"Rodent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... squirrel as our subject in this chapter, as this little rodent has a tough skin that is easily manipulated. A cottontail rabbit might be more easy to procure, but is not so satisfactory for the purpose of initiative steps in this work, as his skin is extremely delicate and requires especially careful ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... She found Taug, though, and told him what the others were planning, and the great bull stamped upon the ground and roared. His bloodshot eyes blazed with wrath, his upper lip curled up to expose his fighting fangs, and the hair upon his spine stood erect, and then a rodent scurried across the open and Taug sprang to seize it. In an instant he seemed to have forgotten his rage against the enemies of his friend; but such is the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... set more perfectly diversified in structure. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the Australian marsupials, which are divided into groups differing but little from each other, and feebly representing, as Mr. Waterhouse and others have remarked, our carnivorous, ruminant, and rodent mammals, could successfully compete with these well-developed orders. In the Australian mammals, we see the process of diversification in an early and incomplete stage ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... bird had flapped its wings in the branches, if one little rodent had stirred in the underbrush, Little Shikara would likely have turned back. But the jungle-gods, knowing their son, stilled all the forest voices. He crept on, still looking now and again over his shoulder to see the village fire. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... 157, talking of the identification of a Mexican animal with the Synetheres prehensilis, says, "We do not know with what propriety, but if correct, it is, if not a solitary instance, at least very nearly so, of a rodent animal being common to North and South America.") Some few species alone have passed the barrier, and may be considered as wanderers from the south, such as the puma, opossum, kinkajou, and peccari. South America is characterised by possessing many ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... pastoral state keep down the incipient growth of trees on the half-dried bogs, and prevent them from recovering their primitive condition. Young trees in the native forest are sometimes girdled and killed by the smaller rodent quadrupeds, and their growth is checked by birds which feed on the terminal bud; but these animals, as we shall see, are generally found on the skirts of the wood only, not in its deeper recesses, and hence the mischief they ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... mouthfuls, and carried it to his nest, coming and going with admirable industry, forecast, and confidence. None watching him as we did could fail to sympathize with him; and I fancy that in practical weather wisdom no government forecaster with all his advantages surpasses this little Alaska rodent, every hair and nerve ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides an acre into a hundred fragments,—ever spurred on to his banquet by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the Revolution, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... irony of fate, who weaves stranger dramas than could ever be set on censored stages, for they both take hundreds of years to unravel themselves, and are of the most unedifying character, Turkey, the rodent cancer, has been infected by another with greater organisation for devouring; the disease of Ottomanism is threatened by a more deadly hungerer, and Prussianism has inserted its crab-pincers into the cancer that came out of Asia. Those claws are already deeply set, and the problem for ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... good-sized animal, being two and a half feet long exclusive of the tail, which is one foot more. It is of a deep chestnut colour; the hair very fine, smooth, and glossy. The Indians use its incisor teeth, which are very large and hard, to cut the bone or horn with which they tip their spears. It is a rodent, or gnawing animal. It has a broad, horizontal, flattened tail, nearly of an oval form, which is covered with scales. The hind feet are webbed, and, with the aid of the tail, which acts as a rudder, enable it to swim through the water with ease and rapidity. Except in one respect, I do ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... requiem! We feel very sorry at the loss of our pet, for he was a thorough sailor, thinking it nothing to mount the rigging and seat himself on the crosstrees, whilst on his rounds; and as to the item "rats," shew me the rodent that could ever boast of weathering him, and I will shew you a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... light from the nitrogen bulb they stood in the cell of the dead man, gathered about the cage of the rat—a prison within a prison. After the first start caused by the needle prick, the rodent again shrank back into its corner. For perhaps ten minutes it remained thus, and then it began to exhibit signs of uneasiness. It stood up on its haunches and began to bite at the wires of the cage. It squeaked, more as though uneasy than ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... largest skulls of the lop-eared this line was plainly bowed inwards. In one specimen there was an additional molar tooth on each side of the upper jaw, between the molars and premolars; but these two teeth did not correspond in size; and as no rodent has seven molars, this is merely a monstrosity, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... "Hi, scat!" And the frisky rodent scampered off, but speedily returned, followed by several others. After that they had a lively time of it for half an hour, when the rats left them as ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... in 200 locations in 18 eastern States. It was suspected that the greatest hazard to direct seeding in or near forests would be rodents. Accordingly, in the spring of 1939 and 1940, 400 nuts and 600 nuts, respectively, were coated with a strychnine-alkaloid rodent repellent, and a comparable number of seeds, for both years, were left untreated to serve as checks. The checks were held in sphagnum moss at Beltsville, Md., and the nuts to be treated were packed in sphagnum moss and expressed to Denver for treatment by the Division of Wildlife ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... part of British Columbia contains the mule deer of western North America (Mazama macrotis), and a very strange rodent, the sewellel or mountain beaver (Haplodon), a creature distantly allied to squirrels, marmots, and beavers, but restricted in its distribution to a few parts of California, Oregon, and British Columbia. Amongst the birds noteworthy in ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... other kind of rodent. I found I have to plant in the spring and always in a tin can, with rock ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... viral disease carried by rats of the genus Mastomys; endemic in portions of West Africa; infection occurs through direct contact with or consumption of food contaminated by rodent urine or fecal matter containing virus particles; fatality rate can reach ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... horse, equine cow, bovine bull, taurine sheep, ovine wolf, lupine hog, porcine bear, ursine fox, vulpine cat, feline dog, canine fish, piscatorial mouse, vermin rat, rodent mankind, humanity man, masculine woman, feminine ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... away with that everywhere. Our orchard is far enough away from the nursery that we don't have any rodent damage. We have had some trouble from skunks, and they finally find out that the nuts are in there in a row where we have planted them, and they go right down and get them. But we have no trouble from mice or rats. We are far away from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... related to a thrilling happening he had experienced on one occasion, when lying out in the woods watching for a certain timid little rodent to commence moving around. At the time the deacon had one of those new-fangled hand electric torches with him, which he meant to use when the proper ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... of Dr. Bigelow, and in a published discourse he has said of him: "He read men and women as great scholars read books. He took life at first hand, and not filtered through alphabets....He would get what he wanted out of a book as dexterously as a rodent will get the meat of a nut out of its shell.... He handled his rapidly acquired knowledge so like an adept in book-lore that one might have thought he was born in an alcove and cradled on a book-shelf." Dr. Bigelow was so frequently ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... tall and thin. He dropped at the middle, but showed vitality and energy in his small face and rodent features. His hair was black, and his thin mouth and chin clean-shaven. His eyes were small and very shrewd; his manner was humble. He had a monotonous inflection and rather chanted in a minor ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... 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
... backward. Five years would be five hundred thousand of reverse evolution—in that time, one would be reduced to something definitely animal. Beyond that, one would drop into the category of tailed monkeys, of rodent ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... allowed to eat, my appetite was kindly tempted by dainties sent to me by friends, and which were placed under tin covers, on the top of a chest of drawers. The endeavours of my rodent companions to get at these were excessively droll; but as fast as they clambered an inch or two up the sides, the slippery metal caused them to slide down again; then they thought if they could but get to ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... usually due to bladder cancer; endemic in 74 developing countries with 80% of infected people living in sub-Saharan Africa; humans act as the reservoir for this parasite. aerosolized dust or soil contact disease acquired through inhalation of aerosols contaminated with rodent urine: Lassa fever - viral disease carried by rats of the genus Mastomys; endemic in portions of West Africa; infection occurs through direct contact with or consumption of food contaminated by rodent urine or fecal matter containing virus ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... also had an other-self, and when he slept that other-self dreamed back into the past, back to the winged reptiles and the clash and the onset of dragons, and beyond that to the scurrying, rodent-like life of the tiny mammals, and far remoter still, to the shore-slime of the primeval sea. I cannot, I dare not, say more. It is all too vague and complicated and awful. I can only hint of those vast and terrific vistas through which ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... the mud. Rick reached down and splashed a handful on his face. It was warm. He saw a wet black head emerge from under the duck blind and speed for shore. It was a startled water rat. Alerted by the small splash of their coming, the rodent decided to take better cover. Then they were at the corner of the blind where ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... noticed in their structure and development. The peculiar structure of the enlarged heads of the warrior termites was particularly noticeable. Some had a formidable head provided with tentacles and powerful rodent clippers—as well as the peculiar whitish cuirasses in sections of the body. The workers had more normal shapes, the head being ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... James Robinson (2) Jehu Robinson John Robinson (3) Joseph Robinson Mark Robinson Nathaniel Robinson Thomas Robinson William Robinson John Rockway Daniel Rockwell Jabez Rockwell Elisha Rockwood Anthony Roderick Jean Raptist Rodent James Rodgers Michael Rodieu Francis Rodrigo Franco Rogeas Robert Roger Dudson Rogers Ebenezer Rogers Emanuel Rogers George Rogers (3) John Rogers (5) Nicholas Rogers Paul Rogers Thomas Rogers William Rogers John Rogert Joseph Roget Jean Rogue John Francis ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone. The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then one remembers that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his kind, and cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the tree against his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, one can watch his attempts at mischief ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... particularly quieting thought to certain members of the fair sex! The origin of the word rat is less certain, but it may have been derived from the root of the Latin word radere, to scratch, or rodere, to gnaw. Rodent is derived from the latter term. Cat is also in doubt, but is first recognised in catalus, a diminutive of canis, a dog. It was applied to the young of almost any animal, as we use the words pup, kitten, cub, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... you've got to, and get it over, and then perhaps we can go on and not waste any more time over rubbish-heaps. Can we eat a door-mat? Or sleep under a door-mat? Or sit on a door-mat and sledge home over the snow on it, you exasperating rodent?" ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... a high collar at a time when it was completely out of fashion. Well, one day this very woman was shown into my consulting-room. When the footman was gone she suddenly tore off the upper part of her dress. 'For Gods sake do something for me!' she cried. Then I saw what the trouble was. A rodent ulcer was eating its way upwards, coiling on in its serpiginous fashion until the end of it was flush with her collar. The red streak of its trail was lost below the line of her bust. Year by year it had ascended and she had heightened her dress to hide it, until now it was about to invade ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... grey hopping rodent mammal (Chinchilla lanigera), of the approximate size of a squirrel, inhabiting the eastern slopes of the Andes in Chile and Bolivia, at altitudes between 8000 and 12,000 ft. It typifies not only the genus Chinchilla, but the family Chinchillidae, for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... animals could be introduced. A field-mouse dies and decays, and its elements are appropriated by the roots around its grave; and we can easily imagine the next generations of mice, the children and grandchildren of the deceased rodent, feasting off the tender bark which was made out of the remains of their parent. The soil of our gardens and the atmosphere above it are full of potential tomatoes, beans, corn, potatoes, and cabbages,—even of peaches of the finest flavor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... travellers who are employed to spread them discreetly, "urbi et orbi," through Paris and the provinces, seasoned with the fried pork of advertisement and prospectus, by means of which they catch in their rat-trap the departmental rodent commonly called subscriber, sometimes stockholder, occasionally corresponding member or patron, ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... end of the room, he reached into a large flat metal cage and brought forth three small rodent like animals, natives of that world. These he also tossed carelessly under ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... never dared to retire without first having a thorough examination to assure herself that no lurking rodent was lying hidden behind the wardrobe, or in any other obscure corner. One evening she was making her usual round, armed with a tennis racket for protection, and was peeping under the bed, when she suddenly let the valance fall hurriedly, and ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... vessel at the Keeling Cocos Islands, and another at Rodriguez, along with a centiped stowed away in the hold; but one of them I drove out of the ship, and the other I caught. This is how it was: for the first one with infinite pains I made a trap, looking to its capture and destruction; but the wily rodent, not to be deluded, took the hint and got ashore the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... with an accession of energy. Then one leg was stretched forth spasmodically. There was a convulsive heave as the lungs drew in a first long breath, and, with that, an astonished and very much alive rodent scrambled to its feet, blinking wondering ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... tried to electrocute a rat which was caught in a wire basket trap and accidentally discovered a painless method. I say painless, because the rodent does not object to a second or third experiment after recovering, and is apparently rigid and without feeling ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... shouting and a group ran across his path, chasing a small rodent. He heard a wild tumult begin, minutes later. When he passed the spot where they had stopped, a fight was going on, apparently over ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... to the mammals of to-day. In Pleistocene times in North America there were several species of bison,—one whose widespreading horns were ten feet from tip to tip,—a gigantic moose elk, a giant rodent (Castoroides) five feet long, several species of musk oxen, several species of horses,— more akin, however, to zebras than to the modern horse,—a huge lion, several saber-tooth tigers, immense edentates ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... 1962. A new species of the rodent Pipestoneomys from the Oligocene of Nebraska. Breviora, Mus. Comp. Zool., no. ...
— Records of the Fossil Mammal Sinclairella, Family Apatemyidae, From the Chadronian and Orellan • William A. Clemens
... best run house. When this happens it is a matter of either traps or the new scientific poison baits that domestic pets will not eat. There is also the old farm method of mixing equal parts of plaster of Paris and corn meal, an entree harmless in itself but with fatal results for the invading rodent. In summer there is the possibility of a plague of ants. For this there is now a cheap and scientific liquid bait that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... while the honey bee stings once at the cost of its life; or why only one species of fish can fly; or why one kind of eel has a powerful electric battery; or why the porcupine has an armor of quills while his brother rodent the woodchuck has only fur and hair, and so on—we make no ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... murmur, "Rat's tail," to myself, or (more offensive still) "Chewed string," for him to rush at me. "Where, O Bingo, is that delicate feather curling gracefully over the back, which was the pride and glory of thy great-grandfather? Is the caudal affix of the rodent thy apology for it?" And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... one occasion she caught a harmless, innocent little blue mouse in the pantry. She fully intended to drown the helpless creature—as if this world were not big enough for mice and men to live and be happy in! I had great difficulty in rescuing the tiny rodent from his captor, and I remember the satisfaction I had in giving him his liberty under the kitchen porch of ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the sloths and ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous cats, dogs, and bears, still less the rodent rats and rabbits, or the insectivorous moles and hedgehogs, or the bats, could claim our Homo as ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Spaniards to this range, meaning both mouse and squirrel. It had its origin either in the fact that one of its several peaks bore a fanciful resemblance to a squirrel, or because of the immense numbers of that little rodent always to be found in its ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... away with all his energy at the heavy bar that secured the door, now and then giving a dismal little squeal, as in imagination he felt the sharp teeth of a rodent nipping him ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... a rat, the animal has no right to the name, although, like the true rat, it is a rodent, and much resembles the rat in size and in the length and colour of its fur. The likeness, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... two were discussing secret matters which they had no intention of imparting to her. A woman has a faculty about such things which corresponds to scent in the terrier; the little mystery is there—the small rodent lurks behind the wainscot; she is consumed with a desire to get at it—to worry its life out; and if it refuse to leave its hiding-place she cannot rest and be satisfied. It was her nature; and though she asked no questions, knowing that her husband was not ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... doubt that at times all three live in the same burrow, and in dens that the hard-working rodent first made. But the simple fact is that the Owl and the Snake merely use the holes abandoned (perhaps under pressure) by the Prairie-dog; and if any two of the three underground worthies happen to meet in the same hole, the fittest survives. I suspect further that the young of ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... warmly and tenderly, while at the same time his eyes were everywhere about the room and he was listening with the wary alertness of a rodent. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distant odour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught from the contact of her long, fawn-coloured suede gloves, and he saw again her moist, rodent teeth, her thin, bitten lips, and her troubled eyes, of a grey and opaque lustre which could suddenly be transfigured with radiance. "Oh, night after next it will be ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... come soon?" Edwardson asked, his brown rodent's eyes on the indicator. The men didn't answer him. After two months together in space their conversational powers were exhausted. They weren't interested in Cassel's undergraduate days, ...
— The Hour of Battle • Robert Sheckley
... Mr. RODENT (Senior) was called upon to preside. He took the hillock amid waving of tails and much enthusiasm, and remarked that he trusted that that vast assembly, one of the most magnificent demonstrations that even Hyde Park had ever known, would show by its orderly behaviour, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... absent. North and South America, perhaps, present one or two exceptions to the last rule, but they are readily susceptible of explanation. Thus, in Australia, the later Tertiary mammals are marsupials (possibly with the exception of the Dog and a Rodent or two, as at present). In Austro-Columbia, the later Tertiary fauna exhibits numerous and varied forms of Platyrrhine Apes, Rodents, Cats, Dogs, Stags, Edentata, and Opossums; but, as at present, no Catarrhine Apes, no Lemurs, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... original types, but in like conditions, has produced in the end very similar results in both cases. Still, when we come to examine the more intimate underlying structure of the two animals, a profound fundamental difference at once exhibits itself. The one is distinctly a true squirrel, a rodent of the rodents, externally adapted to an arboreal existence; the other is equally a true phalanger, a marsupial of the marsupials, which has independently undergone on his own account very much the same ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... little week." He began this at first by help of Dutocq, who shared the profits; but, at the present moment this man of many legal crimes, now the banker of fishwives, the money-lender of costermongers, was the gnawing rodent ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and I were to remain in the boat with our guns, ready to shoot all that came to the edge of the stream—the habits of both animals, when hard-pressed, being to take to the water. We had not long to wait. The first arrival was a Paca, a reddish, nearly tail-less rodent, spotted with white on the sides, and intermediate in size and appearance between a hog and a hare. My first shot did not take effect; the animal dived into the water and did not reappear. A second was brought down by my companion as ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... West Indian name of Dasyprocta aguti, a terrestrial rodent of the size of a rabbit, common to Trinidad and Guiana, and classed in the family Caviidae. Under the same term may be included the other species of Dasyprocta, of which there are about half a score in tropical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... selecting the genus, still care should be taken to select one that includes the term to be defined. We might begin the definition of iron by saying, "Iron is a metal," since all iron is metal, but it would be incorrect to begin the definition of rodent by saying, "A rodent is a beaver," because the term beaver does not include all rodents. We must also take care to choose for the genus some term familiar to the reader, because the object of the definition is to make the meaning clear ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... hunted in company. Here the startled rodent skips briskly off, down his accustomed run, only to meet another archer standing motionless, ready ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... streets are at times redolent, and which makes good home-brewed 'pop;' the Kola-nut, here worth a halfpenny and at Bathurst a penny each; the bitter Kola, a very different article from the esculent; skewered rots of ground-hog, a rodent that can climb, destroy vegetables, and bite hard if necessary; dried bats and rats, which the African as well as the Chinese loves, and fish cuits au soleil, preferred when 'high,' to use the mildest adjective. From the walls hung dry goods, red woollen ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... classes of animals. In the mammalia, for example, we have in the common rat a fish-eater and flesh-eater as well as a grain-eater, which has no doubt helped to give it the power of spreading over the world and driving away the native rats of other countries. Throughout the Rodent tribe we find everywhere aquatic, terrestrial, and arboreal forms. In the weasel and cat tribes some live more in trees, others on the ground; squirrels have diverged into terrestrial, arboreal, and flying ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... and then the villages were too far apart. The people were very fond of sheep, which they call ngombe, or ox, and tusks are never used. They went off to where an elephant had formerly been killed, and brought the tusks rotted and eaten or gnawed by "Dere" (?)—a Rodent, probably the Aulocaudatus Swindermanus. Three large rivers were crossed, breast and chin deep; in one they were five hours, and a man in a small canoe went ahead sounding for water capable of being waded. Much water and mud in the forest. This report makes me thankful I did not go, for ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... in the horse. It begins as a small, wartlike tumor, which grows slowly at first, but finally bursts open, ulcerates, and extends laterally and deeply in the skin and other tissues, destroying them as it advances (rodent ulcer). It is made up of a fibrous framework and numerous round, ovoid, or cylindrical cavities, lined with masses of epithelial cells, which may be squeezed out as a fetid, caseous material. Early and thorough removal with the knife is the most ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... rabbits, guinea-pigs, and white mice breed so abundantly when closely confined under various climates, it might have been thought that most other members of the Rodent order would have bred in captivity, but this is not the case. It deserves notice, as showing how the capacity to breed sometimes goes by affinity, that the one native rodent of Paraguay, which there breeds freely and has yielded successive generations, is the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... can fall back in time of need on a plank for their dinner, require a very different-sized cooking apparatus to that of the Carnivora. Thus the rat, the most perfect sample of the rodent order, possesses a digestive tube of a prodigious length, through which the scrapings of wood have plenty of time for travelling, while the minute nutritive particles they contain are being thoroughly disengaged; and as every ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... will touch the leaves, owing to their bitter juices, nor will a grub or nibbling rodent molest the root, which bites like ginger; nevertheless credulous mankind once utilized the plant as ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Finch admitted. "In fact, I may say that I'm very, very fond of tree-buds. But I'm a bird. And of course everybody knows that you're a rodent." ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... bolts and iron knees burning holes in their bottoms. Of the singular entry, "rat gnawing a gaspipe," the firemen state that it is common for rats to gnaw leaden service pipes, for the purpose, it is supposed, of getting at the water, and in this instance the gray rodent labored under a mistake, and let out the raw material of the opposite element. Intoxication is a fruitful cause of fires, especially in public ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... in the alkaline wastes of this Wyoming valley; and that thread or fringe betokens the existence of a stream in the spring-time,—one that the Sioux have ever called the Beaver, after the amphibious rodent who dammed its waters, and thereby rescued them from a like fate at the hands of modern residents. Far to the southeast, miles and miles away, dim and hazy through the heatwaves of the atmosphere one can almost see another twisting string ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... most superficial study would at once convince us that, among the orders of placental mammals, neither the Whales, nor the hoofed creatures, nor the Sloths and Ant-eaters, nor the carnivorous Cats, Dogs, and Bears, still less the Rodent Rats and Rabbits, or the Insectivorous Moles and Hedgehogs, or the Bats, could claim our 'Homo', as one ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... favorite edible; but statisticians usually admit that hogmeat forms the staple. Doctor KANE speaks in glowing terms of the excellence of rats when mixed with due proportions of walrus blubber, and cut out in frozen chunks, probably with a cold-chisel. Why this fierce rodent should make more savory meat than the innocent kitten, does not appear. The latter is certainly much nicer to play with, in the ante-mortem state. But this is a digression. Returning, therefore, not to the mutton, but to the pork, consider ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... sunken sea, Lacus Mortis. Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... with the rest. I could not doubt the cause of the clamor. This was the morning of the warriors' return; and getting the knife in my teeth, I began filing furiously at the ropes about my wrists. Man is not a rodent; but under stress of necessity and with instruments of his own designing, he can do something to remedy his human helplessness. To the din of clamoring voices outside were added the shouts of approaching warriors, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... forest, darkly, and from its depths came those nameless sounds that are a part of the night life of the jungle—the rustling of leaves in the wind, the rubbing together of contiguous branches, the scurrying of a rodent, all magnified by the darkness to sinister and awe-inspiring proportions; the hoot of an owl, the distant scream of a great cat, the barking of wild dogs, attested the presence of the myriad life she could not see—the savage life, the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... while, as before, Mrs. Toomey felt the magnetism of the younger woman's health and strength and courage. Nevertheless, she was panic-stricken at what Kate was taking for granted and her quick little mind was darting about like some frightened rodent from corner to corner, thinking how she was going to disentangle herself from the situation with the minimum of ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... swarmed with rabbits, in fact, it was a perfect warren, and must have contained thousands of them. I had therefore to devise some means of keeping them down, or they would so have multiplied as to eat up everything that to a rodent was toothsome, and that is nearly everything green, even to the furze bushes. I had only four tooth-traps with me, and these were not nearly adequate for the number I wanted to kill, so I had recourse to wire gins. These I soon became an adept in setting, and discovered that ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... again, usque ad nauseam, is equally well adapted to pick up a pin or to break the great boughs of tropical forest trees. (That pin, in particular, is now a well-worn classic.) The squirrel, once more, celebrated for his unusual intelligence when judged by a rodent standard, uses his pretty little paws as veritable hands, by which he can grasp a nut or fruit all round, and so gain in his small mind a clear conception of its true shape and properties. Throughout the animal kingdom generally, indeed, this correspondence, or rather this ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Living Jerboa in the Zoological Garden of Berlin.—A rare rodent from South Africa, one seldom seen alive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... time for books and music, when The lambs were bleating in their pen, The chickens peeping at the door; The rodent gnawing at the churn, The buckwheat wafers crisped to burn, The ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... in other sciurids. I think that the presence or absence of P3, together with the projection of the anterior root of P4 in relation to the masseteric knob, is of generic significance, for, squirrels in general have retained the dentition and dental formula of a primitive rodent, and any change in the pattern of the teeth or in dental formula is, in my opinion, of a ...
— Genera and Subgenera of Chipmunks • John A. White
... canoes were thickly infested with them. They were a light gray animal, larger than the common gray squirrel, with beautiful bushy tails, which made them strikingly resemble the squirrel, but in cunning and deviltry they were much ahead of that quick-witted rodent. I have known them to empty in one night a keg of spikes in the storehouse in Yamhill, distributing them along the stringers of the building, with apparently no other purpose than amusement. We anticipated great fun watching the efforts of these rats to escape the next day when the canoes should ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... teaches that it is usually safe to avoid one who pretends to be a friend without having any reason to be. It wasn't safe in this instance, however; for the cat went after that departing rodent, ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... hay. From this various underground passages start which lead to the storerooms, which are three or four in number. It is to these that the Vole bears his harvest. Each compartment is large enough to contain four or five kilogrammes of roots, so that the little rodent finds himself at the end of the season the proprietor of about fifteen kilogrammes of food in reserve. He would have enough to enable him to revel in abundance if he were able to reckon without his neighbours. This diligent ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... bird-catching spider (mygale), of extraordinary large size. The back part of the body alone measured two inches. Being at some distance I supposed it to be one of the rodent animals, and I fired at it. To my mortification I discovered my mistake when too late, for the specimen was completely destroyed by the shot, and was useless for my collection. The Indians assured me that on the margin of the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... (black death) Contagious, often fatal epidemic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasteurella) pestis, transmitted from person to person or by the bite of fleas from an infected rodent, especially a rat; produces chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter |
