The Natural History of Selborne: With Observations on Various Parts of Nature, and the Naturalist's Calendar

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Henry G. Bohn, 1861 - 416 стор.

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Сторінка 208 - ... in a lonely orchard, where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs: while the horse would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus, by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours of the...
Сторінка 216 - ... with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus:* — Into the body of the tree, a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations, long since forgotten.
Сторінка 302 - Of glory obscured ; as when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon, JOHN MILTON. 345 In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Сторінка 93 - Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing ; Amusive birds ! — say where your hid retreat When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide...
Сторінка 258 - They are the housewife's barometer, foretelling her when it will rain; and are prognostics sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good luck, of the death of a near relation or the approach of an absent lover. By being the constant companions of her solitary hours they naturally become the objects of her superstition.
Сторінка 145 - Faunists, as you observe, are too apt to acquiesce in bare descriptions, and a few synonyms: the reason is plain : because all that may be done at home in a man's study; but the investigation of the life and conversation of animals is a concern of much more trouble and difficulty, and is not to be attained but by the active and inquisitive, and by those that reside much in the country.
Сторінка 173 - For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely figured aspect of chalk-hills in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless. Perhaps I may be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to you the- same idea ; but I never contemplate these mountains without thinking I perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and regular hollows and slopes,...
Сторінка 248 - The language of birds is very ancient, and, like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical ; little is said, but much is meant and understood.
Сторінка 226 - Earthworms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of Nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be great promoters of vegetation...
Сторінка 34 - Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool, Now starting to a sudden stream, and now Gently diffus'd into a limpid plain ; A various group the herds and flocks compose, Rural confusion ! on the grassy bank Some ruminating lie ; while others stand Half in the flood, and often bending, sip The circling surface.

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