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Carnivorous   Listen
adjective
Carnivorous  adj.  Eating or feeding on flesh. The term is applied:
(a)
to animals which naturally seek flesh for food, as the tiger, dog, etc.;
(b)
to plants which are supposed to absorb animal food;
(c)
to substances which destroy animal tissue, as caustics.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Carnivorous" Quotes from Famous Books



... here breaks off, at the moment when Pallil, whose help against the dragon had been invoked, begins to speak. Let us hope we shall recover the continuation of the narrative and learn what became of this carnivorous monster. ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... to a mutton-chop, Kenelm helped himself, and replied gravely, "Tell your mistress that if she had only given us vegetables, I should have eaten you. Tell her that though man is partially graminivorous, he is principally carnivorous. Tell her that though a swine eats cabbages and such like, yet where a swine can get a baby, it eats the baby. Tell her," continued Kenelm (now at his third chop), "that there is no animal that ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... opuntia, and promote its growth, as they are careful to keep crocodiles in the ditches of fortified places. In regions where organized nature is so powerful and active, man summons as auxiliaries in his defence the carnivorous reptile, and the plant with ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... it has a duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly a bird, for it lays eggs, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the strawberry is thought to be comparatively modern. The ancients appear to have been a carnivorous race: they gorged themselves with meat; while the modern man makes larger and larger use of fruits and vegetables, until this generation is doubtless better fed than any that has preceded it. The strawberry and the apple, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... exposed not only to terrible fatigue, but to hunger, thirst, and fierce carnivorous animals. It appeared impossible that they could accomplish ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... was the one that came suddenly upon More while he was resting with Almah after his flight with the run-away bird. That I take to be the Megalosaurus. This animal was a monster of tremendous size and strength. Cuvier thought that it might have been seventy feet in length. It was carnivorous, and therefore more ferocious than the iguanodon, and more ready to attack. Its head was like that of a crocodile, its body massive like that of an elephant, yet larger; its tail was small, and it stood high on its legs, so that it could run with great speed. It was ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... in his career. Up to this time he had lived entirely on the provisions which his parents had left him, but henceforth he was independent and could take care of himself. He was no longer an embryo; he was a real fish, a genuine Salvelinus fontinalis, as carnivorous as the biggest and fiercest of all his relations. The cleft in his breast might close up now, and the last remnant of his yolk-sac vanish forever. He was done with it. He had graduated from the nursery, and had found his place ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... we may feel quite sure belonged to one of those domestic breeds which have all been derived from the wild rabbit of Europe known to zoologists as Lepus Cuniculus. The island was a favourable spot for the rabbits, for there do not appear to have been any carnivorous beasts or birds to harry them, nor were there other land mammals competing with them for food; and, as a result, we are told that they had so far increased and multiplied in forty years as to be described as "innumerable." In four and a half centuries these rabbits ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... O'er all we feed on pow'r of life and death. But read the instrument, and mark it well. The oppression of a tyrannous control Can find no warrant there. Feed then, and yield Thanks for thy food. Carnivorous, through sin, Feed on the slain; but spare the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... vexing problem, which like a huge carnivorous spectre, flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology, now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was not addicted ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... gave little heed, for he was impatiently awaiting the series of plants which most bewitched him, the vegetable ghouls, the carnivorous plants; the Antilles Fly-Trap, with its shaggy border, secreting a digestive liquid, armed with crooked prickles coiling around each other, forming a grating about the imprisoned insect; the Drosera of the peat-bogs, provided with glandular hair; the Sarracena and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... its high bank, covered with forest trees, the advanced lines, as it were, of the vast wilderness which lay behind. From out the depths of those woods rose the occasional shrieks of an owl, or other night bird, and at intervals the long dismal howl of a wild dog — the only carnivorous animal indigenous in that country. The air was balmy, but there was something in the mournful aspect of the scene that weighed upon the spirits, and made one feel inexpressibly lonely in the midst of that boundless wilderness ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... wives of Dhritarashtra's sons and grandsons assembled together, deprived, O Kesava, of their husbands and sons and without protectors, will indulge in lamentations with Gandhari in their midst, on the field of battle haunted by dogs and vultures and other carnivorous birds, then, O Janardana, will the final bath ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... still he is evidently much stronger than when he went to Siena, can walk for an hour together (instead of failing at the end of the street), and looks quite vigorous with his snow-white beard and moustache, through which the carnivorous laugh runs and rings. He doesn't know yet we are going away. He will miss Robert dreadfully. Robert's goodness to him has really been apostolical. And think of the effect of a goodness which can quote at every turn of a phrase something from an author's book! Isn't it more bewitching ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... adapted to a fish diet, until in time it came to resemble in structure the gizzard of an ordinary grain-feeder such as the pigeon. Holmgren again reversed this experiment by feeding pigeons for a lengthened period on a meat-diet, with the result that the gizzard became transformed into the carnivorous stomach. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace mentions the case of a Brazilian parrot which changes its color from green to red or yellow when fed on the fat of certain fishes. Not only changes of food, however, but changes of climate ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... and sick, as I see daily weapons of war about me and men slaughtered like altar-victims; drawing as I do breath infected by rotting corpses; expecting myself a similar fate, (for who can be hopeful when the very atmosphere is weighed down and dusky with the shadow of carnivorous birds?) yet do I cling to my country. For what else would my feeling be, born and bred as I am, and with the not ignoble tombs of my fathers before my eyes? For thee alone does it seem to me that I could neglect my country, and if I could get leisure, force myself ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... and concur by their reciprocal reaction to the same definite end. None of these parts can be changed without affecting the others; and consequently each taken separately, indicates and gives all the rest." He then gives illustrations: arguing that the carnivorous form of tooth necessitating a certain action of the jaw, implies a particular form in its condyles; implies also limbs fit for seizing and holding prey; therefore implies claws, a certain structure of the leg-bones, a certain form of shoulder-blade. Summing ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... possibly I might meet with an adventure with a lion or a leopard in that dark belt of tall trees, under whose impenetrable shade grew the dense thicket that formed such admirable coverts for the carnivorous species, I took a stroll along the awesome place with the gunbearer, Kalulu, carrying an extra gun, and a further supply of ammunition. We crept cautiously along, looking keenly into the deep dark dens, the entrances of which were ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... or diarrhoea of infants, is generally owing to too great acidity in their bowels. Milk is found curdled in the stomachs of all animals, old as well as young, and even of carnivorous ones, as of hawks. (Spallanzani.) And it is the gastric juice of the calf, which is employed to curdle milk in the process of making cheese. Milk is the natural food for children, and must curdle ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... is sooner completed in the carnivorous than in the herbivorous tribes. In the former the temporary callus may attain sufficient fineness of consistency for the careful use of the limb within four weeks, but with the latter a period of from six weeks to ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... of experiments was forthwith set on foot, with the result of proving that sun-dews and a number of other plants obtain the bulk of their nourishment by catching, killing, and digesting insects. They may be called truly carnivorous plants. What an unexpected reversal this was of the order of things hitherto believed to prevail universally. Animals live on other animals or on plants. Here were plants living on animals, and keeping down their number. Moreover, without a nervous ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... of incense full, With parasites tickled, with slaves begirt, He strutted, a cock, he bellowed, a bull, He rolled him, a dog, in dirt. And dog, bull, cook, was he, fanged, horned, plumed; Original man, as philosophers vouch; Carnivorous, cannibal; length-long exhumed, Frightfully living and armed to devour; The primitive weapons of prey in his pouch; The bait, the line and the hook: To feed on his fellows intent. God of the Danae shower, He had but to follow his bent. He battened on fowl not safely ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her own vernacular, "making, culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached her with her stockyards—an injustice which even Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely have committed. Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is carnivorous? Was not "Nature red in tooth and claw" several aeons before Chicago was thought of? I do not understand that any unnecessary cruelty is practised in the stockyards; and apart from that, I fail to see that systematic slaughter of animals for food is any more ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... development of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. At first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. The canines are early developed, and evidently designed ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... small island, and have not yet been detected elsewhere. Amongst those thus limited in their geographical range are the tiger and devil of the colonists, the two largest indigenous Australian carnivorous quadrupeds. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... that you will eat the horse," answered the Frenchman, who was a bit of a naturalist. "He is graminivorous; you are carnivorous. He can't eat you, but ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... oatmeal and bread, and rarely taste flesh of any sort. Dogs thus fed are hardier, healthier, have more endurance, better wind, keener scent, greater intelligence, and are more easily trained than meat-fed dogs. A diet which is safe for carnivorous animals, must certainly be safe for human beings, who belong to a class of animals all representatives of which, with the exception of man are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... principle," the Professor broke out. "It depends upon diet. Carnivores and birds of prey can take lethodyne with impunity; herbivores and fruit-eaters cannot recover, and die of it. Man, therefore, being partly carnivorous, will doubtless be able more or ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... thing that grew there, a huge ball with a thousand stinging tentacles. A carnivorous plant. Even as the realization flashed across his mind he saw that the spiny sphere was opening. Split vertically, the two halves fell apart to disclose the steaming interior whose walls were lined with sharp dagger-like projections a foot in ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... situated on each side of the mouth. They are variously toothed, so as to tear the food, and move horizontally instead of up and down as in the horse. The act of taking the food, especially if the insect be carnivorous in its habits, is quite complex, as not only the true jaws, but the accessory jaws (maxillae, Fig. 5, a, upper, b, under side of the head of a young beetle; at, antennae, md, mandible, mx, maxillae, mx[1], labium) and the feelers (palpi) attached to the maxillae, and the under ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... to continue tireless and ever-inventive. Mrs. Ward's League to promote the return of women as town and county councilors is her latest device to prove the unfitness of women for public affairs, and since the Vegetarian League for combating the carnivorous instincts of the tigress by feeding her on blood, there has been no quite so happy adaptation of means to end. If anything could add to the educative efficiency of the new League, it is Mrs. Ward's scrupulousness in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... differences in certain wild species of the genus. A much more important difference, according to Daubenton,[99] is that the intestines of domestic cats are wider, and a third longer, than in wild cats of the same size; and this apparently has been caused by their less strictly carnivorous diet. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... operates in the same degree to effect changes I am inclined to doubt. In man there is no dental or intestinal difference, whether he be as carnivorous as an Esquimaux or as vegetarian as a Hindu; whereas in created carnivorous, insectivorous, and herbivorous animals there is a striking difference, instantly to be recognised even in those of the same family. Therefore, if diet has operated in effecting such changes, why ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... he added, "you disappoint me. You look like a boy who is fond of flowers. And yet you have never been to see my cannas, which are the finest in the kingdom, to say nothing of myself, who am also something of a flower. A carnivorous orchid, I fancy." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... dragged about from city to city, like a bag of wheat or a cask of wine. He would dwell in pretentious and monumental hotels, where he would be numbered like a convict; he would meet the same carnivorous English family, with whom he might have made a tour of the world without exchanging one word; swallowing every day the tasteless soup, old fish, tough vegetables, and insipid wine which have an international reputation, so to speak. But above all, he was to have the horror, every evening upon ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... was, that the carnivorous and vinous Father Ricardo knew that his stomach was not suited for high winds and rough oceans, and was hoping that some scheme might be devised to allow him to remain tranquilly on ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... passive regularity. She scarcely knows the lighter shades of sentiments and expressions. She laughs or she weeps. No smiling. When she laughs, it is with a large display of the solid white teeth of a carnivorous animal; when she weeps, it is with the deep sobs of a beaten child. She is strong and patient like the ox, she runs like the horse, she resists cold, heat, and fatigue; her sleep is profound and without dreams. She is more mother than wife, in the animal sense ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... The hind-feet are like those of a duck when in the water, and the front ones have, beyond the skin, only a flapper or paw with claws, at the end of it. They are covered with thick, glossy hair, closely set against the skin. The form of their jaws and teeth proves that they are carnivorous, and they are known to live on fish, crabs, and sea-birds. The birds they catch in the water, as they can swim with great rapidity and ease. They can remain also for a considerable time under the water, without coming ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... eventually an impasse would be reached when greater mobility would endanger nutrition. If the roots withdrew from the soil, the vine would die—unless, he agreed slowly, echoing her shudder, the vine solved the dilemma by becoming again a carnivorous strangler. Nature made unaccountable blunders and sometimes found strange remedies, turning a blessing for one species into a ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... keep still!" cried out Nance Pete; and she snatched him up bodily, and held him out to the elephant. I believe my own pang at that moment to have been general. I forgot that elephants are not carnivorous, and shuddered back, under the expectation of seeing Davie devoured, hide and hair. But Nance had the address to stiffen the little arm, and my lord took the cookie, still clutched in the despairing hand, and ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... to have prevented all mistake, for he plainly enough overthrows the phantom of hereditary guilt; and as to guilt from a corruption of nature, it is just such guilt as the carnivorous appetites of a weaned lion, or the instinct of a brood of ducklings to run to water. What then is it? It is an evil, and therefore seated in the will; common to all men, the beginning of which no man can determine in himself or in others. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... purpose of this provision—to endeavour, if possible, to find its justification. Insects lured by the sweetness of the exudation are callously entrapped, and why so? Do the seeds require the presence of animal matter to ensure germination? In that case the tree is indirectly carnivorous, and therefore decidedly entitled to recognition among the curiosities of the island. Is the glutin secreted to secure the wide dispersal of the seeds? If so, the object is largely self-defeated, for seeds by the hundred cling as they fall to the branches of the parent tree, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... sudden confusion of the attack, Carse knew the creature for what it was: a full-grown specimen of the giant carnivorous lemak, a seldom-seen, dying species, too clumsy, too slow, too huge to survive. His ray-gun came around, but he was caught in a feathered maelstrom and knocked too violently around to use it. Without pause the lemak's claws ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... as in duty bound, expressed the pity she felt for anybody placed in such a distressing situation; and the carnivorous Mrs. Bloss proceeded to arrange the various preliminaries with wonderful despatch. 'Now mind,' said that lady, after terms were arranged; 'I am to have the second-floor ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... cut down, and not far from which he saw what appeared to him to be the remains of a trap. Almost at the same moment of his making this discovery he heard a growl, and saw the bear itself—a monster of the brown species, which differs from the ordinary black bear of America in being more carnivorous and much larger, as well as more savage and bold. No sooner did it see the youth than it rushed upon him with great fury. A piece of broken line was drawn tight round its neck, and another piece round its fore-leg, while ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne

... acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very thick shield-like horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence only against animals of his own species, who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp to offend his adversary, but are branched for the purpose of parrying or receiving the thrusts of horns similar to his own, and have therefore been formed for the purpose of combating other stags for the exclusive possession of the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... demonstrate, that the flesh of a cat was as nourishing and delicious as veal or mutton, provided they could prove that the said cat was not of the boar kind, and had fed chiefly on vegetable diet, or even confined its carnivorous appetite to rats and mice, which he affirmed to be dainties of exquisite taste and flavour. He said, it was a vulgar mistake to think that all flesh-devouring creatures were unfit to be eaten: witness the consumption of swine and ducks, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... he has thrown upon them. There are faults I acknowledge, but a man who writes for money does not always write for fame; rapid writing and much more rapid publishing is a vast evil, but one which is too often unavoidable. I have four or five drawings of fish, one of the spotted carnivorous carp, the most carnivorous type of all except Opsarion, and perhaps a new subgenus; {0b} one of the Sir-i-Chushme and Khyber Oreinus, and a Perilamp with two long cirrhi on the upper lip. I intend in my travels now I am alone, to stop at every fertile place. I am ascertaining ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... Joe, his hat striken down over his eyes by the descending panther, and, leaping over the frail barrier of bushes into the water, he plunged forward and executed a series of diving evolutions, as if still endeavouring to elude the clutches of the carnivorous beast, which he imagined ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... aggressiveness, the boor was the man possessed of a strong personality, while the gentleman was relatively "impersonal." If pure selfishness and aggressiveness are the measure of personality, then are not many of the carnivorous animals endowed with a very ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... answer "Carnivorous" (as it bore on the lesson), a teacher asked his class for an example of a bird of prey, and among other answers he got was "A yellow yite." The boy who responded so, on being asked to explain, continued, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... English anthropologist, tells us in his interesting volume, "Prehistoric Man," that "there was not, so far as we are aware, any carnivorous creature ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... favourite road through the forest, with my gun, when I saw a butterfly on the ground. It was large, handsome, and quite new to me, and I got close to it before it flew away. I then observed that it had been settling on the dung of some carnivorous animal. Thinking it might return to the same spot, I next day after breakfast took my net, and as I approached the place was delighted to see the same butterfly sitting on the same piece of dung, and succeeded in capturing it. It was an entirely new species of great beauty, and has been ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... that 'a man' can live on a few coppers a day. He became aware of the prices of things to eat, and was taught the relative virtues of nutriment. Perforce a vegetarian, he found that a vegetable diet was good for his health, and delivered to himself many a scornful speech on the habits of the carnivorous multitude. He of necessity abjured alcohols, and straightway longed to utter his testimony on a teetotal platform. These were his satisfactions. They compensate astonishingly for the loss of many ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... "We have all heard," writes the Bishop, "of the humanity of the Hindus towards brute creatures, their horror of animal food, etc.; and you may be, perhaps, as much surprised as I was, to find that those who can afford it are hardly less carnivorous than ourselves. And though they consider it a grievous crime to kill a cow or bullock for the purpose of eating, yet they treat their draft oxen, no less than their horses, with a degree of barbarous severity which would turn an English ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... a carnivorous production, And must have meals, at least one meal a day; He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction, But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey; Although his anatomical construction Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way, Your labouring people think, beyond all ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... be the death of me; lobsters are poison," he confessed; "but I've read that chorus-girls are carnivorous animals and seek their ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... enough. They tell us that the Grasshopper is an inveterate consumer of insects, especially of those which are not protected by too hard a cuirass; they are evidence of tastes which are highly carnivorous, but not exclusively so, like those of the Praying Mantis, who refuses everything except game. The butcher of the Cicadae is able to modify an excessively heating diet with vegetable fare. After meat and blood, sugary fruit-pulp; ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... force of their own appeals, though more susceptible hearts might be crushed through conscientious compliance. It maddened Oswald that this lovely girl, with all her perfections of mind, face, and form, should be cast, like a common worm, into the great, vulgar, carnivorous mouth of human want. If Christ's ultimate aim were alleviation of physical suffering, why not feed and heal all earth's hungry, diseased millions, through diviner, broad-gauged philanthropy than lagging ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... the details which I have collected and elsewhere published on this curious subject; but to show how singular the laws are which determine the reproduction of animals under confinement, I may mention that carnivorous animals, even from the tropics, breed in this country pretty freely under confinement, with the exception of the plantigrades or bear family, which seldom produce young; whereas, carnivorous birds, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... etc. One extinct animal, called the Oreodon, had grinding teeth like lions, cats, etc., and must have belonged to a race that lived on vegetables and flesh, and yet chewed the cud like a cow. Another called the Machairodus, was wholly carnivorous, and combined the size and weight of the grizzly bear with the jaws and teeth of the Bengal tiger. Most of the bones are yet in good preservation and highly mineralized. Dr. Owen says he saw all the bones of a skeleton eighteen feet ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... the Squalidae family, and they are, upon the whole, as unpleasant a family as a Squalid Castaway would desire to meet with in a Squall. They are all carnivorous, cartilaginous, and cantankerous. No fish culturist, from St. ANTHONY to SETH GREEN, has thought it worth while to take them in hand, with the view of reforming them, and their Vices are as objectionable now as they were three thousand years ago. If a sailor falls overboard, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various

... on Mount Ararat, and the animals went forth, how did they subsist? As they went down the mountains, the carnivorous animals would have devoured a large portion of the herbivorous animals saved in the ark. Beside the lions, tigers, leopards, ounces, and other carnivorous mammals, amounting to eight hundred and ninety-two, there were in the ark six hundred ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton

... old sow, very busy groping among the refuse. Although Vanslyperken came on shore without even a stick in his hand, he had no fear of a pig, and walked up boldly to drive her away, fully convinced that, although she might like cabbage, not being exactly carnivorous, he should find the tail in statu quo. But it appeared that the sow not only would not stand being interfered with, but, moreover, was carnivorously inclined; for she was at that very moment routing the tail about with her nose, and received Vanslyperken's advance with a very irascible ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... course, in Europe, where the wolf was one of the largest carnivorous animals, that the were-wolf superstition chiefly gained currency. In Eastern countries, where similar beliefs prevailed, bears, tigers, and other beasts of prey were substituted for the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine teeth. Carnivorous. I'll call them just 'guardians' until we find out what they ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... large head, and a very landed manner; knowing enough to torment his fellow-creatures, not to instruct them; the ridicule of young ladies, and the natural butt and target of wit. It is easy to talk of carnivorous animals and beasts of prey; but does such a man, who lays waste a whole civilized party of beings by prosing, reflect upon the joy he spoils and the misery he creates in the course of his life, and that any one who listens to him through politeness would prefer toothache or ear-ache to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... with the fowl in Europe. It is a rather small, lean, extremely active bird, lays about a dozen eggs, and hatches them all, and is of a yellowish red colour—a hue which is common, I believe, in the old barn-door fowl of England. The creolla fowl is strong on the wing, and much more carnivorous and rapacious in habits than other breeds; mice, frogs, and small snakes are eagerly hunted and devoured by it. At my home on the pampas a number of these fowls were kept, and were allowed to range freely about the plantation, which was large, and the adjacent grounds, where there were thickets ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... the diet of the Blister-beetles: some Meloidae in the United States devour the packets of eggs laid by the Grasshoppers. This is a legitimate acquisition on their part, not an illegal seizure of the food-stores of others. No one, as far as I am aware, had as yet suspected the true parasitism of a carnivorous Meloid. It is nevertheless very remarkable to find in the Blister-beetles, on both sides of the Atlantic, this weakness for the flavour of Locust: one devours her eggs; the other a representative of the order, in the shape of the Praying Mantis and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... VIII., and Louis XII. often hunted thus. The leopards, which formed a part of the royal venery, were kept in an enclosure of the Castle of Amboise, which still exists near the gate des Lions, so called, no doubt, on account of these sporting and carnivorous animals being mistaken for lions by the common people. There, were, however, always lions in the menageries of the kings ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... eateth of all things promiscuously. O thou of flames, the flame that is in thy viler parts shall alone eat of all things alike. The body of thine which eateth of flesh (being in the stomach of all carnivorous animals) shall also eat of all things promiscuously. And as every thing touched by the sun's rays becometh pure, so shall everything be pure that shall be burnt by thy flames. Thou art, O fire, the supreme energy born of thy ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... saved us the trouble of killing it. Men, and all carnivorous animals, can not live except on the condition of sacrificing other creatures. Didn't you shoot a squirrel yesterday? And you did not refuse your share of those beautiful birds, the plumage ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... the following story, we have described in our first series of Traditions, where Sir Tarquin, a carnivorous giant, is slain by Sir Lancelot of the Lake. These circumstances, and more of the like purport on this subject, we therefore omit, as being too trite and familiar to bear repetition. We do not suppose the reader to be quite so familiar with the names and fortunes ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... Ape Pygmies or Orang-Outang fighting the Cranes, this, I think, may be easily enough made out, by what I have already observed; for this wild Man I dissected was Carnivorous, and it may be Omnivorous, at least as much as Man is; for it would eat any thing that was brought to the Table. And if it was not their Hunger that drove them to it, their Wantonness, it may be, would make them apt enough to rob the Cranes Nests; and if they did so, no doubt but the ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson

... dinner. The mistress ordered every morning a huge quantity of bones for the sustenance of her boarders. It is very possible that there was, in all that heap of bones, a Christian one from time to time; certainly, whether they came from carnivorous animals or from ruminants, there was rarely on those tibiae, humeri, and femora a tiny scrap of meat. The ossuary boiled away in the huge pot with beans that had been tempered with bicarbonate, and with ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... God, who was represented by no image, and confined by no temple. He was represented as a young man, and his image of polished black stone was richly garnished with gold plates and ornaments. But the homage to this god was not always of a more refined or merciful character than that paid to his carnivorous brother." ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson

... among these, forms with sinistral shells are relatively common. The genus Clausilia is remarkable on account of attaining a second centre of development in China, where its finest species, referable to several subgenera, occur. Carnivorous molluscs include a peculiar slug (Rathouisia) and the shelled genera Ennea and Streptaxis. In the western provinces species of Buliminus are abundant, and in the operculate group Heudeia forms a peculiar type akin to Helicina, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... lilies, the flowers, the arbors, and the growing vegetables; and Rake had the solemn impudence, when the whole company stood round him, to say, "That he sincerely wished that men might rise out of the earth like plants; and that our minds were not of necessity to be sullied with carnivorous appetites for the generation, as well as support of our species."[331] This was spoke with so easy and fixed an assurance, that Madonella answered, "Sir, under the notion of a pious thought, you deceive yourself in wishing ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... in the progress of marine life, though their influence is probably less than that of the great carnivorous monsters which now fill the waters. The heavy Arthrodirans languish and disappear. The "pavement-toothed" sharks, which at first represent three-fourths of the Elasmobranchs, dwindle in turn, and in ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... Indo-European and Semitic races of man. Anatomy points to the rudiment—still lingering, now and then still appearing in some one man and without a trace in the next—of that climbing muscle which shows man in the past either nervously escaping up the trunk of a tree in his flight from many of the carnivorous animals with whom he was contemporary, or, as the shades of night were beginning to gather around him, we again see him by the aid of these muscles leisurely climbing up to some hospitable fork in the tree, where the robust habits of the age allowed him to ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... notion of an ancient origin of the phrase and fixes the terminus a quo by the recent introduction of vegetarian diet. Nuts being a prime staple of the votaries of this cult, a person who cannot do anything "for nuts" means, by implication, a carnivorous savage who is incapable of progress. Lastly, there remains the ingenious solution that the phrase as commonly employed involves a misspelling. It ought to be "four nuts," and playing four nuts was an ancient but simple game, which may be connected with the cognate phrase about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various

... meannesses;—to such a reader who, from the hieroglyphic lines of feigned content, can translate the haggard spirit and the pining heart,—to such a man too often depressed and sickened by the contemplation of the carnivorous faces thronging the streets of London—faces that look as if they deemed the stream of all human happiness flowed only from the Mint,—to such a man, how great the satisfaction, how surpassing the enjoyment of these "last ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough, by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the rusty bars ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... and depravity, and taken to typify the degrading life of the mountebank. It may also be remembered that this carnivorous beast, which was supposed to carry its young in the mouth and give birth to them through the ear, is numbered among the unclean animals in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... crouched so low while walking, that his shoulders protruded above his back in large humps, and his belly almost touched the ground. His long tail flirted angrily from side to side, his jaws were parted, disclosing his sharp, carnivorous teeth and blood-red tongue, while his eyes emitted a phosphorescent glow ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... ground, some find their home in the air. Some live in the Arctic regions, some in the burning deserts; one little beetle (Hydrobius) in the thermal waters of Hammam-Meskoutin, at a temperature of 130 deg.. As to food, some are carnivorous and wage open war; some, more insidious, attack their victims from within; others feed on vegetable food, on leaves or wood, on seeds or fruits; in fact, there is scarcely an animal or vegetable substance which ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... for evil purposes. There are several stories, and one really pretty play, about a fox who took the shape of a beautiful woman, and married a man, and bore him children—all out of gratitude for some favour received—the happiness of the family being only disturbed by some odd carnivorous propensities on the part of the offspring. Merely to achieve a diabolical purpose, the form of a woman is not always the best disguise. There are men quite insusceptible to feminine witchcraft. But the fox is never at a loss for a disguise; he can assume more forms than Proteus. Furthermore, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... control measures. As man has come to occupy a greater portion of the earth's surface, and as he has become more and more the master of his environment, he has inevitably disturbed the relationships of the birds and mammals about him, has upset the balance of nature. If he kills the carnivorous species because of their depredations on game and live stock he must be prepared to cope with the increased hordes of rodents which feed on vegetation and on which the carnivorous animals act as a check. If he destroys the rodents, ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... across the bay in their boats, and they knew that Henty's men were going to feed on fresh meat, while all the rest were eating such awful stuff as Yankee pork and salt horse. The very sight of the two sides of the heifer suspended at the flagstaff was an unendurable insult and mockery to the carnivorous whalers, and an incitement to larceny. Davy Fermaner was steering one of the boats, and he exclaimed: "There, they are flashing the fresh meat to us. They would look foolish if ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... extraneous influences. The aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national character, is as tenacious as the "irreducible elements of species, of the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the carnivorous animal." In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, "The discoveries due to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... they station on their outposts, the old bulls. The age to which a buffalo may attain is not known; but, it is certain that they are generally long-lived when not prematurely cut off. When their powers of life begin to fade, they fall an easy prey to the small, carnivorous animals of the plains. The attempt has been made to domesticate and render them useful for agricultural purposes. Hitherto such efforts have invariably failed. When restrained of their freedom, they are reduced to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... in time obtain and keep a numerical superiority. Now, let some alteration of physical conditions occur in the district—a long period of drought, a destruction of vegetation by locusts, the irruption of some new carnivorous animal seeking "pastures new"—any change in fact tending to render existence more difficult to the species in question, and tasking its utmost powers to avoid complete extermination; it is evident that, of all the individuals composing the ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... king Of brutes evades this deep devouring grave: But by the wily African betrayed, Heedless of fate, within its gaping jaws Expires indignant. When the orient beam With blushes paints the dawn; and all the race 220 Carnivorous, with blood full-gorged, retire Into their darksome cells, there satiate snore O'er dripping offals, and the mangled limbs Of men and beasts; the painful forester 224 Climbs the high hills, whose proud aspiring tops, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... produced according to the regular laws of nature, because I was not framed with a capacity of preserving my life, either by swiftness, or climbing of trees, or digging holes in the earth. They observed by my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... as fast as possible. Inasmuch as the species is limited to Tasmania, Mrs. Roberts and others fear that the sheepmen will totally exterminate the remnant at an early date. This animal is the largest and also the most interesting carnivorous marsupial of Australia, and its untimely end will be a ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... hothouses as it promptly closes the crushing trap at the end of its sensitive leaves over a hapless fly, and the common sundew that tinges the peat-bogs of three continents with its little reddish leaves, belong to a distinct class of carnivorous plants which actually masticate their animal food, depending upon it for nourishment as men do upon cattle slaughtered in an abattoir. Darwin's luminous account of these two species alone, which occupies ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... thrilling to man than a meal alone with a woman he loves or is about to love. Perhaps, deep down, the reason is that there still vibrates in the masculine blood the thrilling surprise of the moment when man first realised that the angel woman was built upon the same carnivorous ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... appendix, so necessary to the bone eaters of a carnivorous age, has no part in the physical economy of a later and more highly-evolved generation. The pineal gland and the pituitary body are adjuncts of the brain whose functions have long been in latency. The Anastatica hierochuntica, commonly ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... places itself erect on its hind legs, regarding every thing that passes with great attention. It is of a very restless disposition, and always carries its food to the most retired place to consume it, and is very cleanly in its habits; but it is exclusively carnivorous and destructive to poultry, employing great ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... fearsome and terrifying creature. His snarls and growls waked fury in the breast of the irritable old tiger, who was not accustomed to hear threats or warnings from any of his neighbours, he being the only large carnivorous animal in the show, and, in consequence, he threw himself against the partition between Finn's cage and his own, snarling ferociously. This put the strength of centuries of hunting and fighting courage and fierceness into Finn's replies, and left ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... from the table of my dining-room, I'll take away all tasty joints and entrees. All sorts of meat, all forms of animal diet That the carnivorous cook hath gathered there: And, by commandment, will entirely live Within the bounds of vegetable food, Unmixed with savoury matters. Yes, by heaven! O most pernicious Meat! O Mutton, beef, and pork, digestion-spoiling! My tables, my tables! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... animal or vegetable kingdoms. There are some animals which eat only vegetables, while others live only on animal substances. The number and form of the teeth, and the structure of the stomach, and bowels, determine whether an animal be herbivorous, or carnivorous. The first class have a considerable number of grinders, or dentes molares; and the intestines are much more long and bulky; in the second class, the cutting teeth are predominant, and the intestines ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... of injuring the common life, as more advanced communities abstained from eating the flesh of domestic animals. This may be the ground for the rule that they should only eat sparingly of the totem. To the later period may be ascribed the adoption of carnivorous animals as totems; when these animals came to be feared and also venerated for their qualities of strength, ferocity and courage, warriors would naturally wish to claim kinship with and descent ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... shorten an animal's life. A white rabbit would be more surely the prey of hawk or buzzard, and the white mole, or field mouse, could not long escape from the vigilant owl. So, also, any deviation from those tints best adapted to conceal a carnivorous animal would render the pursuit of its prey much more difficult, would place it at a disadvantage among its fellows and in a time of scarcity would probably cause it to starve to death. On the other hand, if an animal spreads from a temperate into an arctic district, the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... toes instead of one. Another, probably a very dangerous animal, was related to our present hog, but stood nearly seven feet high. Others resembled the rhinoceros, camel, tapir, or peccary. All but the peccary are now extinct upon this continent. Of the carnivorous animals there were wolves and ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... not only true humor but is at the same time educational, as the best humor must always be, in that it teaches the young certain indubitable facts in the Science of Natural History, viz., that neither the pachyderm nor the bivalve, in common with several other carnivorous botanical specimens, is gifted similarly to the squirrel, the ant, ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... not even the rustle of skirts was heard in the land as Pete made his first wild ride across the pleasant pastures of Romance—for Doris had no share in this adventure, and, we are told, the dusky ladies of that carnivorous ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... of the few places in California where the charming linnaea is found, though it is common to the northward through Oregon and Washington. Here, too, you may find the curious but unlovable darlingtonia, a carnivorous plant that devours bumblebees, grasshoppers, ants, moths, and other insects, with insatiable appetite. In approaching it, its suspicious-looking yellow-spotted hood and watchful attitude will be likely to make you go ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... goaded is in itself unblessedness,' and that 'each creature is in constant danger, constant agitation, and the whole, with its restless, meaningless motion, is a tragedy of the most piteous kind.' 'A creature like the carnivorous animal, who cannot exist at all without continually destroying and tearing others, may not feel its brutality, but man, who has to prey on other sentient beings like the carnivorous, is intelligent enough, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... is half-starved for lack of vegetation in the woods; the low temperature, snow, and ice, make his conditions of life harder for lack of the proper amount of food, whereby he becomes an easier prey to carnivorous animals. He has difficulty even in preserving life. In spring he sheds his winter coat, and is provided with a suit of lighter hair, and while this is going on the male grows antlers for defence. The ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... all his curious collection of insects in a special box. In this collection figured, among others, some specimens of those new staphylins, species of carnivorous coleopters, whose eyes are placed above the head, and which, till then, seemed to be peculiar to New Caledonia. A certain venomous spider, the "katipo," of the Maoris, whose bite is often fatal to the natives, had been very highly recommended to him. But a spider does not belong ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... of the saueba ants. These ants are eaten by the Rio Negro Indians, and esteemed a luxury; while the Tapajos tribes use them to season their mandioca sauce. Akin to the vegetable-feeding sauebas are the carnivorous ecitons, or foraging ants, of which Bates found ten distinct species. They hunt for prey in large organized armies, almost every species having its own special manner of marching and hunting. Fortunately the ecitons choose the thickest part of the forest. The ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... pine, without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,—in fact, quite as likely to land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,—just as implicitly obeyed to-day as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It requires no greater effort ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... secure hold of the silk lining of the tube by means of a pair of strong hooks at the posterior end of its soft defenceless abdomen. Their food appears for the most part to be of a vegetable nature. Some species, however, are alleged to be carnivorous, and a North American form of the genus Hydropsyche is said to spin around the mouth of its burrow a silken net for the capture of small animal organisms living in the water. Before passing into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... himself an experiment station. On his own person he directly and practically tried out each idea ... his wife was also a convertee, slightly reluctant, to his tests ... and his son, perforce. Baxter actually kept a vegetarian dog. "Even carnivorous animals thrive better on a vegetarian diet." But the dog was no corroboration of his theory. It lacked gloss and shine to its ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... never suit me. Let me retire to a monkery where carnivorous leanings may be indulged. Methinks I could pray more cheerfully with the prospect of a rational dejeuner ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... human enemies the two men were menaced by peril from wild beasts as well. Panthers prowled among the hills, great Himalayan bears, a blow from the paw of one of which would crack a man's skull, wandered on the jungle-clad slopes and, though not carnivorous, were always ready to attack human beings. Herds of wild elephants, which had scaled the mountains into Bhutan at the beginning of the Monsoon to reach the northern face of the Himalayas and escape the heavy rains that deluge ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... the previous year from a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight little citadel of New York. "Of course if you and Regina invite her the thing is settled. Well, we need new blood and new money—and I hear she's still very good-looking," the carnivorous ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... for Home Reading remarks, "It is said that Carlyle reads on an average a dozen books a day. Of course he examines them chiefly with his fingers, and after long practice is able to find at once the jugular vein and carotid artery of any author." Likewise, "John Quincy Adams was said to have 'a carnivorous instinct for the jugular vein' of an argument." [Footnote: Page 80.] "Rapid reading," says Koopman, [Footnote: Koopman, The Mastery of Books, p. 47.] "is the... difficult art of skipping needless ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... the infant is the simple stomach of the carnivorous animal, intended for food which shall not need to stay long in that receptacle, but shall be speedily digested; and it is only as the child grows older, and takes more varied food, that the stomach alters somewhat in form, that it assumes a more rounded shape, resembling somewhat ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... depends upon the species. Some of them are pure vegetarians; others are carnivorous. The heavy tramping we heard during the night evidently came from the beast ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... he was aroused by a whispering of strange voices that seemed to come from the courtyard. Putting the point of his nose out of the kennel, he saw four little beasts with dark fur, that looked like cats, standing consulting together. But they were not cats; they were polecats—carnivorous little animals, especially greedy for eggs and young chickens. One of the polecats, leaving his companions, came to the opening of the kennel and ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... the first arrivals covered the vaseline, the rest of the troops marched across them in safety and gained access to the hammock, causing a quick evacuation on my part. Articles of food were completely destroyed by these carnivorous creatures, within a few minutes after I had placed ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... demonstrated the community which exists between animals and vegetables—phenomena of movement, of sensibility, of production of heat, of respiration, of digestion even, for there are the Drosera and kindred carnivorous plants. Iron cures chlorosis in vegetables as well as in animals, and chloroform and ether render both insensible. There resemblances are more striking still between animals. After Baudrimont, insects are, in presence of alcohols, chloroform, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... cats—who still possess some of the qualities of wild animals—grow savage and leave their homes, being principally because of the lack of raw meat which causes them to go ahunting to procure it for themselves. The cat, it should be remembered, is a carnivorous animal, and is not particularly happy when fed on a vegetable diet, no more than we beef-eating people are when invited to a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... point a dart at the extremity of the shoulder, and kill each of them one cow, sometimes more: for, as I said above, they never kill the males. Then they flay them, take out the entrails, and cut the carcasse in two; the head, feet, and entrails they leave to the wolves and other carnivorous animals: the skin they lay on the horse, and on that the flesh, which they carry home. Two days after they go out again; and then they bring home the meat stript from the bones; the women and young people dress it in the Indian fashion; while the men return for some days longer to hunt in the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere nothings. A woman well informed in such matters can read her future in a simple gesture; just as Cuvier could say from the fragment of a bone: This belonged to an animal of such or such dimensions, with or without horns, carnivorous, herbivorous, amphibious, etc., age, so many thousand years. Sure now of finding in d'Arthez as much imagination in love as there was in his written style, she thought it wise to bring him up at once to the highest pitch ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac

... was, too, much in evidence. It is a carnivorous plant of about the bigness of a large sage-brush such as dots our western plains. Each branch ends in a set of strong jaws, which have been known to drag down and devour large ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the country embraces fifty-two varieties of mammal quadrupeds, including three species of large felidae—the jaguar, the puma, or cougar, and the ocelot, a carnivorous cat-like animal, whose name is derived from the native Mexican word ocelotl. There are five varieties of monkeys in the tropical forests, as well as a sloth. There are forty-three classes of reptiles, including alligators and turtles, and several kinds of venomous serpents, and the great ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... them that these vampire-bats have very sharp, carnivorous teeth, besides a tongue, which is furnished with the curious organs, by which they suck the lifeblood of their fellow-creatures; that they have a peculiar, leaf-like, overhanging lip; and that he had a stuffed specimen of a bat that ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... are indiscriminate in their diet, which includes pork, snakes, rats, and even carnivorous animals, as panthers. They refuse only beef, monkeys and the leavings of others. The wilder Binjhwars of the forests will not accept cooked food from any other caste, but those who live in association with Hindus will take it when cooked without water from a few of the higher ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... notwithstanding their conservative principles, they might be driven at length to quit these rocks inhabited by their ancestors for centuries. To the naturalist this district is of fascinating interest, on account of the large number of carnivorous birds of various species by which it is still haunted. Besides the common brown eagle, three kinds of vulture, several species of falcons, hawks, and owls, the raven family appears to be fully represented, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... proves fatal to them, for the owners, knowing their attachment to these vegetables, have a practice of poisoning some part of the plantation, by splitting the canes and putting yellow arsenic into the clefts which the animal unwarily eats of, and dies. Not being by nature carnivorous, the elephants are not fierce, and seldom attack a man but when fired at or otherwise provoked. Excepting a few kept for state by the king of Achin, they are not tamed in any part of ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... which has sprung from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... Ben meant heron, the great blue heron of American waters—Ardea Herodias of the naturalists. And fisher, or fisher-cat, is the common name among hunters for Pennant's marten, or the Mustela canadensis, a very fierce carnivorous animal, of the weasel family, growing from three to four feet in length, called also "the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... the Order of Things, for He is the Order of Things Himself. Is there even in Him complete Freedom of Will, freedom to make a world other than this? One wishes, in a sense, to say so, but the horror of it! for then He is responsible for the cruelty of the ant-heap, the feeding of the carnivorous upon the vegetable eaters, the preying and persecution of the malevolent upon the kindly—and He could have made it all otherwise! With a Free Will He could have brought growth without pain, being omnipotent. Here we see God as a monster,—responsible ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... just bobbed into the net and the spider, with hideous, carnivorous zest, was scrambling for it, when the guardian of the manor returned with the family solicitor, a little man who bore in his arms a bundle of papers which, after the customary greetings, he spread upon the table. He helped himself to a glass of burgundy and proceeded ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... orange, we saw a large wild animal of some sort on the crest of the hill silhouetted against the colour. I started for it with my rifle, but of course it did not wait; no animal ever does if he can help it, unless he is carnivorous and famished. The weather remained generally fair, though one day we had a wild gale that nearly relieved us of the tent in the midst of thick flurries of snow. We often climbed among the cliffs, and everywhere we found picture-writings, poles laid up, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... the kind I had seen. She was about thirty-six feet long and wide in proportion, the stem rising upright about six feet, on top of which was a figure of some imaginary monster of uncouth sculpture, having the head of a carnivorous animal with large erect ears but no body, clinging by arms and legs to the upper end of the canoe, and grinning horribly. The ears were painted green, the other parts red and black. The stern also rose about five feet in height, ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... not understand that; the human species subsists as much on animal as on vegetable food, and there are some carnivorous animals that will ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... varieties, parrots—in short all sorts of birds abound in them. The lake is equally well supplied with aquatic birds, and particularly wild ducks. Notwithstanding its extent, the island produces neither noxious nor carnivorous animals; the only things to be apprehended are the civet cat, which only preys upon birds, and the monkeys, which issue in troops from the forests to ravage the fields of maize and sugar-cane. The lake, which abounds with excellent fish, is less favoured in this respect than the land, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... of its predecessors, till we trace in the productions of this contemporary pottery, the patterns used by the nations of antiquity when just emerging from barbarism. Hunting, the most necessary of arts to the vagrant and carnivorous savage, is the employment celebrated on all these vessels, A stag, followed by ferocious quadrupeds and hungry bipeds, forms their general ornament. I have picked up the same groups among Roman ruins, have often contemplated them in the cabinets of the curious, and here I was ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... sardels served at lunch—their look or their smell or something—which seemed to make them distasteful to me; and I excused myself from the company at the table and went up and out into the open air. But the deck was unpleasantly congested with great burly brutes—beefy, carnivorous, overfed creatures, gorged with victuals and smoking disgustingly strong black cigars, and grinning in an annoying and meaning sort of way every time they passed a body ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... hands. He could not be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzling madman, whose diseased will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions. But here a young life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw Reginald crush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of Ernest Fielding, as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its glorious petals upon ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck

... is more accurate than the poet he translates, for Homer writes "a prey to dogs and to all kinds of birds. But all kinds of birds are not carnivorous. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer



Words linked to "Carnivorous" :   herbivorous, predaceous, zoophagous, piscivorous, flora, carnivorous plant, carnivore, omnivorous, insectivorous, predacious, plant, flesh-eating, carnivorous bat, meat-eating



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