"Petrel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not even the first-class luggers, or their smaller sisters, the 'cats,' could be launched. Had there been a harbour from which the Deal luggers could at once make the open sea, they would have been able to live and skim like the stormy petrel over the crest of the billows; but it is quite a different thing when a lugger has to be launched from a beach right in the teeth of a mountainous sea, and incurs the certainty of being driven back broadside on to the steep shingle, and of her crew being washed out of her, and drowned ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... and mineral and vegetable productions, remain still, to us, sealed mysteries. The crowned crane has drawn its food from the waters of that vast lake of Tschad, in the search for which so many Europeans have perished; the little stormy petrel, borne on the surge, or wafted by the gale, has travelled to every shore that has been visited by the tempests in which it loves to rove; and the wandering stork, like the restless swallow, has nestled, indifferently, among the chimneys of Amsterdam, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... in nature But my moan, The shriek of the wild petrel All alone, And roar of waves exulting To make my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... but sorrow, this child of the Great Rebellion, born in the old Buckinghamshire manor house, while her father was at Falmouth with the Prince—born in the midst of civil war, a stormy petrel, bringing no message of peace from those unknown skies whence she came, a harbinger of woe. Infant eyes love bright colours. This baby's eyes looked upon a house hung with black. Her mother died before the child was a fortnight old. They had christened her Angela. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... sea are conveniently divided into the active swimmers (Nekton) and the more passive drifters (Plankton). The swimmers include whales great and small, such birds as the storm petrel, the fish-eating turtles and sea-snakes, such fishes as mackerel and herring, the winged snails or sea-butterflies on which whalebone whales largely feed, some of the active cuttles or squids, various open-sea ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... dehortation^; admonition, monition; alarm &c 669. handwriting on the wall, mene mene tekel upharsin, red flag, yellow flag; fog-signal, foghorn; siren; monitor, warning voice, Cassandra^, signs of the times, Mother Cary's chickens^, stormy petrel, bird of ill omen, gathering clouds, clouds in the horizon, death watch. watchtower, beacon, signal post; lighthouse &c (indication of locality) 550. sentinel, sentry,, watch, watchman; watch and ward; watchdog, bandog^, housedog^; patrol, patrolman, vedette^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... favorable conditions, a whole district, let it be ever so large. The condor lays a couple of eggs and the ostrich a score, and yet in the same country the condor may be the more numerous of the two; the Fulmar petrel lays but one egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird in the world. One fly deposits hundreds of eggs, and another, like the hippobosca, a single one; but this difference does not determine how many individuals of the two species ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... of The spotted Opossum; Vulpine Opossum; Norfolk Island Flying-Squirrel. Blue Bellied Parrot; Tabuan Parrot; Pennantian Parrot; Pacific Parrakeet; Sacred King's-fisher; Superb Warbler, male; Superb Warbler, female; Caspian Tern; Norfolk Island Petrel; Bronze-winged Pigeon; White-fronted Heron; Wattled Bee-Eater; Psittaceous Hornbill; dimensions of a ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... procellarius, as we naturalists call it, but in English, the stormy petrel; its presence ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Purple Gallinule Belted Kingfisher Canada Goose Kingbird Wood Duck Woodthrush Hooded Merganser Catbird Double-crested Cormorant White-bellied Nuthatch Arctic Tern Brown Creeper Great Northern Diver Bohemian Chatterer Stormy Petrel Great Northern Shrike Arctic ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... plaintive cries. The albatrosses, of the black or sooty variety, had watched with hard, bright eyes, and seemed to have a quite impersonal interest in our struggle to keep afloat amid the battering seas. In addition to the Cape pigeons an occasional stormy petrel flashed overhead. Then there was a small bird, unknown to me, that appeared always to be in a fussy, bustling state, quite out of keeping with the surroundings. It irritated me. It had practically no tail, and it flitted about vaguely ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... outbreak of hostilities in America Miranda had played the part of stormy petrel in other continents. Born in Venezuela, he had the advantage of a wider knowledge of the world than many of his compatriots; he had already taken an active part in the struggle between North America and Great Britain, and he had joined with Lafayette in the territories of the then ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Company of One Hundred Associates. Dumesnil retorted by filing a dossier of charges against some of the councilors; and the colonists at once ranged themselves into two opposing factions—those who believed the charges and those who did not. The bishop had become the stormy petrel of colonial politics, and nature had in truth well fitted him ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... was the first privateer which got to sea, but this vessel was captured after having taken only a single prize. The Petrel, also from Charleston, bore down upon the United States frigate St. Lawrence, which the captain mistook for a merchant ship; his vessel was sunk by the first broadside of his formidable antagonist. The Sumter, under Captain Semmes, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Fritz, levelling his rifle at a petrel, "the misfortunes of the one constitute the happiness of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... in the desolate South Seas there lives a large and beautiful bird called the albatross, the giant member of the petrel family. The wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans) is the largest of its tribe. Specimens have been captured measuring four feet in length, and with an expanse of wing from ten to fourteen feet. The body of this bird is very large, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... necessary to obtain the white bear, the musk-ox, of which seven would be required, since it is a clean beast; seven reindeer, likewise; the white fox, the polar hare, the lemming, and seven of each species of cormorant, gannet, penguin, petrel, and gull, some of which are as large as eagles, as well as mergansers, geese, and ducks, certain species of which are only found in the frigid zone. Noah or his agents must have discovered Greenland and North America thousands ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton
... ship. All our two and three deckers are to be called after states; the frigates after rivers; and the sloops after towns. Thus it is that our craft has the honour to be called the United States ship the 'Poughkeepsie,' instead of the 'Arrow,' or the 'Wasp,' or the 'Curlew,' or the 'Petrel,' as might otherwise have been the case. But the wisdom of Congress is manifest, for the plan teaches us ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper |
