Gallery of Nature and Art, Or a Tour Through Creation and Science: Illustrated with 100 Plates, Volume 5

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Page 637 - Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man His annual visit. Half afraid, he first Against the window beats; then brisk alights On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, Eyes all the smiling family askance, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is — Till, more familiar grown, the table-crumbs Attract his slender feet.
Page 634 - But, first and chiefest, with thee bring Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The Cherub Contemplation; And the mute Silence hist along, 'Less Philomel will deign a song, In her sweetest saddest plight, Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke Gently o'er the accustomed oak.
Page 45 - The fig-tree ; not that kind for fruit renown'd, But such as at this day, to Indians known, In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade High over-arch'd, and echoing walks between...
Page 482 - ... disturb them But though they thus strive to be formidable to man, they are much more so to each other for they are possessed of one most unsocial property, which is, that if any of them by accident is maimed in such a manner as to be incapable of proceeding, the rest fall upon and devour it on the spot, and then pursue their journey. When after a fatiguing march, and escaping a thousand dangers, (for they are sometimes three months in getting to the shore,) they have arrived at their destined...
Page 586 - ... yards distant on the sea-shore. I therefore charged again with ball, and hit the bird under the throat, which made it mine. I accordingly ran up to seize it ; but even in death it was terrible, and defended itself upon its back, with its claws extended against me. so that I scarce knew how to lay hold of it.
Page 475 - In this form," says Smeathman, " the animal comes abroad during or soon after the first tornado, which at the latter end of the dry season proclaims the approach of the ensuing rains, and seldom waits for a second or third shower, if the first, as is generally the case, happen in the night and bring much wet after it.
Page 583 - ... of herbs and roots. I have seen many thus armed for a season do pretty much the same feats as those that possessed the exemption naturally. The drugs were given me, and I several times armed myself, as I thought, resolved to try the experiment, but my heart always failed me when I came to the trial...
Page 544 - No part of its behaviour ever struck me more than the extreme timidity it always expresses with regard to rain; for though it has a shell that would secure it against the wheel of a loaded cart, yet does it discover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, shuffling away on the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner.
Page 580 - To make myself assured that the animal was in its perfect state, I made the man hold him by the neck, so as to force him to open his mouth, and lacerate the thigh of a pelican, a bird I had tamed, as big as a swan. The bird died in about thirteen minutes, though it was apparently affected in...
Page 4 - But the effects of this vital energy are still more stupendous in the operations constantly going on in every organized body, from our own elaborate frame to the humblest moss or fungus. Those different fluids, so fine and transparent, separated from each other by membranes as fine, which compose the eye, all retain their proper situations (though each fluid individually is perpetually removed and renewed) for sixty, eighty, or a hundred years, or more, while life remains. So do the infinitely small...

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