A Dictionary of Birds, 1–2. osa

Front Cover
A. and C. Black, 1893 - 1212 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 529 - By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed The air is delicate.
Page 29 - With many of the feathered race, he pays the common tribute of a morning and an evening song ; and even when the meridian sun has shut in silence the mouths of almost the whole of animated nature, the campanero still cheers the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause for a minute, then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause.
Page 304 - A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again ; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sand, and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sea.
Page 548 - ... become extinct ; which will also be the fate of those which do not leave the feeding area at the proper time. Now, if we suppose that the two areas were (for some remote ancestor of the existing species) coincident, but by geological and climatic changes gradually diverged from each other, we can easily understand how the habit of incipient and partial migration at the proper seasons would at last become hereditary, and so fixed as to be what we term an instinct. It will probably be found that...
Page 478 - ... six or eight white, glossy, translucent eggs are laid, sometimes on the bare soil, but often on the fishbones which, being indigestible, are thrown up in pellets by the birds, and in any case, before incubation is completed ; these rejectamenta accumulate so as to form a pretty cup-shaped structure that increases in bulk after the young are hatched, but, mixed with their fluid excrements and with the decaying fishes brought for their support, soon become a dripping, foetid mass.
Page 189 - Norway has long been afforded every encouragement and protection, a fine being inflicted for killing it duringlhc breeding-season, or even for firing a gun near its haunts, while artificial nesting-places are in many localities contrived for its further accommodation. From the care thus taken of it in those countries it has become exceedingly tame at its chief resorts, which are strictly regarded as property, and the taking of eggs or down from them, except by authorized persons, is severely punished...
Page 230 - The plumage of the adult is generally blackish blue above, and white, with a more or less deep cream-coloured tinge, beneath— the lower parts, except the chin and throat, being barred transversely with black, while a black patch extends from the bill to the ear-coverts, and descends on either side beneath the mandible. The young have...
Page 157 - About 1638, as I walked London streets I saw the picture of a strange fowl hong 'out upon. a cloth vas and myselfe with one or two more Gen. in company went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turkey Cock and so legged and footed but stouter and thicker and of a. more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a yong Cock Fesan (pheasant), and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo...
Page 156 - Dodo,' and the following account : — " The Dodo Herbert's flgurc. comes first to our description, here, and in Dygarrois (and no where else, that ever I could see or heare of, is generated the Dodo). (A Portuguize name it is, and has reference to her...
Page 532 - Celebes, but not fully 1 Antonio Pigafetta, one of the survivors of Magellan's voyage, records in his journal, under date of April 1521, among the peculiarities of the Philippine Islands, then first discovered by Europeans, the existence of a bird there, about the size of a fowl, which laid its eggs, as big as a duck's, in the sand, and left them to be hatched by the heat of the sun (Premier voyage autour du monde, ed.

Bibliographic information