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Zebra   Listen
noun
Zebra  n.  (Zool.) Any member of three species of African wild horses remarkable for having the body white or yellowish white, and conspicuously marked with dark brown or brackish bands. Note: The true or mountain zebra (Equus zebra syn. Asinus zebra) is nearly white, and the bands which cover the body and legs are glossy black. Its tail has a tuft of black hair at the tip. It inhabits the mountains of Central and Southern Africa, and is noted for its wariness and wildness, as well as for its swiftness. The second species (Equus Burchellii syn. Asinus Burchellii or Equus quagga), known as Burchell's zebra, plains zebra, and dauw, is the most abundant, inhabiting the grassy plains of tropical and southern Africa, and differing from the preceding in not having dark bands on the legs, while those on the body are more irregular. It has a long tail, covered with long white flowing hair. Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) is distinct from the others in being placed in the subgenus Dolichohippus, whereas the plains and mountain zebras are placed in the subgenus Hippotigris.
Zebra caterpillar, the larva of an American noctuid moth (Mamestra picta). It is light yellow, with a broad black stripe on the back and one on each side; the lateral stripes are crossed with withe lines. It feeds on cabbages, beets, clover, and other cultivated plants.
Zebra opossum, the zebra wolf. See under Wolf.
Zebra parrakeet, an Australian grass parrakeet, often kept as a cage bird. Its upper parts are mostly pale greenish yellow, transversely barred with brownish black crescents; the under parts, rump, and upper tail coverts, are bright green; two central tail feathers and the cheek patches are blue. Called also canary parrot, scallop parrot, shell parrot, and undulated parrot.
Zebra poison (Bot.), a poisonous tree (Euphorbia arborea) of the Spurge family, found in South Africa. Its milky juice is so poisonous that zebras have been killed by drinking water in which its branches had been placed, and it is also used as an arrow poison.
Zebra shark. Same as Tiger shark, under Tiger.
Zebra spider, a hunting spider.
Zebra swallowtail, a very large North American swallow-tailed butterfly (Iphiclides ajax), in which the wings are yellow, barred with black; called also ajax.
Zebra wolf. See under Wolf.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zebra" Quotes from Famous Books



... shawl round it, and a cushion for her feet). She dressed him a little doll, who was master of the ring, and he had lots of animals in his procession. Two elephants and a bear on hind legs, and a bear on four legs, a zebra, a tiger, a big squirrel, some tin horses, and some lovely horses covered with real hair, a set of performing ...
— Humpty Dumpty's Little Son • Helen Reid Cross

... of animals standing in a straight line reaching from one side of the ring to the other. In the middle stood the elephant, with the summer house, as Billy called it, on his back; next him stood a camel; next the camel a giraffe; next the giraffe a horse; next the horse, a zebra, and last a little Shetland pony. On the other side of the elephant were more animals standing in the ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... Everard Home: A young chestnut mare, seven-eighths Arabian, belonging to the Earl of Morton, was covered in 1815 by a Quagga, which is a species of wild ass from Africa, and marked somewhat in the style of a Zebra. The mare was covered but once by the Quagga, and after a pregnancy of eleven months and four days gave birth to a hybrid, which had, as was expected, distinct marks of the Quagga, in the shape of its head, black bars on the legs and shoulders, &c. In 1817, 1818 and 1821, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... but there the resemblance ceased. Behind the features glowed a proud, fierce spirit that transformed them. His head was high but his eyes roved from right to left restlessly, never still save when they paused for a flickering instant to examine some gazelle, some distant herd of zebra or wildebeeste standing in the vista of the flat-topped trees. His nostrils slowly expanded and contracted with his breathing, as do those of a spirited horse. In contrast to the gait of the white man he stepped ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... speak of such a horrid thing," gasped Libbie, who did not consider measles in the least romantic. "You get all speckled like—like a zebra if you ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson

... resembling the unicorn which figures as one of the supporters of the royal arms of England that he could hardly credit his eyes. He counted the creatures, and found that, as the professor had stated, there were sixteen of them, all apparently full-grown. They very closely approached the zebra in general shape, but were considerably larger animals, standing about fourteen hands high. They were of a beautiful deep cream colour, their legs black below the knee, and they had short black manes, black switched tails very similar to that of the gemsbok, and, in the case of four of ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... take the highly decorated species—that is, animals marked by alternate dark or light bands or spots, such as the zebra, some deer, or the carnivora—we find, first, that the region of the spinal column is marked by a dark stripe; secondly, that the regions of the appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly, that the flanks are striped or spotted along or between the ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... the Zouave Zemindaress of Zululand, was no Zany, but rode on a Zanzibar Zebra, resided in a Zing-Zag Zenana, Zealously studied Zanyism, Zealotism, Zoology, Zoonomy, Zoophytology, Zoolatry, Zymology, Zincography And many other 'isms, 'ologies, 'olatries, 'ographies, etc., out of the works she bought at ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... Patagony. An' the ould man Mazarine— part rhinoceros and part Methody, he is. An' what do ye be thinkin' of him they call Giggles, that almost guv his life to save the ould behemoth! Doesn't he remind you of the zebra, where the wild Hottentots come from—smart and handsome, but that showy, all stripes and tail and fetlock! D'ye unnerstand ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Thither came the buffalo and the bison, the white bull of Northumberland and Galloway, the unicorn from the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of Ceylon or Siam. The ostrich and the cameleopard, the wild ass and the zebra, the chamois and the ibex of Angora,—all brought their tributes of beauty or deformity to these vast aceldamas of Rome: their savage voices ascended in tumultuous uproar to the chambers of the capitol: a million of spectators sat round them: standing in the centre was a single statuesque ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... of laughter, and Leander, beside himself with rage, half rose, to throw himself upon Scopin, and chastise him then and there for his insufferable impertinence; but he was so stiff and sore from his own beating, and the pain in his back, which was striped like a zebra's, was so excruciating, that he sank back into his place with a suppressed groan, and concluded to postpone his revenge to some more convenient season. Herode and Blazius, who were accustomed to settle such little disputes, insisted upon their making up their differences, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... and now I'm not going to get any more until to-morrow. Oh, those stupid humans, how they do stare! Have they never seen a gentleman eat his dinner before? They would open those silly round eyes a bit wider if these bars were not between us. I wish they could have seen me that day we caught the zebra. It was grand that!' (Lick, lick.) 'I had hunted all one night without getting even the whisk of a tail; and also during the day in the glaring, hot African sun, when I wanted to go to sleep; and I was ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... a new species, which we had caught on the desert plain above, among the roots of the artemisia plant. This last was a beautiful little creature, not much larger than a mouse, and striped like a little zebra. It has never—as far as I can tell—been described by naturalists; and on this account, as well as from its peculiar size and beauty, it was a general favourite with all of us, particularly with Luisa and Mary, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... a commanding officer who has insulted us and will hear of it. But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife to send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass—if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it's a moot point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not composers of zebra. 'No one ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... beliefs about the different animals, and one of these concerned the inappeasable ferocity of the zebra. I do not know why the zebra should have had this repute, for he certainly never did anything to deserve it; but, for the matter of that, he was like all the other animals. Bears were not much esteemed, but they would have been if they could have been really ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... or untrue to some people; but it is an undoubted fact, and in some degree corroborates Dr. Smith's account that the late Sir Gore Ouseley had a Persian mare which produced her first foal by a zebra in Scotland. She was afterwards a brood-mare in England, and had several foals, every one of which had the zebra's stripes on it. That the force of imagination influences some brutes cannot be doubted. A gentleman had ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... along with some bulky object concealed in her pouch met a Zebra, and desirous of keeping his attention ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... has placed himself between the metals! The newcomer has but a theoretical knowledge at best of all these animals; and he is intensely interested in identifying the various species. The hartebeeste and the wildebeeste he learns quickly enough, and of course the zebra and the giraffe are unmistakable; but the smaller gazelles are legitimate subjects for discussion. The wonder of the extraordinary abundance of these wild animals mounts as the hours slip by. At the stops for water or for orders the passengers gather from their different ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... an eagle-feather war-bonnet; his mane was plaited with red flannel strips and fluttering plumes; his tail was even gaudier; around each eye was a great circle of white and another of black; his nose was crossbarred with black and red; his legs were painted in zebra stripes of yellow and black; the patches of white that were native to his coat were outlined with black and profusely decorated with red hands and horseshoes painted in vermilion; on his neck was a band of beadwork, carrying ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... frequent opportunity of witnessing his multiform supremacy. Till I read this amazing catalogue of calamities, I never dreamt that among other claims to distinction he might have been billed as The Fractured Man, principal attraction in a travelling show, eclipsing the One-Legged Camel, the Tinted Zebra, and the Weird-Eyed Wanton from the Crusty North, who can sing in five languages "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Ignoring the monotony of experience suffered by the ribs, and noting the obtrusiveness of one collar-bone, we may, with slight variation from a formula in use by the SPEAKER ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... strong men, and the riders flying about in the air as if the laws of gravitation no longer existed. But, best of all, was the grand conglomeration of animals where the giraffe appears to stand on the elephant's back, the zebra to be jumping over the seal, the hippopotamus to be lunching off a couple of crocodiles, and lions and tigers to be raining down in all directions with their mouths, wide open and their tails as stiff as that of the famous Northumberland ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... instance is given by the Rev. H. Rowley, in his account of the Mauganja. {184b} A thief had stolen some corn. The medicine-man, or sorcerer, produced two sticks, which he gave to four young men, two holding each stick. The medicine-man danced and sang a magical incantation, while a zebra-tail and a rattle were shaken over the holders of the sticks. 'After a while, the men with the sticks had spasmodic twitchings of the arms and legs; these increased nearly to convulsions. . . . According to the native idea, it ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... a Striped Iguanodon sounded softly in the darkness. The sentry, who was pacing to and fro before the camp-fire, halted, and peered into the night. As he peered, he uttered the plaintive note of a zebra calling to its mate. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... more some people get the more they want. Your wishes seem to be on the Jack's Bean-stalk scale. They grow to reach the sky in a single night. Suppose you did have those things, you wouldn't be satisfied. It would be a zebra and a giraffe and a jungle ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Give 'em three square meals, and you can't hardly ride 'em. They ain't stayers, neither; no bottom, seems-like. Forty miles, and that horse of mine is played out. What for a horse is that? Is that a horse? Not by a high-kick! Gimme a buckskin with a black line down his back, and zebra stripes on his legs—high back, square chest—say, then ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... out to his field work; but his heart couldn't of been in it that day. I'll bet he could of found the carcass of a petrified zebra with seven legs and not been elated by it. He had only the sweet encouragement of Lydia to brace him. He was depending ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... he snarls. "Bah! Now what the zebra-striped Zacharias do they send those things to me for? What good am I, anyway, except as a common carrier for all the blinkety blinked aches and pains that ever existed? A shivery, shaky old lump of clay streaked with cussedness, that's all ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... of the Marsupialia family which does not exist out of the small island of Tasmania is the zebra-wolf, the most savage and destructive of all the marsupials. This ferocious beast is about the size of the largest kind of sheep-dog. Its short fur is of a yellowish-brown color, and its back and sides are handsomely marked with black stripes. It is a fleet runner, propelling ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... one another, so we cannot get our idea of-we will say a horse-to conjure up to our minds the idea of any animal more unlike a horse than a pony is; nor can we get a well-defined idea of a combination between a horse and any animal more remote from it than an ass, zebra, or giraffe. We may, indeed, make a statue of a flying horse, but the idea is one which cannot be made plausible to any but ignorant people. So "human flesh" may vary a little from "human flesh" without undue violence being done to ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... Deliverer of France. But by and by when we had paraded about the chief parts of the city and were come near to the end of our course, we being now approaching the Archbishop's palace, one saw on the right, hard by the inn that is called the Zebra, a strange t—two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the front rank of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang at them in a fury to teach them better manners; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the floor, swearing in a steady monotone. He had been efficiently bound with his own blouse and trousers, which revealed his predilection for maroon shorts with zebra stripes. There was a lump on the back of his head, and a hammer lay close by. Ellen must have stolen the tool and come in here with the thing behind her back. The operator would have had no reason ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... zebra wood with its golden stripes cannot exceed in quaint beauty the grain of unpainted chestnut, prepared simply with a coat or two of oil. The butternut has a rich golden brown, the very darling color of painters, a shade so rich, and grain so beautiful, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... in a variety of ways—some by spinning their beautiful web, with which we are all familiar; others, as the Zebra spiders, catch flies by leaping suddenly upon them, and these may often be seen on window-sills watching some coveted insect, drawing slowly nearer to the victim, till, by a well-directed spring, it can be secured. There are nearly three hundred species of spiders ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... even articulations. With the latter is an Odontidium allied to, or identical with O. turgidulum, and with the former a fine species of Epithemia resembling in form, but not in marking, E. Faba, E. (Zebra) a fine Navicula, perhaps the same with N. major and Fragilaria (virescens).* [Mr. Thomas Brightwell finds in a portion of the same specimen Epithemia alpestris, Surirella splendida, S. linearis, Smith, Pinnularia viridis, Smith, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Steiner took her guests to the bear pits, and to their delight, they saw the great polar bear, the black bear and many others of which they had seen illustrations, and after watching them as much time as they could spare they passed on to see the giraffe, and from thence to the pen of the zebra. They were earnestly engaged in counting its beautiful stripes when from a great tent near they heard the sound of some wild and warlike instrument which seemed to serve as a summons, for people were ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... fulfils all these conditions is that of the series of extinct animals which culminates in the horses, by which term I mean to denote not merely the domestic animals with which we are all so well acquainted, but their allies, the ass, zebra, quagga, and the like. In short, I use "horses" as the equivalent of the technical name Equidae, which is applied to the whole group ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of a zebra, the legs of a rhinoceros, the neck of a giraffe, the head of a bull dog, and three corrugated tails. This monster at once began to growl and run toward her, showing its terrible teeth and lashing its three tails. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... A zebra is too jolly to let himself be tamed by a Frenchman. I'll break one in myself and go out with the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... animals are given at the end of this book, the most interesting of all being an accurate picture of the zebra, here called the Fu-lu, which means "Deer of Happiness," but which is undoubtedly a rough attempt at fara, an old Arabic term for the wild ass. Now, the zebra being quite unknown in Asia, the puzzle is, how the Chinese ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles

... door, he looked over the heads of those on the lower steps of the veranda, and there on the sidewalk stood the dejected Hannington holding the bridle of what might have been a huge zebra gone wild on the colour scheme, or an ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... "Towncrier" was meaningless to Georgina. There was nothing by that name in her linen book which held the pictures of all the animals from Ape to Zebra, and there was nothing by that name down in Kentucky where she had lived all of her short life until these last few weeks. She did not even know whether what Mrs. Triplett said was coming along would be wearing a hat or horns. The cow ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Recently Exterminated North American Birds Sacred to the Memory of Exterminated Birds Whooping Cranes in the Zoological Park California Condor Primated Grouse, or "Prairie Chicken" Sage Grouse Snowy Egrets in the McIlhenny Preserve Wood-Duck Gray Squirrel Skeleton of a Rhytina Burchell's Zebra Thylacine, or Tasmanian Wolf West Indian Seal California Elephant Seal The Regular Army of Destruction G.O. Shields Two Gunners of Kansas City Why the Sandhill Crane is Becoming Extinct A Market Gunner at Work on Marsh Island Ruffed Grouse A Lawful Bag of Ruffed Grouse ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... "It is full of mystery; its eyes are provided with a sort of burnished covering, to which the Orientals attribute the powers of fascination; it has a glossier and finer coat than our handsomest horses possess, striped with more or less tawny bands, very much like the zebra's hide. There is something pliant and silky about its hair, which is sleek to the touch. Its powers of sight vie in precision and accuracy with those of man; it is rather larger than our largest domestic donkeys, and is possessed of extraordinary courage. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... the true horses and the asses, which latter also include the zebra and quagga. Apart from the decided external differences between the horse and ass, they have one marked divergence, viz. that the horse has corns or callosities on the inner side of both fore and hind limbs, whilst the asses have them only on ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... I've been wondering about the people in Casperton. Like Doc Welch. I used to see him in the street with his little black bag. I always thought it was full of pills and scalpels; but maybe it really had zebra's tails and toad's eyes in it. Maybe he's really a magician on his way to cast spells against demons. Maybe the people I used to see hurrying to catch the bus every morning weren't really going to the office. Maybe they ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer

... miniature copy of the Argus pheasant I brought from India), and a triangular patch of bright yellow under its throat. I saw some of them alive in a cage in the market with many other kinds of small birds, and several pairs of those pretty grass or zebra paroquets, which are called here by the very inharmonious name of "budgerighars." I admired the blue wren so much—a tiny birdeen with tail and body of dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers standing straight ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... endured while making my journey home from Mashonaland. I had no weapons wherewith to procure food, and I was obliged to live upon just what I could pick up, chiefly roots. But twice I was fortunate enough to come upon the partially devoured 'kill' of a lion—once it was a zebra, and the other time it was a giraffe—still comparatively fresh; and if it had not been for them I believe I should not have survived, for I was literally at the end of my tether when I came upon them. And I had no means of making a fire, you will understand. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... and I beheld a superb painted zebra (Burchell's, I think), following our track with palpitating nostrils. The car ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... flatter themselves. No man can create anything. I knew a man once who drew a horse on a bit of paper to amuse the company and covered it all over with many parallel streaks as he drew. When he had done this, an aged priest (present upon that occasion) said, "You are pleased to draw a zebra." When the priest said this the man began to curse and to swear, and to protest that he had never seen or heard of a zebra. He said it was all done out of his own head, and he called heaven to witness, ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... nailed up the door. The African zebra is a good student compared to him. It is a maxim of Walpole and North that all ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... see him get his. You don't? I do. I guess my say goes, this time. I ain't enjoying being sore wherever I ain't worse, but I'd go out and take another smash like we had to-day to see him wearing zebra clothes in a jail. Missing that, I'll make that pink millionaire palace red-hot and get him ruled off every race ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... chevalier threw a glance on his toilet. It did not escape his notice that it was slightly disordered; his stockings, originally purple, then pale pink, had become striped, zebra-fashion, with a number of green rays, since his journey in the forest; his coat was ornamented with various holes fancifully arranged, but the Gascon made this reflection aloud, if not very modest, at least very consoling: "Faith! Venus arose ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... discover the Island Battery opposite, which had bothered Sir William in the siege of '45; but nevertheless, we could judge of the difficulty of reaching it with a hostile force, screened as it was by its waves and vapors. The lighthouse is striped with black and white bars, like a zebra, and we entered it. One cannot help but admire such order and neatness, for the lighthouse is a marvel of purity. We were everywhere—in the bed-rooms, in the great lantern with its glittering lamps, in the hall, the parlor, the kitchen; and found in all the same pervading virtue; as ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... stairway and two men entered carrying something between them. Sweat had streaked through the charcoal coating on their faces leaving striped zebra-like countenances. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... not elevate this nauseating nonsense into importance by attempting a reply. Such men must be left to follow out their inevitable instincts. They are not worth the trouble necessary to civilize them. Mr. Rarey succeeded in taming a zebra from the London Zooelogical Gardens; but a single lesson could not permanently reclaim the beast, and it soon relapsed into its native and normal ferocity. One experiment sufficed to show the power of the artist; no possible increase of value in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... barsati, presented by some Arab merchant, and was if anything dirtier than her maid's attire. The large joints of all her fingers were bound up with small copper wire, her legs staggered under an immense accumulation of anklets made of brass wire wound round elephant's tail or zebra's hair; her arms were decorated with huge solid brass rings, and from other thin brass wire bracelets depended a great assortment of wooden, brazen, horn, and ivory ornaments, cut in every shape of ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... El-Wijh from the Jebel Hassni. Moreover, we caught amidships a fine lumpy sea, that threatened to roll the masts out of the stout old corvette. As the Sinnr, which always reminded me of her Majesty's steamship Zebra, is notably the steadiest ship in the Egyptian navy, the captain was asked about his ballast. He replied, "I have just taken command, but I don't think there is any; the engine (El-iddah) is our Saburra"—evidently he had never seen the hold. This state of things, which, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... except, I grant you, the campaigner. The lad might daub his canvases, christen a child a year, and be as happy as any young donkey that browses on this common of ours—but he must go and heehaw after a zebra forsooth! a lusus naturae is she! I never spoke to a woman of fashion, thank my stars—I don't know the nature of the beast; and since I went to our race-balls, as a boy, scarcely ever saw one; as I don't frequent operas and parties in London like you young flunkeys of the aristocracy. I heard ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... lash through the grass like a cast lance.* It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other shriveled and abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone; yet "it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger."** It is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth, of the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the dust; as the bird is the symbol of the spirit ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... little Alderney calf should marry a sleek young zebra and afterward get kicked to death for her pains, we should all sympathize with her. But we should expect other mild-eyed Alderneys after that to ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... and the giraffe. There was a wonderful profusion of antelopes,—thirty-one species have been enumerated,—including such noble animals as the eland and koodoo, such beautiful ones as the springbok and klipspringer, such fierce ones as the blue wildebeest or gnu. There were two kinds of zebra, a quagga, and a buffalo, both huge and dangerous. Probably nowhere in the world could so great a variety of beautiful animals be seen or a larger variety of formidable ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... ZEBRA.—Something for which you have long waited is now within sight, but you are likely to be disappointed, for you will find that it was not ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent

... curious circumstance occurred to the Zebra frigate, under command of the gallant Robert Faulknor. The Zebra, which had been separated from the rest of the squadron, saw one evening a ship on the horizon. All sail was made in chase, and the ship ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... much wanted at the camp, the party immediately commenced cutting up the elephant, while messengers were despatched to summon carriers to convey the flesh and tusks. As soon as it was sent off the hunters continued the chase. Ned shot a zebra, which raised him in the estimation of his companions. A giraffe was also seen, and creeping up to it among the long grass the party surrounded it. Before it could escape a bullet from Sayd's gun wounded it in the shoulder, when spears and javelins thrust ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... girls who have visited menageries have probably seen an animal shaped something like a horse, but beautifully adorned with black and tawny stripes, standing silent and sulky in its cage. This is the zebra, the wild horse of the great plains of Southern Africa. There it lives in great herds, and browses on the thin grass and low shrubs of the wilderness. It enjoys the widest liberty, and gallops and gambols merrily with its companions through regions where the foot of man rarely penetrates. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... at the end of the fingers, is it not that they may grow so immoderately that the use of the hand is rendered almost impossible? If the skin, black or brown, covers the human frame, is it not so as to zebra it by "temmbos" or tattooings representing trees, birds, crescents, full moons, or waving lines, in which Livingstone thought he could trace the designs of ancient Egypt? This tattooing, done by fathers, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... of the "zebra" or "ladder-backed" Woodpeckers, having the back and wings closely barred with black and white, the same as the preceding; the forehead, nasal tufts and nape are golden yellow, and the male has a patch of red on the crown. This is a very common resident ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... of game mammals found are as follows: Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, sable and roan antelope, kudu, water buck, blue wilde-beest, impalla, reed buck, bush-buck, steenbok, duiker, klipspringer, mountain reed buck, ...
— Supplement to Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... Scapins, and the Cassandras, and the Doctors, and the favourite Mezzetin "the big brown man with the laughing face" always in the foreground with his cap on the back of his head—striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a Silenus! It is the Comedie Italienne that plays the guitar in all ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... rationed upon very tough old rhinoceros for several days past. It was a cloudy morning, and soon after starting, it came on to rain heavily. I, however, held on, skirting a fine, well-wooded range of mountains, and after riding several miles I shot a zebra. Having covered the carcass well over with branches to protect it from the vultures, I returned to camp, and, inspanning my wagons, took it up on the march. We continued trekking on until sundown, when we started an immense herd of buffaloes, into which ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, he dashes at the squaws, capering, ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... men is my manager. He always gets what he starts out for. What were we talking about? Oh, Austen Vane. You see, I've known him ever since I was a shaver, and I think the world of him. If he asked me to go to South America and get him a zebra to-morrow, I believe ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in the past. But conditions now and then appear which are abnormal to man, but which are normal to some of the lower animals. This tendency is exhibited by all organisms. In an occasional horse the long-lost stripes of the zebra-like ancestor reappear. Now and then a blue pigeon, like the ancestral form, crops up in a pure breed of domesticated birds. Even in the details of anatomy some long-vanished character ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... have wonderfully descriptive names. For example, there's ARCA ZEBRA, which has stripes and looks like a miniature turkey wing and is commonly called Turkey Wing. Then there's a scallop called the Lion's Paw; NERITA PELORONTA, or Bleeding Tooth; and CYPRAEA CERVINETTA, "little deer cowrie" which resembles a spotted fawn. (Cowrie ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... dauw (Equus burchellii) is a South African quadruped, intermediate between the zebra and the quagga. It is found in numerous herds in the wide plains north of the Orange River. It is somewhat larger than the zebra, but more ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... 1847 Punch proposed the use of umbrellas and house-fronts for advertising purposes, and the hint was promptly taken. In the previous year he foretold the use of the Thames Tunnel as a railway conduit; and his sketch of a zebra harnessed to a carriage in the streets of London was realised forty years later. The great "Missing Word Competition" of 1892 was forestalled by Punch by four-and-thirty years (p. 53, Vol. XXXV., August 7th, 1858). Leech's ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... fraction less than twenty cents. In this total they did not include the many years they spent behind prison bars, performing, without pay, ambition crushing toil under the eyes of brutal guards, fed upon poor food, sleeping in unhealthy quarters, dressed in coarse, zebra-striped suits and ruled by a most cruel discipline, all of which they were unable to reduce to a dollar and ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... dazed to say much, but she watched one of Jim's big ears turn to violet and the other to rose, and wondered that his tail should be yellow and his body striped with blue and orange like the stripes of a zebra. Then she looked at Zeb, whose face was blue and whose hair was pink, and gave a little laugh that ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... powerful charger and bears arms white as snow and a shield blank and without any device, is a novice knight, a Frenchman by birth, Pierres Papin by name, lord of the baronies of Utrique; that other, who with iron-shod heels strikes the flanks of that nimble parti-coloured zebra, and for arms bears azure vair, is the mighty duke of Nerbia, Espartafilardo del Bosque, who bears for device on his shield an asparagus plant with a motto in Castilian that says, Rastrea mi suerte." And ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... same genus, partly under domestication and partly under nature. It is a case apparently of reversion. The ass not rarely has very distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs of the zebra: it has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal, and from inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. It has also been asserted that the stripe on each shoulder is sometimes double. The ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... and painted to resemble a zebra," muttered John. "The fellow has no property as respectable as the basest ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... having a corrugated cistern upon the cross beams which gave force for a shower. The towels and appointments were specklessly clean. When Birnier appeared he found zu Pfeiffer sprawled in the lounge. On a red lacquer tray upon a great war drum, covered with the striped skin of a zebra, was a crystal liqueur set and a large silver box of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... settled the question entirely. In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the Anthropological Institute, and J. F. Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England, found implements not only in alluvial deposits, associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals which have since retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas, near Thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard, stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten feet below the surface; relics evidently, as Mr. Campbell says, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... before, and she thought she could have studied the wonderful forms of those tropical plants for ever, if it had not been for the crowds of people, and for a little awe of Lord Marchmont, who had given her his arm, and who did not seem to know or care much even for the dove orchis or the zebra-striped pitcher-plant. She wished she could turn him into Edmund, and looked at every plant which she fancied a native of the Cape, almost as kindly as if it had been ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... and where the forests held the great rhinoceros, plenty of elephants, and amongst whose open glades the tall giraffe browse the leafage of the high trees. There in the plains were herds of buffalo too numerous to count, quagga, zebra, gnu, eland, and bok of all kinds. There was a great river there, he said, full of fish, and with great crocodiles ready to seize upon the unwary. The hippopotamus was there too, big and massive, ready to upset boats or to attack ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... to quit now. I was left behind to clean out the barracks an I hear the battery comin in from drill so I got to hussle. Tell Archie to cheer up about the war. When I come home hell be wearin so many wound stripes hell be lookin like a zebra. ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... asses and zebras had got busy. Something about the arrangement of the zebra's stripes must have offended the artistic sensibilities of the wild asses, for pretty soon there was a lively kicking-match going on round the deck—a zebra against a donkey, kicking out, stern to stern, like prize-fighters sparring. It was funny, the way they ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... Elephant, Defiance, Monarch, Bellona, Edgar, Russell, Ganges, Glatton, Isis, Agamemnon, Polyphemus, and Ardent, ships of the line; the Amazon, Desiree, Blanche, and Alcmene, frigates; the Dart, Arrow, Cruiser, and Harpy, sloops; the Zephyr, and Otter, fire-ships; the Discovery, Sulphur, Hecla, Explosion, Zebra, Terror, and Volcano, bombs; with eight gun-brigs]—which you did me the honour to place under my command, I beg leave to inform you that, having by the assistance of that able officer Captain Riou, and the unremitting exertions ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... I assented, and after hiding ourselves in one of the retired angles of the house, so that no one could know who was guilty of disturbing the peace by such dire noises, the performance commenced. I was by turns a bear, a lion, a zebra, an elephant, dogs of various kinds, and a cat. As I personated the latter-named ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton

... and miles of swamp intersected by streams flowing southward to the Zambesi basin. One day Livingstone's ox, Sindbad, threw him, and he had to struggle wearily forward on foot. His strength was failing. His meagre fare varied by boiled zebra and dried elephant, frequent wettings and constant fever, were reducing him to a mere skeleton. At last on 26th March he arrived at the edge of the high land over which he had so long been travelling. "It is so steep," he tells us, "that I was obliged to dismount, and I was so weak that ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... of the hatchet, a number of beautiful little creatures poured forth on all sides. They resembled the kangaroos of our island, but were smaller, more elegant, and remarkable for the beauty of their skin, which was striped like that of the zebra. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... converted to universal military training—as a war measure. Better late than never, as Noah remarked to the Zebra, which had understood that passengers ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... fine, we made excursions in the neighbourhood. At Sevres I saw two pieces of china; on one of them was a gnu, on the other a zebra. Somerville had told me that soon after his return from his African expedition, he had given the original drawings to M. Brongniart then ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... And so he will, no doubt, go on roaring and braying, to the end of time or at least so long as people will hear him. You cannot alter the nature of men and Snobs by any force of satire; as, by laying ever so many stripes on a donkey's back, you can't turn him into a zebra. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... by paying five cents you can take your choice, and ride on a zebra or a lion or a big gold ostrich, or anything that's there. And once we chose a scrumptious boat, all blue and silver, and drawn by two ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... have adopted it; besides, it is, as will be seen from the following description, very distinct from other Arums. The Syn. Arisaema zebrinum, as given, belongs really to a variety of A. triphyllum, but the type is marked in its flowers zebra-like, and there are many shades and colours of it, therefore both or either of the names may be used for the different forms, with a fair degree of propriety, as in ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... "By the way you're gawpin' at it, though, it might be a young zebra or a baby hippopotamus. But it's ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... This is a very imperfect account of the Zebra, which exactly resembles the ass, except in colour, and is by no means larger. One died lately in Edinburgh, after being exhibited as a show, which was as quiet and gentle as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... the hotel of Zebra clothed with a pocket full of smiles and a wad of joy. (INSPECTOR whispers for O'MARA to bring up ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... shows the pupa case. In the pupa stage the insects pass the winter among the remains of old plants or in near-by fences or in weeds or bushes. Cleaning up and burning all trash will destroy many pupae and thus prevent many cabbage worms. In Fig. 164 e and f show the moth and zebra caterpillar; g represents a moth which is the parent of the small green worm shown at h. This worm is a common foe of the ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... subdivisions, such as genera and species, it is usually impossible to say that the one type is more highly organized than another type. A horse, for instance, cannot be said to be more highly organized than a zebra or an ass; although the entire horse-genus is clearly a more highly organized type than any genus of animal which ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... given, we must conclude that these three forms are now as fixed in character as are many others which are universally ranked as true species. Consequently they have as good a right to receive distinct specific names as have, for instance, the ass, quagga, and zebra. ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... the Rhinoceros, which has been 23 years there; there is likewise a lion, with a little dog in the same den, as his companion, and a zebra. ...
— A Trip to Paris in July and August 1792 • Richard Twiss

... his big hand up to his eyes and rubbed them. Curious mechanisms the eyes.... That deer in line with the vision—not a zebra? A zebra after all these years? And yet ... curious, indeed, the eyes! ... a zebra.... Who ever heard of a deer with stripes? The big hand rose from the eyes and ran through the hair which he had always worn rather long. It would ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington



Words linked to "Zebra" :   Equus Burchelli, zebra mussel, grevy's zebra, zebra crossing, zebra finch, Burchell's zebra, zebra orchid, Equus, Equus zebra zebra, mountain zebra, genus Equus, equid, Equus grevyi, common zebra, equine, zebra-tailed lizard



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