"Quadruped" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Doan't mind me," went on the colored man. "It was mah fault fer gittin in de road. But dat mule Boomerang am suttinly de most outrageous quadruped ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... period of the morning when the grazing animals retired from the open patena to the cool shade of the forest: doubtless, the leopard had taken my approach for that of a deer, or some such animal. And if his spring had been at a quadruped instead of a biped, his distance was so well measured, that it must have landed him on the neck of a deer, an elk, or a buffalo; as it was, one pace more would have done for me. A bear would not have let his victim off ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... that we should have begun at first by dividing land animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd, and that alone, comes out in the same class with man, we should divide bipeds into those which have feathers and those which have not, and when they have been divided, and the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... Fern Quarry. In the evening, by the campfire, the men played cards and whiled away the hours in talk and sport. They told stories of their wonderful feats with fowl, fish and quadruped—how many wild ducks and turkeys they had shot, what "savage trout" they had caught, and how they had bagged the craftiest foxes, outwitted the most clever 'possums and overtaken the fleetest deer, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... continued similar to that above described. It is inhabited by few birds or animals of any kind. Occasionally a deer, or a Guanaco (wild Llama) may be seen; but the Agouti (Cavia Patagonica) is the commonest quadruped. This animal here represents our hares. It differs, however, from that genus in many essential respects; for instance, it has only three toes behind. It is also nearly twice the size, weighing from twenty to twenty-five pounds. The Agouti is a true friend of the desert; it ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... several times at the hands of the latter—a circumstance which probably accounts for one of the horse's legs being about a foot longer than the rest—half of that limb having been renewed after it had been lost in one of the many free fights in which this remarkable quadruped has seen service. The greatest proprietor of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of Pembroke, son of the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in connection with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before his death, Lord Herbert ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... living ally in the Opossums (Didelphys) of America. Lastly, the Stereognathus of the Stonesfield Slate is in a dubious position. It may have been a Marsupial; but, upon the whole, Professor Owen is inclined to believe that it must have been a hoofed and herbivorous Quadruped belonging to the series of the higher Mammals (Placentalia). In the Middle Purbeck beds, near to the close of the Oolitic period, we have also evidence of the existence of a number of small Mammals, all of which are probably Marsupials. Fourteen species are known, all of small size, ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... body as it rose in the air, and, turning a complete somersault, landed on the ground all in a heap. One of the dogs, in his eagerness to do something grand, had approached a little too close to the mule's heels—an impertinence which that sagacious quadruped promptly resented by kicking out with both hind feet and knocking his would-be assailant into a cocked hat. The dog was not killed, but he was terribly demoralized, and his howls of anguish did much to dampen the ardor of ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... and sleep led on by indigestion was heavy on our eyelids, a snort, loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!)—one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they coughed, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... instance, that natural selection is inadequate to effect the numerous concomitant changes necessitated by such developments as that of the long neck of the giraffe. Darwin, however, on the contrary, holds that natural selection alone "would have sufficed for the production of this remarkable quadruped."[8] He is surprised at Mr. Spencer's view that natural selection can do so little in modifying the higher animals. Thus one of the chief arguments with which Mr. Spencer supports his theory is so poorly founded as to be rejected by a far ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... Squeers. "A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped's Latin for beast, as everybody that's gone through the grammar knows. As you're perfect in that, go and look after my horse, and rub him down well, or I'll rub you down. The rest of the class go and draw water up, till somebody tells you to leave off, for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a command—this time not given by the bugle—and leaving a sufficient detail to look after the animals, they commenced the ascent, their guide, seemingly more quadruped than biped, in the lead. Strung out in single file—no other formation being possible—as they wound their way up the zig-zag with the moonlight here and there, giving back the glint of their armour, it was ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... moment looking at it, and wondering what had moved it to the attempt. It was really a perfect type of the human derelict which Orlando G. Spence and his kind were devoting their millions to perpetuate, and he reflected how much better Nature knew her business in dealing with the superfluous quadruped. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... places hard and slippery. In spite of my determination to preserve an awesome and unmoved calm while among these dangerous savages, I had to give way and laugh explosively; to see the portly, powerful Pagan suddenly convert himself into a quadruped, while Gray Shirt poised himself on one heel and waved his other leg in the air to advertise to the assembled nations that he was about to sit down, was irresistible. No one made such palaver about taking a seat as Gray Shirt; I did it repeatedly ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the horse has received an elevation into the primal rank of sculptural subject, owing to his association with men. The full value of other quadruped forms has hardly been perceived, or worked for, in late sculpture; and the want of science is more felt in these subjects than in any other branches of early work. The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the hunting sculpture of the Lombards; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of which is "Near to a Reptile." Its structure was very singular and its character very strange. In the words of Buckland: "To the head of a lizard, it united the teeth of the crocodile, a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and a tail of the size of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... yet diagnosis of almost any condition that may be classed under the head of "hip lameness" is not easy except in cases where the cause is obvious, as in wounds of the musculature and certain fractures. To the complexity which the gait of the quadruped contributes, because of its being four-legged, there is added the complicated manner of articulation of the bones of the hind leg. This involves the hip in the manner of diagnostic problems and because of the inaccessibility of certain parts, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... income explained it—too small for traditional purposes, just large enough to foster indolence. For Hugh had not even followed up his promise of becoming an explorer; he had merely rambled, mostly in pursuit of fowl or quadruped. When he married, all hope for him was at an end. The beautiful and brilliant daughter of a fashionable widow, her income a trifle more than Carnaby's own; devoted to the life of cities, wherein she shone; an enchantress whose spell would not easily be broken, before whom her husband ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... shrewd; but he made endless calculations upon the probability of drawing prizes,—provided the tickets were really all sold, and the wheel fairly managed. A dice-box was always at hand upon the mantel. He had portraits of celebrated racers, both quadruped and biped, and he could tell the fastest time ever made by either. His manipulation of cards was, as his friends averred, one of the fine arts; and in all the games he had wrought out problems of chances, and knew the probability ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... consummation of his wishes without delay. This, as may be believed, was so consonant with Will's own opinion that he accepted it at once, and acted upon it then and there, as far as was possible, by plying whip and spur so vigorously that his steed skimmed over the plain more like a swallow than a quadruped. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... the darkness of ignorance as everyone is now, but into some light of the knowledge and hence of the intelligence soon to be his. To be sure, he would creep on all fours at first but come erect on his feet by an implanted striving. However much he might resemble a quadruped, he would not face down to the ground but forward to heaven and come erect so that he ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... aspick[obs3]. [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classificatiopn by number of feet] biped, quadruped. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae[Lat]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock[obs3], duck, grouse, plover, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... range of their rifles. The young fawn gives out no scent upon its track until it is sufficiently grown to make good running, and instinct teaches the mother that this wise provision of nature to preserve the helpless little quadruped from the ravages of wolves, panthers, and other carnivorous beasts, will be defeated if she remains with it, as her tracks can not be concealed. She therefore hides her fawn in the grass, where it is almost impossible to see it, even when very near it, goes off to ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Dampier," and, in corroboration of the hippopotamus story, mentions that Bailly, when exploring the Swan River, "heard a bellowing much louder than that of an ox from among the reeds on the river side, which made him suspect that a large quadruped lay somewhere near him." It is remarkable that in the several accounts of the early Dutch visits to the northern coast no mention is made of alligators, although they are so common to all the inlets and rivers of that region, the name CROCODILS EYLANDEN ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... of the order are found in Australia or its vicinity, and nowhere else in the present day; although, as we shall better see hereafter, Europe once possessed animals closely allied to Australian forms of to-day—notably to a pretty little quadruped which bears the generic ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... they have only hogs, dogs, and poultry; neither is there a wild animal in the island, except ducks, pigeons, paroquets, with a few other birds, and rats, there being no other quadruped, nor any serpent. But the sea supplies them with great variety of most excellent fish, to eat which is their chief luxury, and to catch it their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... involves a further sourge of danger. In few parts (if any) of the body is a blow more fatal than over what is popularly called the "pit of the stomach." In the quadruped this part is little exposed either to accidental or intentional injuries. In man it is quite open to both. A blow, a kick, a fall among stones, etc., may thus ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... it! I should saunter into Tat's' like a swell, and ask them if they couldn't find me a raw colt to try my hand on for a wager. Say I had laid a hundred I would quiet down the most vicious quadruped they ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classification by number of feet] biped, quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the White Elephants" above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... thought,' said Pleydell, 'that very respectable quadruped which is just now limping out of the room upon three of his four legs was rather of ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... too rude spirits. The children wanted him baptized by the time-honoured title of 'Jacko'; but by a series of exploits in which the monkey distinguished himself at the expense of every member of the household in turn, it became evident that only one name would fit a quadruped of his peculiar disposition; and that was 'Tricky.' Tricky, therefore, he was called, and as Tricky ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... what we mean—she'll kick over the milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to free herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped's actions, her heart more deeply concerned ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... then I fell asleep; and in my sleep I had an ugly dream. I dreamt that I had died of the injuries I had received from my fall, and that no sooner had my soul departed from my body than it entered that of a quadruped, even my own horse in the stable—in a word, I was, to all intents and purposes, my own steed; and as I stood in the stable chewing hay (and I remember that the hay was exceedingly tough), the door opened, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog, going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail, which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... their life, being what they [24] were. It was something like a fear of the supernatural, or perhaps rather a moral feeling, for the face of a great serpent, with no grace of fur or feathers, so different from quadruped or bird, has a sort of humanity of aspect in its spotted and clouded nakedness. There was a humanity, dusty and sordid and as if far gone in corruption, in the sluggish coil, as it awoke suddenly into one metallic spring of pure ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... self-possession, intelligence, and great firmness. The sight of the cavaliers approaching with their silken banners, their glittering armor, and bestride their magnificent steeds, must have been astounding in the highest degree to one who had never seen a quadruped larger than a dog. But the proud chief assumed an air ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... for awhile. A crow and a fox caught sight of a morsel of food at the same moment and hurried to seize it. Their greed was equal, but their speed was not. Reynard ran, but the crow flew, with the result that the bird was too quick for the quadruped, sailed down the wind on extended pinions, outstripped and forestalled him. Then, rejoicing at his victory in the race for the booty, the crow flew into a neighbouring oak and sat out of reach on the topmost bough. The fox being unable to hurl a stone, launched a trick at him and reached ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... flesh. Our officer endeavoured to free himself and his shipmates from this suspicion; but the want of language was an insurmountable obstacle to his undertaking, even supposing it possible to persuade a set of people, who had never seen a quadruped in their lives."—G.F. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... its freedom, its superior powers of locomotion, its triumph over time and space. The reptile measures its length upon the ground; the quadruped enjoys a more complete liberation, and is related to the earth less closely; man more still; and the bird most of all. Over our heads, where our eyes travel, but our bodies follow not,—in the free native air,—is his home. The trees are his temples and his dwellings, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... by a brace at least of dogs in his morning visits; and it is not easy to determine on these occasions which is the most troublesome animal of the two, the biped or the quadruped." ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... uses its wings as fore-legs, and crawls or runs on four feet, as it were, so quickly that, on a grassy cliff, it might be mistaken for some kind of quadruped. Living in regions which are rarely visited by man, these birds have not yet learned to dread him, but often stand still until they are knocked down with a stick. They are very courageous. A naturalist tells us how he attempted to stop ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... which had gone before. I have already referred to the sombre, unproductive character of the earliest terrestrial flora with which we are acquainted. It was a flora unfitted, apparently, for the support of either graminivorous bird or herbivorous quadruped. The singularly profuse vegetation of the Coal Measures was, with all its wild luxuriance, of a resembling cast. So far as appears, neither flock nor herd could have lived on its greenest and richest plains; nor does even the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... islands with birds and animals, however, was to me even a more interesting and engrossing study in natural evolution than its peopling by plants, shrubs, and trees. I may as well begin, therefore, by telling you at once that no furry or hairy quadruped of any sort—no mammal, as I understand your men of science call them—was ever stranded alive upon the shores of my islands. For twenty or thirty centuries indeed, I waited patiently, examining every piece of driftwood cast up upon our beaches, in the faint hope that perhaps some ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... irritation, sensation, volition, and association; and also with some acquired habits or propensities peculiar to the parent: the former of these are in common with other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of feature or form to the parent. It is difficult to be conceived, that a living entity can be separated or produced from the blood by the action of a gland; and which shall afterwards become an animal ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... like a humble bicolored quadruped of the Rose-Cross wilds, which, when agitated, sprays the air—so the poet, laboring obesely under his emotion, smiled with a sweetness so intolerable that the air seemed to be squirted full of saccharinity to ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... adhered to, in nearly all works on Egyptology. But we know from ancient evidence that the cucupha was a bird, perhaps a hoopoe; the sceptre of the gods, moreover, is really surmounted by the head of a quadruped having a pointed snout and long retreating ears, and belonging to the greyhound, jackal, or ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... feathers, &c. By the contraction of these muscles the hairs can be instantly erected, as we see in a dog, being at the same time drawn a little out of their sockets; they are afterwards quickly depressed. The vast number of these minute muscles over the whole body of a hairy quadruped is astonishing. The erection of the hair is, however, aided in some cases, as with that on the head of a man, by the striped and voluntary muscles of the underlying panniculus carnosus. It is ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... afflictions. Mr. Walcott told me that it was with the greatest difficulty he could keep a few fowls, on account of the smaller vampire; and that the larger kind were killing his poor ass by inches. It was the only quadruped he had brought up with him into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... to join his friends; for the fact that he had fired into a stump, under the belief that it was a bear, was no proof that the dreaded quadruped was not ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... not unlike the mink in form, but several times larger. It swam with a swift movement of its forefeet, while its hind legs, stretched out behind with the tail, twisted powerfully, like a big sculling oar. Its method, indeed, combined the advantages of that of the quadruped and that of the fish. The trout saw at once that here was a foe to be dreaded, and he lay quite still against a stone, trusting to escape the bright ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hair. There were tracks on the desks where the knife-blades had wandered in search of their prey; Their tops were as duskily spattered as if they drank ink every day. The square stove it puffed and it crackled, and broke out in red flaming sores, Till the great iron quadruped trembled like a dog fierce to rush out-o'-doors. White snowflakes looked in at the windows; the gale pressed its lips to the cracks; And the children's hot faces were streaming, the while ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... "spare shirt," "leathern breeches" and "gauze cap to keep off gnats," with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable. His eye is to take in fish, flower, and bird, quadruped and biped. Science is always brave, for to know, is to know good; doubt and danger quail before her eye. What the coward overlooks in his hurry, she calmly scrutinizes, breaking ground like a pioneer for the ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... Small image of a quadruped, very rude; impossible to determine the animal intended; white ware with undulate ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson
... led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Graeco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siut?[**] How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... brazen crinoline, duty compels us to reveal a fact concerning her which will shock the feelings of those who have watched the stately rigidity of decorum with which she moves in the presence of admiring multitudes. She is a quadruped!. Inside of her great golden boots, which represent one pair of feet, is another smaller pair, which move freely ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of the windows. The road had more traffic than on week-days, for it was the recreation of a certain class of Dunfieldians to drive out in parties to the Heath, either hiring a vehicle or using their own trade-carts. It would have been a consolation to observe that in the latter case the quadruped employed benefited by its owner's regard for his own interests; possibly an acute spectator might have discerned gradations of inhumanity. To the casual eye there showed but a succession of over-laden animals urged to the utmost ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... his companion. "Thick-headed, muddy-brained brute; more like a quadruped than a man! The Kaffirs are gentlemen to some of these up-country farmers, and yet they are ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... Quack cxarlatano. Quackery cxarlatanismo. Quadrangle kvarangulajxo. Quadrant kvadranto. Quadrate kvadrato. Quadrate kvadrata. Quadratic kvadrata. Quadrature kvadrato. Quadrille kvadrilo. Quadruped kvarpieda. Quadruple kvarobla. Quaff glutegi. Quaggy marcxa. Quagmire marcxejo. Quail (bird) koturno. Quail tremi. Quaint stranga. Quake tremi—egi. Qualification eco, kvaliteco. Qualify kvalitigi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... together, he soon had a fire started, and the cooking of his breakfast was begun. He went about the work methodically, whistling again in that low key he had used when on the way from his hotel, and stopping now and then as the noise of a woodbird or some wild quadruped of the smaller kind came to his ears. He sniffed the coffee that was boiling furiously and the freshly caught fish that sent out an appetizing aroma. No meal served at the Hoffman, the Imperial or the far-famed Delmonico restaurant, could equal this ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... door, where the Ceases are fed under busha's own eye on all estates—for this excellent and most cogent reason, that otherwise the maize or guinea—com, belonging of right to poor mulo, would generally go towards improving the condition, not of the quadruped, but of the biped quashiet who had charge of him—and there he lay in ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Many of them have English names, which I found very tantalising, especially when, the New Zealand Robin was announced, and I could only see a fat little ball of a bird, with a yellowish-white breast. Animals there are none. No quadruped is indigenous to New Zealand, except a rat; but then, on the other hand, we are as free from snakes and all vermin as if St. Patrick himself had lived here. Our host has turned several pheasants into this forest, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... that one servant lass, in her ardour of search, was found looking under the bed in an upstairs room—scarcely a likely grazing ground for any four-footed animal (unless perhaps it might be a night-mare). But whether she expected to find there the lost quadruped, or the man guilty of its abduction, tradition says not. At any rate, all that any of the searchers found—and that not till broad daylight—was the print of the good mare's hoofs in some soft ground over which she had been ridden fast. And no ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one organic being to another being, been perfected? We see these beautiful co-adaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and the mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped or feathers of a bird; in the structure of the beetle which dives through the water; in the plumed seed which is wafted by the gentlest breeze: in short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every part of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Ettrick Shepherd, living in his early days among the sheep and their quadruped attendants, and an accurate observer of nature, as well an exquisite poet, gives some anecdotes of the colley, (the Highland term for sheep-dog), with which the reader ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... that food for the entire army depended upon his private exertions. I respected this style of mule; and, had I possessed a juicy cabbage, would have pressed it upon him, with thanks for his excellent example. The histrionic mule was a melodramatic quadruped, prone to startling humanity by erratic leaps, and wild plunges, much shaking of his stubborn head, and lashing out of his vicious heels; now and then falling flat, and apparently dying a la Forrest; ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... domestic comfort; they become public nuisances, widely destructive to our literature. Their mode of training will explain the nature of the danger. The infant reciting bore is trained much after the manner of a learned pig. Before the quadruped are placed, on certain bits of dirty greasy cards, the letters of the alphabet, or short nonsensical phrases interrogatory with their answers, such as "Who is the greatest rogue in company?" "Which lady or gentleman in company will be married first?" ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... securing the services of so valuable a quadruped as the last named, Mr. Joseph Tuggs beckoned to the proprietor of a dingy conveyance of a greenish hue, lined with faded striped calico; and, the luggage and the family having been deposited therein, the animal in the shafts, after describing circles in the road for a quarter of an hour, at ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of the South African Republic with an eagle, bird of prey beloved of conquerers. It is true that in the left quarter of their coat of arms is a small lion lying down with bristling mane. It is probably the lady-friend of this ferocious quadruped which Dr. Kuyper has chosen to symbolise ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... straying from its precincts into those of his landlord. But the open casket contained matter, or rather metal, so attractive to old Trapbois, that he remained fixed, like a setting-dog at a dead point, his nose advanced, and one hand expanded like the lifted forepaw, by which that sagacious quadruped sometimes indicates that it is a hare which he has in the wind. Nigel was about to break the charm which had thus arrested old Trapbois, by shutting the lid of the casket, when his attention was withdrawn from him by the question of the messenger, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... is actionable under the lex Aquilia, whose first chapter provides that if a slave of another man, or a quadruped from his flocks or herds, be unlawfully killed, the offender shall pay to the owner whatever was the highest value thereof within the year ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... quick finger of the black pointed to an object close beside the punt. A bill, as of a bird, and apparently of the duck tribe, protruded above the surface of the water. For an instant, small, black, piercing eyes peered towards them: but as the quadruped, for such it was, prepared to dive in affright, the unerring shot of a rifle splashed the water on the cheek of the stranger—the body rolled slowly over—the legs stiffened—a sluggish stream of dark blood tainted the surrounding wave—and the ferryman, extending his careless hand, threw ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... and depth of snow prevents them from obtaining the moss and lichens on which they feed. The little Polar hare ranges round the Arctic Circle; but there is one animal, the musk-ox, which, being truly an Arctic quadruped, is unknown either in Asia or Europe, and therefore belongs exclusively ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... both the east and west hemispheres, but within the antarctic all is one dreary, uninhabitable waste. In the extreme north the reindeer and the musk-ox are found in numbers, but not a single land quadruped exists beyond 50 degrees of southern latitude. Flowers are seen in summer by the arctic navigator as far as 78 degrees north, but no plant of any description, not even a moss or a lichen, has been observed beyond Cockburn Island, in 64 degrees 12 minutes south ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... accepted on trust, especially when, as in this case, it is by implication self-arrogated. The modesty of this thaumaturgic traveller in confining the execution of his detailed scrutiny of a whole community to the moderate progression of some conventional vehicle, drawn by some conventional quadruped or the other, does injustice to powers which, if possessed at all, might have compassed the same achievement in the swifter transit of an express train, or, better still perhaps, from the empyrean elevation of a balloon! Yet is Mr. Froude confident that data professed ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... is in great demand and is not only sought by the human biped, but is also in favor with the equine quadruped. Every morning after the stable doors are thrown open and the horses turned loose they invariably, of their own accord, proceed to the lake, wade out into shallow water and take a bath. They lie down and splash the water about like a lot ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... though I never can come round to your sphere, you must some day come round to me, when wounds, or weariness, or merely, as I hope, a healthy old age, shall shut you out for once and for all from burra shikar, whether human or quadruped.—For you surely will not take to politics in your old age? You will not surely live to solicit (as many a fine fellow, alas! did but last year) the votes, not even of the people, but merely of the snobocracy, on the ground of your having neither policy nor ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... 'Without going into tedious details, man presents, as regards the most important of his constituent structures, his nervous system, the successive characteristics of an avertebrated animal, a fish, a turtle, a bird, a quadruped, a quadrumanous animal, before he assumes the special human ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... most gorgeous piece of Japanese saddlery is the crupper, which, even on a pack-horse, is painted crimson and gilded gloriously. The man who leads the horse is an animal that by long contact and companionship with the quadruped has grown to resemble him in disposition and ejaculation: at least, the equine and the human seem to harmonize well together. This man is called in Japanese "horse side." He is dressed in straw sandals and the universally worn kimono, or blue cotton wrapper-like dress, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... found in the forests and mountains of Grenada. The agouti, the armadillo, and the opossum, are sometimes, though rarely, seen. The only quadruped I ever met with in my rambles was an opossum, which I shot as it was climbing a tree. Of reptiles there are none in the mountains. There are several kinds of snakes in the island, some of which have never been ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... for all. With the exception of some that are devoted to the sale of particular articles, as the Street of Tailors, and Curiosity Street, they differ only in the appearance of the article exposed for sale. They are quite narrow and used only by pedestrians. The only quadruped I recollect seeing in them was a diminutive jackass, standing before a shop in "Old China Street." How he came there, or for what purpose, I could not determine. It may have been out of compliment to the "Foreign Devils," that ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... Livre au Premier Esprit, quelques-uns l'appellent Michabou (Manabozho)."—Charlevoix, Journal Historique, 344. ] It was he who restored the world, submerged by a deluge. He was hunting in company with a certain wolf, who was his brother, or, by other accounts, his grandson, when his quadruped relative fell through the ice of a frozen lake, and was at once devoured by certain serpents lurking in the depths of the waters. Manabozho, intent on revenge, transformed himself into the stump of a tree, and by this artifice surprised and slew the king of the serpents, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... leeming. The lemming, or leming. A rodent quadruped. "It is very prolific, and vast hordes periodically migrate down to the sea, destroying much vegetation ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... as fat and plump. Sometimes as one whose limbs have been broken by the action of disordered wind in the system, sometimes as a bird, and sometimes as one of exceedingly ugly features. Sometimes he appears as a quadruped. Capable of assuming any form, he sometimes appears as an idiot destitute of all intelligence. He assumes also the forms of flies and gnats. O Vipula, no one can make him out in consequence of these innumerable disguises that he is capable of assuming. The very ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... never another could equal that. He looks stealthily around and finds the eyes of all are fixed upon the musician and his bagpipe. No one notices him, and hailing it as a happy omen, he pounces upon the coveted quadruped, grasps it tightly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... Gravesend is about six miles from Rochester—so the evidence of distance does not help us. Where, too, did Mr. Pickwick drop his whip? The Pickwickian enthusiast can ascertain this—'an he will—by a little calculation. After leaving "The Bull," the tall quadruped exercised his "manoeuvre" of darting to the side of the road, rushing forward for some minutes—twenty times—which would cover about an hour. In the etching, there is a picture of the spot—a hedge-lined road. Mr. Pickwick and his friends had to walk the whole way; ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... faculties of animals have always been a favourite study, and they are, perhaps, more strongly developed in the dog than in any other quadruped, from the circumstance of his being the constant companion of man. I am aware how much has been written on this subject, but having accumulated many original and interesting anecdotes of this faithful animal, I ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... not waited long when he saw proof of what the captain had told him: the animals were restless, or rather one of them was. The quadruped thus affected was Hercules, his own mule, who, although lying down, twice rose to his feet, shifted his position and lay down again. Then he sniffed as if the air contained an odor ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... away a stone, why they are simply not in it when compared with a dog's method of wearing down your resistance. After the fifth repetition of the above tactics the man rose, stretched, put his pipe in his pocket, and hurling a pebble at the delighted quadruped, followed in its wake. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... scraps of one kind or another, the general cheapening of printed matter, seem to have dulled that faculty and given us a scattered state of mind. We browse dispersedly, in goatish fashion, instead of nibbling down to the root like that more conscientious quadruped whose name, if I mentioned it, would degrade the metaphor. Devouring so much, so hastily, so irreverentially, how shall a man establish close contact with the mind of him who writes, and impregnate himself with his peculiar outlook to such an extent as to be able to take on, if only momentarily, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... which are active in the generation of hope. He had almost forgotten what he came there for; and had it not been that he had promised Shargar, he would have crept back to his bed and left him to bear his hunger as best he could. But now, first his right hand, then his left knee, like any other quadruped, he crawled to the door, rose only to his knees to open it, took almost a minute to the operation, then dropped and crawled again, till he had passed out, turned, and drawn the door to, leaving it slightly ajar. Then it struck him awfully that the same terrible passage must be gone ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... gently, the mule having tucked its hind legs close beneath it, and slid steadily down, while by means of his ice-axe Melchior regulated his pace to that of the quadruped, till they, too, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... serpent shall bite an ox, or any other quadruped, take a cup of that extract of fennel, which the physicians call smyrnean, and mix it with a measure of old wine. Inject this through his nostrils and at the same time poultice the wound with hogs' dung.[37] You can treat a ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... themselves exert their force in a direct line with the plane of their motion, but at an angle to it, the same principle would, if applied to a steamship, increase its speed. But let us look at the subject from another standpoint. The quadruped has to support the weight of his body, and propel himself forward, with the same force. If the force be applied perpendicularly, the body is elevated, but not moved forward. If the force is applied horizontally, the body moves forward, but soon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... or steinbok, is an Alpine animal remarkable for the development of its horns, which are sometimes more than three feet in length, and of such extraordinary dimensions that they appear to a casual observer to be peculiarly unsuitable for a quadruped which traverses the craggy regions of Alpine precipices. Some writers say that these enormous horns are employed by their owners as "buffers," by which the force of a fall may be broken; and that the animal, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... canine quadruped was under suspicion of having obliterated by a process of mastication that article of sustenance which the butcher ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... quadruped, not yet furnished with wings, were suddenly inspired with the instinct of a bird, and precipitated itself from a cliff, would not the descent be hazardously rapid?" Doubtless the animal would be no better supported than the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... XV the ladies sought a little more comfort, and followed the equipage sitting in a sort of hamper-like, diminutive basket, hung from the broad back of a sturdy quadruped. Dresses became more fanciful, both in materials and colours. From this it was but a step to even more elaborate toilettes which necessitated a conveyance of some sort on wheels, but the most intrepid still ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... extraordinary, not upon the branches, like the squirrel and the monkey, but under them. He moves suspended from the branch, he rests suspended from it, and he sleeps suspended from it. To enable him to do this he must have a very different formation from that of any other known quadruped. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... mistake of attacking the animal. My friend Mr. Ernest Gibson, of Buenos Ayres, in a communication to the Ibis, describes an encounter he actually witnessed between a carancho and a skunk. Riding home one afternoon, he spied a skunk "shuffling along in the erratic manner usual to that odoriferous quadruped;" following it at a very short distance was an eagle-vulture, evidently bent on mischief. Every time the bird came near the bushy tail rose menacingly; then the carancho would fall behind, and, after a few moments' hesitation, follow ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson |
