The Natural History of Animals: The Animal Life of the World in Its Various Aspects and Relations, 7. köide

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Gresham publishing Company, 1904

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Page 183 - Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, | And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
Page 209 - These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow-creatures and inhabitants of the same world.
Page 154 - ... and straightway comes over the water from some distant cove the same password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-rr-oonk!
Page 153 - Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there — who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, with his chin upon...
Page 164 - ... moved toward her; when some four inches from her he stood still, and then began the most remarkable performances that an amorous male could offer to an admiring female. She eyed him eagerly, changing her position from time to time so that he might be always in view. He, raising his whole body on one side by straightening out the legs, and lowering it on the other by folding the first two pairs of legs up and under...
Page 154 - ... the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark ; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-rr-oonk ! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest and...
Page 59 - ... young chicks. Strips of orange and black paper were pasted beneath glass slips, and on them meal moistened with quinine was placed. On other plain slips meal moistened with water was provided. The young birds soon learnt to avoid the bitter meal, and then would not touch plain meal if it were offered on the banded slip. And these birds, save in two instances, refused to touch cinnabar caterpillars, which were new to their experience. They did not, like other birds, have to learn by particular...
Page 176 - ... that by degrees they became bold marauders, and gradually took to keeping slaves ; that for a time they maintained • their strength and agility, though losing by degrees their real independence, their arts, and even many of their instincts ; that gradually even their bodily force dwindled away under the enervating influence to which they had subjected themselves, until they sank to their present degraded condition — weak in body and mind, few in numbers, and apparently nearly extinct, the...
Page 176 - Anerdates, finally, we come to the last scene of this sad history. We may safely conclude that in distant times their ancestors lived, as so many ants do now, partly by hunting, partly on honey ; that by degrees they became bold marauders, and gradually took to keeping slaves ; that for a time they maintained their strength and agility, though losing by degrees their real independence, their arts, and...
Page 209 - It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same question may be asked with respect to these barbarians! At night, five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and. rain of this tempestuous climatej sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals.

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