed his red, fat face and white whiskers over the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... no longer lined with continuous palm-groves; desert and swamps take their place—the abode of the amphibious, nomadic, marsh Arab. An unruly customer he is apt to prove himself, and when he is "wanted" by the officials, he retires to his watery fastnesses, where he can remain in complete safety unless betrayed by his comrades. On the banks of the Tigris stands Ezra's ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... or oar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the children should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them took to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, roving character. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. He was a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain of romance and adventure in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life he ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... extreme lowness, at a distance of more than eight miles from the ship's deck, its presence is made known hours before it is sighted by vast clouds of amphibious birds, most of which all day long hover about the sea in its vicinity, and return to their rookeries on the island at sunset. On one occasion, when the vessel in which I was then serving was quite twenty miles from the land, we were unable to hear ourselves ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... the long rank herbage, which springs up in moist and undrained lands. In their habits they are almost amphibious, lying for hours half ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... such tradesmen, and such as would be particular to them, especially not to launch out in adventures beyond the compass of their stocks,[3] and withal to manage those things with due wariness. But this work had not room for those things; and as that sort of amphibious tradesmen, for such they are, trading both by water and by land, are not of the kind with those particularly aimed at in these sheets, I thought it was better to leave them quite out than to touch ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... of the creeks till the tide was turned, I was greatly alarmed by the men getting into the boat in great disorder and telling me that it was a crocodile which I had for a long time observed, and mistaken for the hull of a tree. A crocodile is an amphibious voracious animal, in shape resembling a lizard. It is covered with very hard scales, which cannot but with difficulty be pierced, except under the belly, where the skin is tender. It has a ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... taste into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the penchant for working mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to royalty, since our good King builds a fishing-temple, and dines on the Virginia ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... relation that Jupiter had to Creation, but simply for the negative reason that they had nobody else)—never does Jupiter seem more disgusting than when as just now in a translation of the 'Batrachia' I read that Jupiter had given to frogs an amphibious nature, making the awful, ancient, first-born secrets of Chaos to be his, and thus forcing into contrast and remembrance his ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... great effort was made to reduce the forts about the Narrows; but it failed, with the loss of three battleships and more than 2,000 men. This demonstrated the fact that the Dardanelles could never be opened by sea power alone, and, accordingly, amphibious operations became necessary. An expeditionary force was assembled in Egypt, and Mudros was selected as the advanced base. On April 25, landings were effected on the extreme point of the Gallipoli Peninsula. In spite of heroic attempts, we did little more than effect a precarious lodgment. ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... remarkable, noteworthy; queer, quaint, nondescript, none such, sui generis [Lat.]; unfashionable; fantastic, grotesque, bizarre; outlandish, exotic, tombe des nues [Fr.], preternatural; denaturalized^. heterogeneous, heteroclite [Gramm.], amorphous, mongrel, amphibious, epicene, half blood, hybrid; androgynous, androgynal^; asymmetric &c 243; adelomorphous^, bisexual, hermaphrodite, monoclinous^. qualified &c 469. singular, unique, one-of-a-kind. newfangled, novel, non-classical; original, unconventional, unheard of, unfamiliar; undescribed, unprecedented, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... without a weapon, or even an arm free to wield one, it would now have for its antagonist a strong man,—fresh and vigorous,—armed with a long-bladed knife; one, moreover, who from earliest youth had lived a half-amphibious life, and who was almost as much at home in the water as the shark itself. At all events, the Coromantee could calculate on keeping himself above water for several hours without rest, and under it as long as any other animal ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... cove, where it had floated right-side up, without any serious injury except the carrying away of the sails. Of course this discovery roused new hopes in the homes of the missing men. It did not "stand to reason" that four big strong, temperate young fellows, brought up to the hardy, amphibious island-life, had all fallen overboard, any more than it "stood to sense" that the boat had upset and then righted of itself. Besides, "none of the boy's corpuses had ever floated up." So the Tucketers took courage and felt sure that, whatever had become of the missing men, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... From this amphibious, ill-born mob began, That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. The customs, sirnames, languages, and manners, Of all these nations, are their own explainers; Whose relics are so lasting and so strong, They've ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... of this amphibious nature. She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning, and broke it without reluctance in the afternoon. As she changed her frock, she wondered whether Cecil was sneering at her; really she must overhaul herself and settle everything up ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... to sea. Then come a party of bathers,—ladies and little children, with towels and blue suits, and all the paraphernalia of pails and wooden shovels. Then will come perhaps a couple of girls, to sketch. They will encamp anywhere upon the shore, call into their service some small amphibious creature to tip a skiff up on its side to make an effective scene, and proceed with the wonders of their art. Soon the bathers return. They have been only a little way down the narrows, and come back to dinner ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Bostonian," said the doctor, laughing at my delight. "It is said that a marked feature of our modern civilization is that we are tending to revert to the amphibious type of our remote ancestry; evidently you will not object to drifting ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Race sprung partly from the old Epicurean, and partly from the Peripatetic Sect; they were brought first into Britain by Julius Cesar; and finding it a Land of Plenty, they wisely resolv'd never to go Home again. Their Doctrines are Amphibious, and compos'd Party per Pale of the two Sects before-mention'd; from the Peripatetics, they derive their Principle of Walking, as a proper Method to digest a Meal, or create an Appetite; from the Epicureans, they ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... canter up the park on Brilliant. Away we go, understanding each other perfectly; and I am quite sure that he enjoys as much as I do the bright sunshine and the morning breeze and the gleaming Serpentine, with its solitary swan, and its hungry ducks, and its amphibious dogs continually swimming for the inciting stick, only rescued to produce fresh exertions; and the rosy children taking their morning walk; and, above all, the liberty of London before two o'clock in the day, when the real London begins. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... marriage until the final examination in June, Lewisham's life had an odd amphibious quality. At home were Ethel and the perpetual aching pursuit of employment, the pelting irritations of Madam Gadow's persistent overcharges, and so forth, and amid such things he felt extraordinarily grown up; but intercalated with these experiences were those intervals at Kensington, scraps of his ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... not what to make of the pianets; but the footsteps of beasts reaching to the edge of the water may probably refer to amphibious animals, while the flocks of pianets may have been water-fowl of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... is greatly agitated, and as my head also is aching, I ask thee, therefore, O worshipful one, who art thou that stayest here?' Hearing these words the Yaksha said, 'I am, good betide thee, a Yaksha, and not an amphibious bird. It is by me that all these brothers of thine, endued with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... always likes to get his shops as near as possible to the sea—the highway of the "prahus" which bring him the products of the neighbouring rivers and islands. In time, no doubt, the Sandakan hills will be used to reclaim more land from the sea, and the town will cease to be an amphibious one. In the East there are, from a sanitary point of view, some points of advantage in having a tide-way passing under the houses. I should add that Sandakan is a creation of the Company's and not a native town ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... pant for breath as they snuff the fresh breeze, like porpouses, and then dive again into the lower regions. They are neither seamen nor landsmen, good whips nor decent shots, their hair is not woolly enough for niggers, and their faces are too black for white men. They ain't amphibious animals, like marines and otters. They are Salamanders. But that's a long word, and now they call them ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... was accumulated, covering, at the same time, some acres of scanty pasture, once held under lease and occupation by an honest fisherman, who earned a comfortable, if not an easy subsistence, from his amphibious pursuits. The thatched roofs were broken through—the walls rent and disfigured—all wore the aspect of desolation and decay. Long grass had taken root, flourishing luxuriantly on the summit, though surrounded by a barren wilderness, a wide and almost boundless ocean ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... it was perfectly calm, and a sailor assured them that the tide was mild. But even at such seasons they preferred to keep their distance, and called out frequently to one another. They looked upon their niece, from all she told them, as a creature almost amphibious; but still they were often uneasy about her, and would gladly have kept her well inland. She, however, laughed at any such idea; and their discipline was to let her have her own way. But now a thing happened which proved forever how much better old heads ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... which we were in search is amphibious, and suckles its young like the whale. It is frequently found in pairs with its young, browsing on the marine plants, and sometimes on shore in the cocoanut groves. It is properly called the "manatee," or seacow; measures fifteen feet ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... spoke constantly of the hippopotamus—ajie, as they called it—and even imitated to perfection the sounds made by that amphibious animal. This was indeed strange, because the hippopotamus did not exist in South America, nor has it ever been known to exist there. The women of the Bororos were in perfect terror of the ajie, which ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of kindred remains are found, which, however, are not identical with the species found in the earlier groups. Of these some were probably almost entirely aquatic, as their limbs take the form of paddles; others were purely terrestrial, a large proportion were amphibious, and some, as the pterodactylus, bore the same relation to the rest of their class as the bats bear to the other mammalia, being furnished with membranous wings, supported upon a special development of the anterior limbs. One important ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... is probable that the Dinosaurs are not really a natural group or order of reptiles, although they have been generally so considered. The Carnivorous and Amphibious Dinosaurs in spite of their diverse appearance and habits, are rather nearly related, while the Beaked Dinosaurs form a group apart, and may be descendants of a different group of primitive reptiles. These relations are most clearly seen in the construction ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... was going on, a conference was being held; and I had the satisfaction of seeing some men pull up a lot of dead rushes, dexterously tie them into bundles, and truss these together by means of spears. They had no canoes, for the very children were amphibious, living, so it seemed, as much in the water as out of it. When the raft was completed, I was invited to embark. My original friend, who had twisted a tow-rope, took this between his teeth, and led the way. Others swam behind and beside me to push and to pull. The force of the water was terrific; ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... which Scythrop inhabited stood at the south-eastern angle of the Abbey; and, on the southern side, the foot of the tower opened on a terrace, which was called the garden, though nothing grew on it but ivy, and a few amphibious weeds. The south-western tower, which was ruinous and full of owls, might, with equal propriety, have been called the aviary. This terrace or garden, or terrace-garden, or garden-terrace (the reader may name it ad libitum), took in an oblique view of the ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... the family, excepting the one who was towing, were eating in a group. The look of peace that beams from the faces of those people and the tranquil appearance of those aquatic houses, of those animals which in a certain measure have become amphibious, the serenity of that floating life, the air of security and freedom of those wandering and solitary families,—these are not to be described. Thus in Holland live thousands of families who have ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... such a spring flowing by the foundation walls of the house, and not a little of the strong overmastering local attachment that holds the owner there is born of that, his native spring. He could not, if he would, break from it. He says that when he looks down into it he has a feeling that he is an amphibious animal that has somehow got stranded. A long, gentle flight of stone steps leads from the back porch down to it under the branches of a lofty elm. It wells up through the white sand and gravel as through a sieve, and fills the broad space that has been arranged ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... thirteen," he said, slowly, as one who grudges assent, "in my uncle's time, I liked it well enough, no doubt. Boys don't realize the full terror of sea or cliff, you know, and are perfectly happy swimming and climbing. I used to be amphibious in those days, like a seal or an otter—in the water half my time; and I scrambled over the rocks—great heavens, it makes me giddy now just to THINK where I scrambled. But when I was about thirteen years old"—his face grew graver still—"a ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the back-water, when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... when the three-arched, twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the road—leaving the last scattered houses of the little town—turned south and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a Distance, there is a third Wall, where you have Lakes, Rivers, and Seas, and all Sorts of rare Fishes. This is the River Nile, in which you see the Dolphin, that natural Friend to Mankind, fighting with a Crocodile, Man's deadly Enemy. Upon the Banks and Shores you see several amphibious Creatures, as Crabs, Seals, Beavers. Here is a Polypus, a Catcher catch'd ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... wharves appear wholly deserted by men and women, and are tenanted alone by rats and boys,—two amphibious races; either can swim anywhere, or scramble and penetrate everywhere. The boys launch some abandoned skiff, and, with an oar for a sail and another for a rudder, pass from wharf to wharf; nor would it be surprising if the bright-eyed rats were to take similar ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... amphibious might of Britain with a master hand. Sea-power, mercantile and naval, enabled him to 'command the riches of the world' and become the paymaster of many thousand Prussians under Frederick the Great and Ferdinand of Brunswick. He also sent a small British army ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... style. A hundred feet from the house a former lake, now a mere pond well stocked with fish, makes known its vicinity as much by a thin mist rising above the tree-tops as by the croaking of a thousand frogs, toads, and other amphibious gossips who discourse at sunset. The time-worn look of everything, the deep silence of the woods, the long perspective of the avenue, the forest in the distance, the rusty iron-work, the masses of stone draped with velvet mosses, all made poetry ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... dreariness was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor, and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy,—although the flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring,—the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a considerable addition to my little farm, and extended my domains towards a wild lake, which I have a good prospect of acquiring also. It has a sort of legendary fame; for the persuasion of the solitary shepherds who approach its banks is, that it is tenanted by a very large amphibious animal called by them a water-bull, and which several of them pretend to have seen. As his dimensions greatly exceed those of an otter, I am tempted to think with Trinculo, "This is the devil, and no monster." But, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... reminder of past spring freshets; but the quickening presence of a stream of water seems thrown away on Beerjand, except as furnishing a place for closely-veiled females to come and wash clothes, and for the daily wading and disporting of amphibious youngsters. In any other city a part of its mission would be the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the Schinck (scincus), an amphibious animal of the lizard species, and sometimes of the land lizard, or crocodile, is said, when reduced to powder and drunk with sweet wine, to act miraculously in exciting the venereal action; it is ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... pursues his allies Gog and Magog and shuts them off by his famous wall. An arrangement with Porus and a visit to the Pillars of Hercules follow. The return is begun, and marvels come thicker and thicker. Strange beasts and amphibious men attack the Greeks. The "Valley from which None Return" presents itself, and Alexander can only obtain passage for his army by devoting himself, though he manages to escape by the aid of a grateful devil whom he sets free from bondage. At the sea-shore sirens beset the host, and ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... on this island, like those of the North American coast, wore clothes made of seal-skin and the intestines of the walrus. The lances used by them were pointed with the teeth of these amphibious animals. Their food consisted of the flesh of whales and seals, which they store in deep cellars dug in the earth. Their boats were made of leather, and they had sledges drawn ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Channel, which is a very convenient arrangement for deep-sea divers and long-distance swimmers desiring to get on at Daunt's Rock and get off in Ambrose Channel, but slightly extending the journey for passengers who are less amphibious by nature. ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... of superiority was, after all, in the men themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... this thrust without discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... floating that you thought a bit of old wood, it might very likely be the back or head of a crocodile. He has a bony coat like a suit of armour, and it would be very difficult indeed to break through it, and he swims along, using both his strong tail and his flat feet. He is what is called an amphibious animal, because he lives partly on land and partly in the water. He must breathe air, but he can shut up his nostrils by a fold of skin as we shut our eyes, and can remain under the water without breathing for some time. His enormous jaws are like a pair ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton |
