The American Naturalist, 4. köide

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Essex Institute, 1871

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Page 441 - These are the gardens of the desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name — The prairies. I behold them for the first, And my heart swells, while the dilated sight Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo ! they stretch In airy undulations far away, As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed, And motionless forever.
Page 355 - Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species" connects together and renders intelligible a vast number of independent and hitherto unexplained facts.
Page 75 - In those days it was thought sufficient for noblemen's sons to wind the horn, and to carry their hawk fair, and leave study and learning to the children of meaner people.
Page 48 - ... Admitting to the full as highly probable, though not completely demonstrated, the applicability to living beings of the laws which have been ascertained with reference to dead matter, I feel constrained at the same time to admit the existence of a mysterious something lying beyond, a something sui generis, which I regard, not as balancing and. suspending the ordinary physical laws, but as working with them and through them to the attainment of a designed end. What this something which we call...
Page 323 - SKETCHES OF CREATION. Sketches of Creation: a Popular View of some of the Grand Conclusions of the Sciences in reference to the History of Matter and of Life. Together with a Statement of the Intimations of Science respecting the Primordial Condition and the Ultimate Destiny of the Earth and the Solar System. By ALEXANDER WINCHELL, LL.D., Professor of Geology, Zoology, and Botany in the University of Michigan, and Director of the State Geological Survey.
Page 82 - ... have hawks and greyhounds ; the former carried in the usual manner, on the hand of the huntsman ; the latter led in a leash by a horseman, generally the same who carries the hawk. When the antelope is seen, they endeavour to get as near as possible ; but the animal, the moment it observes them, goes off at a rate that seems swifter than the wind ; the horsemen are instantly at full speed, having slipped the dogs.
Page 82 - The hawks, skimming along near the ground, soon reach the deer, at whose head they pounce in succession, and sometimes with a violence that knocks it over. At all events, they confuse the animal so much as to stop its speed in such a degree that the dogs can come up ; and in an instant men, horses, dogs, and hawks, surround the unfortunate deer, against which their united efforts have been combined. The part of the...
Page 355 - ... thin branches were tossed to and fro by the wind, the tendrils, had they not been excessively elastic, would instantly have been torn off and the plant thrown prostrate. But as it was, the Bryony safely rode out the gale, like a ship with two anchors down, and with a long range of cable ahead to serve as a spring as she surges to the storm.
Page 151 - The head was covered with a dry skin ; one of the ears, well preserved, was furnished with a tuft of hairs.
Page 80 - The first hare seized by the falcon was very strong, and the ground rough. While the bird kept the claws of one foot fastened in the back of its prey, the other was dragged along the ground till it had an opportunity to lay hold of a tuft of grass, by which it was enabled to stop the course of the hare, whose efforts to escape, I do think, would have torn the hawk asunder, if it had not been provided with the leathern defences which have been mentioned.

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