"Beetle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was chasing a hare, which was running for dear life and was at her wits' end to know where to turn for help. Presently she espied a Beetle, and begged it to aid her. So when the Eagle came up the Beetle warned her not to touch the hare, which was under its protection. But the Eagle never noticed the Beetle because it was so small, seized the hare and ate her up. The Beetle never forgot this, and ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... intensified, and the only thing to be done is to put the lamp at a distance and to dine in comparative darkness. Such a variety of insects come that an entomologist might make quite a respectable collection in the course of one night. One of these evening visitors after the rains is a long, slim beetle, green, or sometimes buff in colour, with a small head which fits loosely into his body. He twists his head about as if his collar was uncomfortable. When alarmed he exudes a strong acid which at once raises a blister. He is the more dangerous because, flying in rapidly, he often ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... to softer strains they struck the lyre, They sung the beetle or the mole, The dying kid, or ass's foal, By cruel man permitted ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of genius, in the mystery of his nature, should find his feelings sometimes like dumb notes in a piano ... should care for people at half past eleven on Tuesday, and on Wednesday at noon prefer a black beetle. How you frightened me with your 'fire-eyes'! 'making the most of them' too! and the 'black pits,' which gaped ... where did they gape? who could tell? Oh—but lately I have not been crossed so, of course, with those fabulous terrors—lately ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... certain signs, which distinguished him from all other animals of that species; upon his forehead was to be a white spot, in form of a crescent; on his back, the figure of an eagle; upon his tongue, that of a beetle. As soon as he was found, mourning gave place to joy; and nothing was heard, in all parts of Egypt, but festivals and rejoicings. The new god was brought to Memphis, to take possession of his dignity, and there installed with a great ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... minds, all so different, whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves or after themselves, who regarded their own existence as that of a transient and a fortuitous being,—like the little life of a plant or a beetle,—had a glimpse of Heaven. Never did music more truly merit the epithet divine. The consoling notes, as they were poured out, enveloped their souls in soft and soothing airs. On these vapors, almost visible, as it seemed to the listeners, like the marble shapes about them in ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... plan is to take up some one section of the subject, and thoroughly exhaust that. Universal laws manifest themselves only by particular instances. They say, man is the microcosm, Mr. Locke; but the man of science finds every worm and beetle a microcosm in its way. It exemplifies, directly or indirectly, every physical law in the universe, though it may not be two lines long. It is not only a part, but a mirror, of the great whole. It has a definite relation to the whole world, and the whole ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... primeval god, and the type of matter which contains within itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day certain of the inhabitants of the Sudan, pound the dried scarabaeus or beetle and drink it in water, believing that it will insure them a numerous progeny. The name ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... dragged a chair to the corner of the hearth and sat heavily down. He bent forward, a brooding, melancholy figure, a thin old veteran, grey and scarred. The fire-light showed strongly square jaw, hawk nose, and beetle brows. When he spoke, it was in a voice inexpressibly sombre. "I have seen my niece but three times since September. If you ask me now what you asked me then, I shall answer differently. I do not know—I do not know if ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... cent., and was the cause, not only of serious loss to the farmers, but of the closing of the cotton mills in New England, of a scarcity of cotton cloth and a decided rise in its price. The boll-weevil is a beetle about a quarter of an inch in length. This little beetle eats into the heart of each boll, which soon falls ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... her sleeves drawn up above her elbows, flourishing the beetle, Angelique struck the clothes most heartily in the pleasure of such healthy exercise. It was hard work, but she thoroughly enjoyed it, and only stopped occasionally to say a few words or to show her shiny face ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... extensive coal-beds; hence the leading industries are mining and iron working. The eastern portion is a level, treeless plain, adapted for grazing. Agriculture, carried on with irrigation, suffers from insect plagues like the Colorado potato beetle. The climate is dry and clear, and attracts invalids. Acquired partly from France in 1804, and the rest from Mexico in 1848; the territory was organised in 1861, and admitted to the Union in 1876. The capital is Denver (107). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... do, fillop me with a three-man-Beetle. A man can no more separate Age and Couetousnesse, then he can part yong limbes and letchery: but the Gowt galles the one, and the pox pinches the other; and so both the Degrees preuent ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... had made my way to the stern the man had fallen far behind the stern of the barge, and his head looked as small as a fly on the glassy surface of the water. However, towards that fly a fishing-boat was already darting with the swiftness of a water beetle, and causing its two oars to show quiveringly red and grey, while from the marshier of the two banks there began hastily to put out a second boat which leapt in the steamer's wash with the gaiety ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... know what insects you are after, in the first place. We have a lot of trouble with Japanese beetles. Around Washington, Dr. Crane's and my plantings there would be defoliated if they weren't sprayed for Japanese beetle control, and it is the same way ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... overwhelming power of enthusiasm. Eleanor dressed well and had a handsome, commanding profile with small, compressed lips and large, prominent, melancholy eyes that wickedly reminded Gregory of the eyes of a beetle. Beneath the black feather boa that was thrown round her neck, her thin shoulder-blades, while she talked to Mrs. Forrester and sketched with pouncing fingers the phrasing of certain passages, jerked and vibrated oddly. Mrs. Forrester nodded, smiled, acquiesced. She ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... succession of rings, or segments, more or less hardened by the deposition of a chemical substance called chitine; these rings are arranged in three groups: the head, the thorax, or middle body, and the abdomen or hind body. In the six-footed insects, such as the bee, moth, beetle or dragon fly, four of these rings unite early in embryonic life to form the head; the thorax consists of three, as may be readily seen on slight examination, and the abdomen is composed either of ten or eleven rings. The body, then, seems divided or insected into three ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... has descended in showers. Go into any of the London theatres now, and the following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... night, she sees a burnished beetle on the ground before her, sparkling along the dust as it makes its slow way to a tuft of maize, and puts out her foot and kills it. The country girl recalls a superstition connected with these bright beetles—that if one was killed, the sun, "his friend up there," would not shine ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... remembered happier days. Presently the clouds parted and the moon sent a brilliant spear shaft through the rent, making it almost like day. A startled peewit cried out, from his nest under the planking, that he had overslept, but was calmed into drowsiness by his wife's assuring tones; and a noisy beetle of some kind boomed and buzzed around, as if intoxicated by the very thought of daylight. Listening intently, amid all this soft murmur of sound, Dan presently began to hear afar the rhythmic beat of footsteps, falling hard and fast upon the ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... "I saw it done myself. But your ferocious growl isn't as loud as the tick of a beetle—or one of Ojo's snores ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... less brave and dashing as a soldier than sagacious as a statesman—is preparing to lead a conquering force. Having stamped out the rebellion within the Union itself—crushing it literally like a beetle—he is now addressing himself to the task—a harder one, perhaps, but still certain of achievement—of making an end of the bad neighbourhood of the Germans in the vast region forming the Hinterland of ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... weeklies a condemnation of this outrage on free speech. If the conditions had been reversed, if a Catholic had shot down the defamer of Catholic women, the country would have rung with denunciations of Catholic bigotry. But the Baptist beetle-browed can for months plan the death of a man who has exposed their hypocrisy and the assassination is taken as one of the few "occurrences" which diversify life in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... that I hear Coomin' doon the street? Weel I ken the dump, dump, O' her beetle feet; Mercy me! she's at the door! Hear her lift the sneck; Wheesht, an' cuddle mammy ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... long, bewildering days drew in, the transient nights, only a few breaths of shadow between noon and noon, deepened and strengthened. A restlessness came over everybody. There was another short strike among the miners. James Houghton, like an excited beetle, scurried to and fro, feeling he was making his fortune. Never had Woodhouse been so thronged on Fridays with purchasers and money-spenders. The place seemed surcharged ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... Infinite Intelligence brooded upon the race. It is the appeal of man's immortal unity to the All-Father, from age to age, for knowledge sufficient for its hourly needs, since ever, back in the far dim ages of the earth, primeval man, beetle-browed, furtive and fashioned fearsomely, first felt the faint vibration of a Soul; and, like an awakened giant, that chief of human faculties, a Mind took form which, pressing on along the uncertain ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... may feel, if the theory of Evolution is true, the 'poor beetle' certainly {62} feels an almost irreducible minimum of ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... German Dompfaffe, a contemptuous name for a cathedral canon. Fr. moineau, sparrow, is a diminutive of moine, monk. The wagtail is called in French lavandiere, laundress, from the up and down motion of its tail suggesting the washerwoman's beetle, and bergeronnette, little shepherdess, from its habit of following the sheep. Adjutant, the nickname of the solemn Indian stork, is clearly due to Mr Atkins, and the secretary bird is so named because some of his head feathers suggest a ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... through the thundering waves and their boat was left to sink. Then, before they could adjust their unaccustomed feet to the different balance of the Puncher's heaving deck, the gongs clanged and the destroyer leaped ahead like a dripping sea-soused water beetle, into ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... sound of scraping went on, broken at intervals by the faint rattle of sand or dirt upon the rocky path. At last he looked up. Far up the face of the cliff a bulky, shapeless thing was crawling, slowly but surely like a great beetle. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... shame!" chimed in a voice from the front seats. "We keep out of the way as much as we can; we eat every kind of troublesome worm and insect,—the cutworm, canker-worm, tent caterpillar, army-worm, rose-beetle, and the common house-fly; we ask for no wages or food or care,—and what do we get in return? Not even protection and common kindness. If we had places where we could live in safety, who could tell the amount of good we might do? Yet I would not have this poor ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... know what baby beetles are called. They are called grubs, and they live in the ground until it is time for them to turn into grown-up beetles. While they are babies they eat as much and as fast as they can, as no baby but a beetle should. The more they eat the sooner they come out into the bright world as a June-bug or some other kind of beetle. They eat all the tender little roots they can find. This is ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... apples lying on the ground, Shining, quite still, as though they had been stunned By some great violent spirit stalking through, Leaving a deep and supernatural calm Round a dead beetle upturned in a furrow. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... authority as Darwin thought it was play, and Scheitlin said that the cat let the mouse loose many times in order that she might have the experience of catching it each time. No mercy is shown the helpless mouse, which is the same to her as the toy ball—in the same way as a real beetle and a toy beetle are the same to a small child. Evidently the cat does not play with the mouse for the delight in torturing it, but purely for practice that she may become skilled in the art of catching it. The cat also exercises in springing movements, and by studying the mouse's ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... persuasion, who, according to the fashion of the learned of that day, had translated his name out of Hendrik Sleet into Henricus Slatius, was one of his most unscrupulous instruments. Slatius, a big, swarthy, shag-eared, beetle-browed Hollander, possessed learning of no ordinary degree, a tempestuous kind of eloquence, and a habit of dealing with men; especially those of the humbler classes. He was passionate, greedy, overbearing, violent, and loose of life. He had sworn vengeance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... just gotten one out when another flew straight at her unperceived and tangled himself in her hair. That was the limit of endurance. With one swift movement Eleanor turned off the gas, with another she pulled down her hair and released the prisoned beetle. Then she twisted up the soft coil again in the dark and went out ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... little things assume an extraordinary distinctness. I trode carefully in the patterns of the terrace pavement, counted the roses on the white bush by the dial (there were twenty-six), and seeing a beetle on the path, moved it to a bank at some distance. There it crept into a hole, and such a wild, weary desire seized on me to creep after it and hide from what was coming, that—I thought it wise ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... straight away: they want a borrowed lodging, which may vary considerably in character. The deserted galleries of the Anthophorae, the burrows of the fat Earth-worms, the tunnels bored in the trunks of trees by the larva of the Cerambyx-beetle (The Capricorn, the essay on which has not yet been published in English.—Translator's Note.), the ruined dwellings of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles, the Snail-shell nests of the Three-horned Osmia, reed-stumps, when these are handy, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... somewhat stiff and formal, the general design derives a certain impressiveness from the lofty clerestory, the immense display of windows, and a profusion of flying buttresses. The fantastic reproduction of Jacob's Ladder, with its beetle-like angels, on the W. front, should be carefully observed, and note should also be taken of the elaborately carved wooden door and the figures above and on either side (Henry VII. and SS. Peter and Paul). The two ladders are flanked by representations of the Apostles, whilst below the ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... pretty cat, was still as frank, as nave, as confiding in its innocence. If she had changed at all, it was that, since her marriage to the silent Algernon, she had become even more talkative than she had been in her girlhood. Her vivacity was as disturbing as the incessant buzzing of a June beetle. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... then beat it in a sack with a wash beetle, being finely hulled and cleansed from the dust and hulls, boil it over night, and let it soak on a soft fire all night; then next morning take as much as will serve the turn, put it in a pipkin, pan, or skillet, and put it a boiling in ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... more than a beetle or a field-mouse this time," she thought. "Now what can I do for him? He is always ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... finding no help in men, resolves to ascend to heaven to expostulate personally with Zeus for allowing this wretched state of things to continue. With this object he has fed and trained a gigantic dung-beetle, which he mounts, and is carried, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, on an aerial journey. Eventually he reaches Olympus, only to find that the gods have gone elsewhere, and that the heavenly abode is occupied solely by the demon of War, who is busy pounding up the Greek States in a huge ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... unique in the production of a species of beetle remarkable for variety of colors and ornamentation of body. We had seen numerous specimens of this insect in southern India and at Singapore, some of which were an inch long, but these of Elephanta ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... are very true. The rumbustious ogre has a hitherto undescribed, but quite imaginable, gap-toothed, beetle-browed ogress of a wife. Why he married her has never been told. Why the mortal male whom we meet for the first time at a dinner party has married the amazing mortal female sitting somewhere on the other side of the table is an ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... happy! Not a worm that crawls, Or grasshopper that chirps about the grass, Or beetle basking on the sunny walls, Or mail-clad fly that skims the face of glass The river wears in summer;—not a bird That sings the tranquil glory of the fields, Or single sight is seen or sound is heard, But some new pleasure to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... away. When shall we ever learn that not even a hair has been added to or taken from a blossom without a lawful cause, and study it accordingly? Fragrance, abundant pollen, and bright-colored petals naturally attract many insects; but roses secrete no nectar. Some species of bees, and a common beetle (Trichius piger) for example, seem to depend upon certain wild roses exclusively for pollen to feed themselves and their larvae. Bumblebees, to which roses are adapted, require a firmer support than the petals would give, and so alight on the center of the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... a beetle [that is, a large wooden hammer], and a few men of my own choice, and I'll take her," he said to General Amherst. He meant to row under the stern of the ship and wedge her rudder so that she would be helpless. ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... make a doctor, his father, after two years' trial, sent him to Cambridge with the object of his qualifying for a clergyman. But at Christ's College, in that University, he again took his own line—which was not that of divinity—riding, shooting and beetle-hunting being his chief delights. Nevertheless, at Cambridge as at Edinburgh, he seems to have shown an appreciation for good and instructive society, and in Henslow, the judicious and amiable Professor of Botany, the young fellow found such sympathy and kindly help that he came to ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... like a broken beetle— Sprawls without grace, Her face gray as asphalt, Her jaws sagging as on loosened hinges... Shadows ply about her mouth— Nimble shadows out of the jigging tree, That dances above her ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... which is the home of gannets, several acres in extent. They were all ruddy, being of red sandstone; and the smallest, in that warm light, was actual carmine. The largest rises with precipitous sides, which in parts beetle far over the sea, to a height of four hundred feet, having above a surface nearly level, but sloping gently to the south. By zigzag scrambling one may at a particular point climb to this surface; but it is a hard climb, and a landing can be effected ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... was the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters, whose principal seat of worship was in Upper Egypt. Phtha was a sort of artisan god, who made the sun, moon, and the earth, "the father of beginnings;" his sign was the scarabaeus, or beetle, and his patron city was Memphis. Khem was the generative principle presiding over the vegetable world,—the giver of fertility and lord of the harvest. These deities are supposed to have represented spirit passing into matter and form,—a process ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... and saw close to him a brown beetle, sitting on a blackberry leaf. Teddy looked at the beetle for a while in silence, and then he said, "Well, why is it ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... figure in its stiff clothes (the skirt rather short, thick legs in black stockings and large flat boots), marched along. She had a peculiar walk, planting each foot on the ground with deliberate determination as though she were squashing a malignant beetle, she was rather short-sighted, but did not wear glasses, because, as she said to Maggie, "one need not look peculiar until one must." Her favourite head-gear was a black straw hat with a rather faded black ribbon and a huge pin stuck skewer-wise ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... behind the College—little lairs whittled out of the heart of the prickly bushes, full of stumps, odd root-ends, and spikes, but, since they were strictly forbidden, palaces of delight. And for the fifth summer in succession, Stalky, McTurk, and Beetle (this was before they reached the dignity of a study) had built like beavers a place of retreat and ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... more or less mimics. She laced tight, wore an enormous bustle, also diamond earrings, and her fingers were covered with rings. At the top of her corsage, between two mounds of flesh well plastered with pearl-white, shone a beetle made of topaz with a diamond head, the gift of dear mistress,—a jewel renowned throughout the department. Like the late dear mistress, she wore short sleeves and bare arms, and flirted an ivory fan, painted by Boucher with two little ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... about to relate, belonged to the Island of Nantucket; she was owned by Messrs. C. Mitchell, & Co. and other merchants of that place; and commanded on this voyage by Thomas Worth, of Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard. William Beetle, (mate,) John Lumbert, (2d mate,) Nathaniel Fisher, (3d mate,) Gilbert Smith, (boat steerer,) Samuel B. Comstock, do. Stephen Kidder, seaman, Peter C. Kidder, do. Columbus Worth, do. Rowland Jones, do. John Cleveland, do. Constant Lewis, do. Holden Henman, do. ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... for you. So said little Robert, and pacing along, His many companions came forth in a throng, And on the smooth grass, by the side of a wood, Beneath a broad oak, which for ages had stood, Saw the children of earth and the tenants of air To an evening's amusement together repair. And there came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there was the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, And all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And then came the Moth, with ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... insect called the death-watch is a small beetle that perforates the small round holes often seen in old furniture or in the panelling of old houses. If one of these beetles be concealed in a panel, it will reveal itself by ticking in answer to any gentle tapping on ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... were those woods without inhabitants Besides the ephemera of earth and air; —Where glid the sunbeams through the latticed boughs, And fell like dew-drops on the spangled ground, To light the diamond-beetle on his way; —Where cheerful openings let the sky look down Into the very heart of solitude, On little garden-pots of social flowers, That crowded from the shades to peep at daylight; —Or where unpermeable foliage made Midnight at noon, and chill, damp horror reign'd O'er dead, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... said Billy, good-naturedly, dont be crabbd, but hear what a man has got to say Ive no consarn in the business, only to see right twixt man and man; and I dont kear the valie of a beetle-ring which gets the better; but theres Squire Doolittle, yonder be hind the beech sapling, he has invited me to come in and ask you to give up to ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mr. Pickwick, looking about him for fear he should tread on some overgrown black beetle, or ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... but Legionnaires drank no less of the heavy, red Algerian wine than before the summer heat engulfed them. Max had heard men say jokingly or solemnly of each other, "He has the cafard." Vaguely he knew that cafard was French for beetle, or cockroach; that soldiers who habitually mixed absinthe and other strong drinks with their cheap but beloved litre were often affected with a strange madness which betrayed itself in weird ways, and that ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... we worship her and observe her ordinances or find our pleasure in breaking them and mocking her who will not be mocked. But it is sad for those who have the feeling of kinship for all living things, both great and small, from the whale and the elephant down even to the harvest mouse and beetle and humble earthworm, to know that killing—killing for sport or fun—is not forbidden in her decalogue. If the killing at home is not sufficient to satisfy a man, he can transport himself to the Dark Continent and revel in the slaughter of all the greatest and noblest forms of life on the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... in air, Crept under the leaf, and hid her there; The katy-did forgot its lay, The prowling gnat fled fast away, The fell mosqueto checked his drone And folded his wings till the Fay was gone, And the wily beetle dropped his head, And fell on the ground as if he were dead; They crouched them close in the darksome shade, They quaked all o'er with awe and fear, For they had felt the blue-bent blade, And writhed at the prick of the elfin spear; Many a ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... astonishment. He had always imagined professional pugilists to be bullet-headed and beetle-browed to a man. He was not prepared for one of Mr Joe Bevan's description. For all the marks of his profession that he bore on his face, in the shape of lumps and scars, he might have been a curate. His face looked tough, and his eyes harboured always a curiously alert, questioning ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... accident which, he says, happened soon after his removal from St John's College, and his being chosen a fellow of Trinity. "Hereupon," he continues, "I did set forth a Greek comedy of Aristophanes, named in Greek [Greek: Heirene] with the performance of the Scarabaeus, or beetle—his flying up to Jupiter's palace with a man and his basket of victuals on her back; whereat was great wondering, and many vain reports spread abroad of the means how that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of the gold-bug is that of a man who finds a piece of parchment on which is a secret writing telling where Captain Kidd hid his treasure off the coast of South Carolina. The gold-beetle has nothing whatever to do with the real story, and is only introduced to mystify. It is one of the principles of all conjuring tricks to have something to divert the attention. Poe's detective story is a sort of conjuring trick, but it is all the more ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... to find without saining (blessing) it, the snares of the enemy being notorious and well-attested. A pool-woman of Teviotdale having been fortunate enough, as she thought herself, to find a wooden beetle, at the very time when she needed such an implement, seized it without pronouncing a proper blessing, and, carrying it home, laid it above her bed to be ready for employment in the morning. At midnight the window of her cottage opened, and a loud voice was heard calling up some one within by a ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... away to an old bird's-nest or a caterpillar's nest and deposit them in it. But in this respect the little kettle cannot call the big pot black. The chickadee also will carry away what it cannot eat. One day I dug a dozen or more white grubs—the larvae of some beetle—out of a decayed maple on my woodpile and placed them upon my window-sill. The chickadees soon discovered them, and fell to carrying them off as fast as ever they could, distributing them among ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... of six thousand million descendants. It is necessary, then, to know what other insects are employed in holding them in check, by feeding on them. Some of our most formidable insects have been accidentally imported from Europe, such as the codling moth, asparagus beetle, cabbage butterfly, currant worm and borer, elm-tree beetle, hessian fly, etc.; but in nearly every instance these have come over without bringing their insect enemies with them, and in consequence they have spread more extensively ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... the boat she stepped then, and found the earth all paved of a middling gravel, and nought at all growing there, not even the smallest of herbs; and she stooped down and searched the gravel, and found neither worm nor beetle therein, nay nor any one of the sharp and slimy creatures which are ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Theodora, all unused to the turbulence of emotion, was troubled and moved and yet wildly happy. She looked away down the centre avenue, and she began to speak fast with a little catch in her breath, and Hector clinched his hands together and gazed at a beetle in the grass, or otherwise he would have taken her in ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... things. Although, for example, the pupil has experienced but one such object, he does not necessarily think of it as a mere individual—this thing—but as a representative of a possible class of objects, a beetle. In other words the new particular notion tends to pass directly into a ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... juice of poppy bruised, With black hellebore infused; Here is mandrake's bleeding root, Mixed with moonshade's deadly fruit; Viper's bag with venom fill'd, Taken ere the beast was kill'd; Adder's skin and raven's feather, With shell of beetle blent together; Dragonwort and barbatus, Hemlock black and poisonous; Horn of hart, and storax red, Lapwing's blood, at midnight shed. In the heated pan they burn, And to pungent vapours turn. By this strong suffumigation, By ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fancy, and 'The Celestial Grocery' is as whimsical as it is fresh. 'Bill' is in yet another vein, and proves that Mr. Pain can handle the squalor of reality: while the last half of 'The Girl and the Beetle,' the best of the book, suggests a certain comprehension of ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... been used more or less in decoration, especially in Brazil, where the richly-colored beetles of the country are affected as articles of personal adornment. Recently in a Union Square jewelry store a monster beetle was on exhibition, having been sent there for repairs. It was alive, and about its body was a delicate gold band, locked with a minute padlock; a gold chain attached it to the shawl of the owner. Sometimes they are worn upon the headgear, their slow, cumbersome movements preventing them from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... forget your beauteous scenery. Seated in the cool of the evening under one of the noble trees on your shore, the only sounds I heard were the soft ripple of the water, and the late warbling of the redbreast—Yes, I forget the humming beetle as it rapidly passed, and the owl calling to its mate in the distant wood. How peaceful were ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the Cocoanut Palm is attacked by a very large beetle with a single horn at the top of its head. It bores through the bark and slightly injures the tree, but I never heard that any had died in consequence. In some countries this insect is described as the rhinoceros beetle, and is said to belong ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... reached the nearest house when Toto saw a large beetle crossing the path and barked loudly at it. Instantly a wild clatter was heard from the houses and yards. Dorothy thought it sounded like a sudden hailstorm, and the visitors, knowing that caution was no longer necessary, hurried forward to see what ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... reasonably retiring. A few glass tumblers inverted above as many of these larger holes during the summer will intercept the winged sprite into which he is shortly to be transfigured—a brilliant metallic-hued beetle, perhaps flashing with bronzy gold or glittering like an emerald—the beautiful cicindela, or tiger-beetle, known to the entomologist as the most agile winged among the coleopterous tribe; known to the populace, perhaps, simply as a bright glittering fly ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... in all this worship. Thus the scarabeus, or beetle, which was held to be especially sacred, was considered as the emblem of the sun. Thousands of these relics may be found in the different museums, having been preserved to the present time. The bull, Apis, not only was a sacred ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... came knocking At my wee, small door; Some one came knocking, I'm sure - sure - sure; I listened, I opened, I looked to left and right, But naught there was a-stirring In the still dark night; Only the busy beetle Tap-tapping in the wall, Only from the forest The screech-owl's call, Only the cricket whistling While the dewdrops fall, So I know not who came knocking, At all, at ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... to moralise; not kill the bird and be compelled to spend the silver in destroying insects that the bird would have delighted to consume, and moralise upon the destructiveness of some hitherto insignificant bug or beetle, which has suddenly ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... mountains, which, at length, deepened into night. Then the LUCCIOLA, the fire-fly of Tuscany, was seen to flash its sudden sparks among the foliage, while the cicala, with its shrill note, became more clamorous than even during the noon-day heat, loving best the hour when the English beetle, with less offensive sound, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the study, forgetting both that there had been a Captain Hull in command of the "Pilgrim," and that that unfortunate had just perished with his crew. The cockroach absorbed him entirely. He did not admire it less, and he made as much time over it as if that horrible insect had been a golden beetle. ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... Such a gentle, high-bred air, and such inimitable ease and composure in his flight and movement! He is a poet in very word and deed. His carriage is music to the eye. His performance of the commonest act, as catching a beetle, or picking a worm from the mud, pleases like a stroke of wit or eloquence. Was he a prince in the olden time, and do the regal grace and mien still adhere to him in his transformation? What a finely proportioned form! How plain, yet rich, his color,—the bright ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... I've been a-roostin' up here in my perch, I've been a-watchin' you boys; a-watchin' an' a-worryin'. What have you been a-doin'? You've been a-raisin' hell, you have. Son, you ain't a rote a word, have yer? An' you, Whinney—boy, you ain't ketched a bug nor a beetle, have yer? And you, ole Swanko-panko, you ain't drawed ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... Cast Skin.—New Britain and Annamite story of immortality, the serpent, and death, 69 sq.; Vuatom story of immortality, the lizard, the serpent, and death, 70; Nias story of immortality, the crab, and death, 70; Arawak and Tamanchier stories of immortality, the serpent, the lizard, the beetle, and death, 70 sq.; Melanesian story of the old woman and her cast skin, 71 sq.; Samoan story of the shellfish, two ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... an irrepressible smile, "your words suggest to me brilliant possibilities. Perhaps were I to sit down and tell every one in trisyllables what they already know only too well about the crops, and the weather, and the Colorado beetle, and so forth, I might perchance wake up some ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... have any earthly concern, as I am sure he will never have a heavenly one. Beetles, minerals, gases, may be classified; and to have them classified is not only convenient but a genuine advance of knowledge. But if you had to make a beetle, as men are making poetry, how much would classification help? To classify in a science is necessary for the purpose of that science: to classify when you come to art is at the best an expedient, useful ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... morning, I will give you the dress. I have decided on it already. Sir Samuel doesn't like it on me, so I don't mind parting with it; but it's very handsome, and cost me a great deal of money when I was getting my trousseau. It is scarlet satin trimmed with green beetle-wing passementerie, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... thing which was offered for sale was a beetle. "What is the special advantage of this ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... of five years, not long afterward was laid beside her mother. Many said that Hugh buried his heart with Jennie and had not been the same man since. He was reserved, except to one or two intimate friends. Shaggy, beetle-browed and unshaven, his looks were anything but pleasing to those who did ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... "Even the cerements of the tomb enveloping the form of the Ninth Goblin could not hide—nay, seemed rather to bring prominently forward—the malignant expression of the one-eyed face, with its crop of red whiskers, beetle ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... of the little wind she could gain to fly on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to the other, like a stag beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to windward on her zigzag flight to the south. Sometimes she was hidden from sight by the straight column of smoke that flung fantastic shadows across the water, then gracefully ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... hurrying you. But get to that switchboard! We need quick action. You and I represent the city of Marion right now. Must keep her name clean! I'll explain later. But give 'er the juice! Jam on every switch. Dome to cellar! Lots of it! Put their night-beetle eyes out with it." ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... night-moth stirs to the reed, And the beetle booms; The bird and the beast are keyed To the ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... leaves were so thick, and their boughs spread so far, that it was only here and there a sunbeam could get straight through. All the gentle creatures of a forest were there, but no creatures that killed, not even a weasel to kill the rabbits, or a beetle to eat the snails out of their striped shells. As to the butterflies, words would but wrong them if they tried to tell how gorgeous they were. The princess's delight was so great that she neither ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... the desert, where they have to fly very far for anything to eat, and to race for it very often at that. Ting-a-ling took nothing with him but what he wore, but his "things" and his best clothes were to be sent after him on a beetle, which, though slow, was very strong, and could have carried, if he chose, everything that Ting-a-ling had. About sunset, the fairy and the butterfly, the latter very tired, arrived at the castle of Tur-il-i-ra, and there, at the great door, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... Pyetushkov was on the point of getting up, and twenty times he huddled miserably under the sheepskin.... At last he really did get down from the stove and determined to go home, and positively went out into the yard, but came back. Praskovia Ivanovna got up. The hired man, Luka, black as a beetle, though he was a baker, put the bread into the oven. Pyetushkov went again out on to the steps and pondered. The goat that lived in the yard went up to him, and gave him a little friendly poke with his horns. ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... be picked. I don't think I'm good enough!" whispered a very small purple pansy, who had only recently been planted, to a beetle who happened to be crawling by. "I should like to go with the others, though I don't suppose it would cheer anyone to see me, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able to make a fair entomological collection but as I neither (Ha! I've killed the hornet) desire them in my hat ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Mr. Russell's Hound had time to make himself acquainted with every smell within twenty yards. He turned over a snail that sat—round and striped like a peppermint bull's-eye—on the short grass, he patted a little beetle that pushed its way across a world of disproportionate size, and then, by peevishly pulling the end of his whip which hung from Mr. Russell's pensive hand, he suggested that the pursuit should continue. So they walked to the crest ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... his speech with so disagreeable an inflection that Arved was astonished. He looked around and spat at a beetle. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... disposal, and that all who wished to do so could at any time travel through the country without the slightest fear of molestation. For some time affairs remained in the same condition. The doctor went daily on shore with butterfly and beetle nets, tin boxes, and other paraphernalia. He was generally accompanied by a couple of bluejackets, and always took a native guide to prevent the risk of being lost in the jungle, and also because the man was able to take him ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... beetle, that we tread upon. In corporal suffering finds a pang as great As when a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... you, Claudio!' replied his sister; 'and I quake, lest you should wish to live, and more respect the trifling term of six or seven winters added to your life, then your perpetual honour! Do you dare to die? The sense of death is most in apprehension, and the poor beetle that we tread upon, feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.' 'Why do you give me this shame?' said Claudio. 'Think you I can fetch a resolution from flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... who never From largest beetle ran, And—conscious p'raps of pleasing caps - The housemaids, formed the van: And Bibulus the Butler, His calm brows slightly arched; (No mortal wight had ere that night Seen him with shirt unstarched;) And Bob, the shockhaired knifeboy, Wielding two Sheffield blades, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... Settlements was covered with roving bands of horse Indians, who gave no quarter to any whites. Yet Darwin rode the four hundred miles between Bahia and Buenos Ayres, when even the hardy Gauchos refused to accompany him. Personal danger and a hideous death were small things to him compared to a new beetle or ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ground beside her, a tiny figure became visible, so small that Toinette had to kneel and stoop her head to see it plainly. The figure was that of an odd little man. He wore a garb of green bright and glancing as the scales of a beetle. In his mite of a hand was a cap, out of which stuck a long pointed feather. Two specks of tears stood on his cheeks and he fixed on Toinette a glance so sharp and so sad that it made her feel sorry and frightened ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... burr after burr I found these sacks or cysts of sweets secreted by the aphides for the bees to puncture and drain. The largest of them would fill a bee at a draught. Some of the burrs contained big fat grubs of a beetle unknown to me,—the creature that had eaten the seeds, bored the hole at the base, and left the burr cleaned and garnished for the aphides. These in turn invited the bees, and the bees, carrying ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... swirl, bellied it as though it had been a gigantic sail, and shook from its folds a deluge of hailstones followed by snow. Through it all a grotesque shape that seemed sometimes a huge, abnormal beetle and sometimes a beast, worked slowly around the crag, now crawling, now rearing upright with a futile napping of stiff wings, towards the two human figures. It was Lucky Banks, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... the same length as the snout. The eggs hatch into the familiar worms found in ripe chestnuts, hickory-nuts and hazel nuts. The large hole in the shell of the nut is made by the full grown worm as it escapes to enter the ground, where it completes its transformation into a beetle. An interesting thing in connection with these weevils is that each species confine its attacks to one particular kind of nut. Even those species that attack acorns show a decided tendency to distinguish between oak species and confine themselves as groups very largely to particular species or ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... into steaks with a bone in each; trim them nicely, and scrape clean the end of the bone. Flatten them with a rolling pin, or a meat beetle, and lay them in oiled butter. Make a seasoning of hard-boiled yolk of egg and sweet-herbs minced small, grated bread, pepper, salt, and nutmeg; and, if you choose, a little minced onion. Take the chops out of the butter, and cover them with the seasoning. Butter some half sheets ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... be. I replied that I had not yet decided, whereupon my tormentor, after looking at my feet, which I have never succeeded in growing up to, observed, "Well, if I were you, I think I should emigrate to Colorado and help to crush the beetle." Later on in life I was the victim of a cruel hoax, carried out with triumphant ingenuity by a confirmed practical joker, who with the aid of a thread caused what appeared to be a gigantic blackbeetle to perform strange and unholy evolutions in my sitting-room. Worst of all, I was victimised ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... Julian, "to see the contempt written in your face, one would think you were an archangel looking at a black beetle, as a learned judge once observed. If you won't regard Hazlet as a man and a brother, at least remember ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... know," she said, weighing her answer. "Perhaps it was the novel experience of being considered—sexless; of being classified by a number, like a beetle in a case. Let me answer with another question: Why did I interest you sufficiently ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... and ivory; but the Ethiopian, without writing, without books, without mechanical faculty of any kind, quieted his soul by the worship of animals, birds, and insects, holding the cat sacred to Re, the bull to Isis, the beetle to Pthah. A long struggle against their rude faith ended in its adoption as the religion of the new empire. Then rose the mighty monuments that cumber the river-bank and the desert—obelisk, labyrinth, pyramid, and tomb of king, blent with tomb of crocodile. Into such deep debasement, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... lived on something else, and the best livers had always been the best killers. He did not pretend to justify the plan, but there it was; and it worked the same whether it was one microscopic organism preying on another or a bird devouring a beetle or Germany trying to swallow the world. Rapp, Senior, said that was all very well, but these pacifists would keep us out of war yet. Doctor Purdy, with whom he had finished a game of pinochle—Herman Vielhaber had lately been unable to keep ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... other ornaments than a door in a simple square frame, with an oval in the centre of the upper part, on which are inscribed the hieroglyphical figures of a beetle, a man with a hawk's head, and beyond the circle two figures on their knees, in the act of adoration. Having passed the first gate, long arched galleries are discovered, about twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, cased with stucco, sculptured and painted; the vaults, of an elegant elliptical ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... "campo." He rarely visited the capital, except on matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never have cared to show himself in the streets of Assuncion; for, like all true naturalists, he ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid |
