"Birch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and went by railway to Riviere de Loup. There I had a fall, and hurt my ribs. Next day I drove over the, new, Temiscouata road to the Lake, and thence took a birch bark canoe and two men and paddled down the Lake, and down the river Madawasca to Little Falls, where I arrived in a drenching storm of rain at one o'clock in the morning—having had 'perils by water.' Our canoe ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "our pleasant times in Scotland? Ah, it is a restful place, your Highland home, with the beautiful purple hills rolling away in the distance, and the glorious moors covered with fragrant heather, and the gurgling of the river that runs between birch and fir and willow, making music all day long for those who have the ears to listen, and the hearts to understand the pretty love tune it sings! You know Frenchmen always have more or less sympathy with the Scotch—some old association, perhaps, with the romantic times of Mary ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... favour." Slidell asked if it was impossible to stir Parliament but acknowledged that everything depended on Palmerston: "that august body seems to be as afraid of him as the urchins of a village school of the birch of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... birch log within six feet of the end of the chain, and looked steadily into the big husky's one bloodshot eye as ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... fire last Tuesday night. He reckons it was caused by a defective flue, for the fire caught in the north wing. This is one of Plum's bon mots, however. He tries to make light of it, but the wood he has been using all winter was white birch, and when he got a big dose of hickory at the same place last week it was so dark that he didn't notice the difference, and before he knew it he had a bigger fire than he had allowed. In the midst of a pleasant ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... world. But at length the sun gained power—or, rather, the cloud-screen which our atmosphere had drawn between him and us was removed—and life immediately kindled under his warmth. But what is life, and how can solar light and heat thus affect it? Near our elm was a silver birch, with its leaves rapidly quivering in the morning air. We had here motion, but not the motion of life. Each leaf moved as a mass under the influence of an outside force, while the motion of life was inherent and molecular. How are we ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the window, and in the dim light watched the trees gigantically tossing in struggle for their life. An oak and a birch were within her view. The oak stood the storm out—for a while. Presently there came an awful gust and beat upon it. It would not bend, and the tough roots would not give, so beneath the weight of the gale the big tree broke in two like ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... removed the trouble that was causing his sickness; but he was very weak and faint, and he slept long after the birds were up and singing. He was a little afraid at first to eat anything when he finally crawled from his hole in the decayed tree branch; but, recognizing some sweet birch trees, he ate moderately of the ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... the slouched figure of a buccaneer silhouetted against the sky. It was not the bearded giant called Herriot, but another, Jeremy was sure. He had no time for conjectures, for they plunged into the thicket and birch limbs ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... had been taking short trial runs, to test our pace and powers of endurance; and Birch (my fellow-"hare") and I had more than once surveyed the course we proposed to take on the occasion of the "great hunt," making ourselves, as far as possible, acquainted with the bearings of several streams, ploughed fields, and high walls to be avoided, and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... later I strolled out to the Giant's Stairway and sat down in the little rock chapel. There was a picnic at the Lovers' Leap, and I had that side of the island to myself. I was leaning back, half asleep, in the deep shadow, when the sound of voices roused me; a birch-bark canoe was passing close in shore, and two were in it,—Jeannette and our surgeon. I could not hear their words, but I noticed Rodney's expression as he leaned forward. Jeannette was paddling slowly; her cheeks were flushed, and ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... other boys can tell how, a barefooted urchin of ten or twelve, with an enormous bagful of worms hanging from his jacket button. To put a new worm on the hook without coming to destruction, he first twisted his legs about a young birch, and put his arms round it. He was after a big one, he informed Corp, though he might as well have been fishing in a treatise ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... was no such book as this Justinian of the play-ground, if we except a thin volume of games published by Tabart. Boys then quarrelled upon nice points of play, parties ran high, and civil war, birch, and the 119th psalm were the consequences. A disputed marble, or a questioned run at cricket, has thus broken up the harmony of many a holiday; but we hope that such feuds will now cease; for the "Boy's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... wood and the grasses of the meadow, as every well-instructed angler knows. The bright emerald tips that break from the hemlock and the balsam like verdant flames have a pleasant savour to the tongue. The leaves of the sassafras are full of spice, and the bark of the black-birch twigs holds a fine cordial. Crinkle-root is spicy, but you must partake of it delicately, or it will bite your tongue. Spearmint and peppermint never lose their charm for the palate that still remembers the delights of youth. Wild sorrel has an agreeable, sour, shivery ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... between the thick forest walls, one hand clutching the butt of the revolver in his coat pocket. Where the trail twisted abruptly into the north he found the charred remains of a camp-fire in a small open, and just beyond it a number of birch toggles, which had undoubtedly been used in place of tent-stakes. With the toe of his boot he kicked among the ashes and half-burned bits of wood. There was no sign of smoke, not a living spark to give evidence that human presence had been there for many hours. There ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... a fine time to plant every kind of "bulb, root and tuber," also all deciduous plants and shrubs, except those with thin bark or thick, fleshy roots (e.g., birch magnolia). ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... was made so fine. I should not object to polished walnut in a light room, although cherry, birch or some other fine-grained, hard, light-colored wood is preferable; but all this ornamental work, these mouldings, cornices and carved handles are worse than useless—they are ugly and troublesome. If ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... Dr. Thomas Birch, in a letter dated June 15, 1764, says that this letter was by Mr. Philip Yorke, afterwards Earl of Hardwicke, who was author also of another piece in the Spectator, but his son could ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material, several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada. That, however, is the land of promise, a promise that is in due time usually fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part, shrewdly practical ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... red, glided in and seated themselves on a vacant bench immediately behind the young couple. The red lady was Geirlaug, who had brought with her the forester's daughters, and in one hand she held a wand of birch bark, and in the ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... Holy Thorn." Of course to Isoult it was different. She had been a forester all her life. To her there were names (and names of dread) not to be known of any map. Deerleap, One Ash, the Wolves' Valley, the Place of the Withered Elm, the Charcoal-Burners', the Mossy Christ, the Birch- grove, the Brook under the Brow—and a hundred more. She steered by these, with all foresters. What she did not remember, or did not know, was that Maulfry had also lived in Morgraunt and knew the ways by heart. Still, she had a better mount than ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild-woods, thickening green; The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar, 'Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene: The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, The birds sang love on every spray; Till too, too soon, the glowing west, Proclaim'd the speed ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... he halted at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and—after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack—said good-bye ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there, but at great distances, a byway branches off, and a gaunt farmhouse may be descried above in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation. Hermiston parish is one of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... particular works of creation, you will find how curious journeyman Nature has been to trim up the vegetable beaux; observe how sparkish a periwig adorns the head of a beech, and what a fine doublet of white satin is worn by the birch." The fault is not in any inaptness of the images, nor in the mere vulgarity of the things themselves, but in that of the associations they awaken. The "prithee, undo this button" of Lear, coming where it does and expressing what it does, is one of those touches ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... a good dinner, and do not know in what manner to set about it, you will do wisely to order it from Birch, Kuehn, or any other first-rate restaurateur. By these means you ensure the best cookery and a ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... canoes until within a hundred yards of the boats. They then seemed simultaneously to have adopted the conviction that the better part of valor was discretion. In the darkness, they could not see the boatmen, who they had no doubt were concealed behind bullet-proof bulwarks. Their birch canoes presented not the slightest obstruction to the passage of a rifle ball. Knowing that the flash of a gun from the boat would be certain death to some one of their number, and that thus the boatmen, with the rapidity with which they could load and ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the inn at the bridge is really charming. The little river which runs down the valley, and becomes lost in the distance, is finally fringed with trees—alder, birch, and chestnut. Ridge upon ridge of mountain rises up behind on the right hand and the left, the lower clothed with patches of green larch, and the upper with dark pine. Above all are ranges of jagged and grey rocks, shooting up in many places into lofty peaks. The setting sun, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... BIRCH-TREE.—Is in great use and of considerable value on some estates for making brooms, and the timber for all purposes of turnery-ware and carving. The sap of the Birch-tree is drawn by perforating the bark in ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... him and come and build a cosy home in one of these nice bushes. Listen! See! There he is, up on the very top of that young birch, with his head thrown back, singing as if his throat would split." As the children looked up they saw a fine bird with a curved beak, rusty-brown back, and light breast streaked with black, who was clinging to a slender spray, jerking his long tail ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... brought one to Bristoll, were in proportion like a wherrie of the river of Thames, seventeene foot long and foure foot broad, made of the barke of a birch tree, farre exceeding in bignesse those of England: it was sowed together with strong and tough oziers or twigs, and the seames covered over with rozen or turpentine little inferiour in sweetnesse to frankincense, as we made triall by burning a little thereof on the coales at sundry ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... the existing vegetation of Europe. They also comprise more species common to the antecedent Miocene period. Among the genera of flowering plants, M. Gaudin enumerates pine, oak, evergreen oak, plum, plane, alder, elm, fig, laurel, maple, walnut, birch, buckthorn, hickory, sumach, sarsaparilla, sassafras, cinnamon, Glyptostrobus, Taxodium, Sequoia, Persea, Oreodaphne (Figure 134), Cassia, and Psoralea, and some others. This assemblage of plants indicates a warm climate, but not so subtropical an one as that ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... glad even in sunshine. Some of them are like gigantic wildernesses of upheaved pudding stone. Then, as the voyage progresses, the hillsides put on greenery, sombre when it is pine, cheerful when the hangings are supplied by the silver birch, and bright ever when the emerald patches bear testimony to the industry of the farmer, winning his scanty harvests against heavy odds. The calling places are numerous, but often consist of some half a dozen houses of the usual weatherboard, red ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... he feared a scene he had good reason, for as the horses climbed the crest of the long hill the lady in green was by his side on the box. He looked anxiously ahead, and there, in a hedge of young alder bushes, he saw something stirring, and, unless he was greatly mistaken, a birch broom lay on the ground near ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the lips of the Llewellyn, when his life was ebbing away in the Pass of the Ambush, syllabled the name, not of wife or child or friend, but of a stanch wolfhound; and perhaps tears less bitter have been shed over the graves of many exemplary Christians than those that sprinkled the turf under the birch-trees where Gelert was sleeping. It could not free the Ancient Mariner from the remorse that clung to him like a poisoned garment till it made him a "world's wonder," because, when he shot the albatross, he ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... goods, embarked all on board one of those great canoes at that time universally used by the fur traders for navigating the intricate and often-obstructed rivers. The canoe was between thirty and forty feet long, and several feet in width; constructed of birch bark, sewed with fibres of the roots of the spruce tree, and daubed with resin of the pine, instead of tar. The cargo was made up in packages, weighing from ninety to one hundred pounds each, for the facility of loading ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the pale, distant depths of the heaven; there was still a red glow where the sun had set, and there the horizon seemed brighter and clearer; a semi-circular moon shone golden through the black network of the weeping birch-tree. The other trees stood like grim giants, with thousands of chinks looking like eyes, or fell into compact masses of darkness. Not a leaf was stirring; the topmost branches of the lilacs and acacias seemed to stretch ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... and the exhausted girls were glad to throw themselves down and sleep, while Claude kept watch by the fire outside. On the next day, and the two following ones, he employed himself in thatching the primitive dwelling with birch bark and whatever materials he could find which would shed the rain from its sloping sides. For himself, he found a sheltered hollow among the rocks, where neither wind nor rain could affect him greatly, and their stores he disposed among the ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... be attacked with great advantage. Sir James gave instant orders to march to the spot; and, with that genius for scheming, for which he was so remarkable, commanded his men to twist together the young birch-trees on either side of the passage to prevent the escape of the enemy. This finished, he concealed his archers in a hollow way, near the gorge ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... arrived at the fishing-ground. His cousin attended to the nets, for he was grown up to manhood, but Wassamo had not yet reached that age. They put their nets in the water, and encamped near them, using only a few pieces of birch-bark for a lodge to shelter them at night. They lit a fire, and, while they were conversing together, the moon arose. Not a breath of wind disturbed the smooth and bright surface of the lake. Not a cloud was seen. Wassamo looked out on the water towards their nets, and saw that almost ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... to repeat the unlucky words, with the birch in prospect, and immediately afterwards ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... clear dry days of an early Russian autumn, when a brilliant glow of colour and sunshine floods the air, and the birch trees turned to golden glories shake their fluttering leaves like brilliant butterflies, Elena, Boris, and Daria, stood on one of the wide balconies of the great house, with their mother beside them, sorting seeds and tying them up ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... cried eagerly; "isn't it just like a palace all round—the castle of Tapio, and I'm the lord of the castle, and you're the forest fairy, come to visit me. And your clothes smell of the pine woods, and there's a scent of birch in your hair, and you come playing on a shepherd's ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... has been a careful dentist to the stumps of his farm. It is beautifully stumpless, and slopes verdantly, or varied with yellow harvest, down to the lake and up to the forest primeval. He has preserved a pretty grove of birch and maple as shelter, ornament, partridge-cover, and perpendicular wood-pile. Below his house and barns is the lovely oval of the lake, seen across the fair fields, bright with wheat, or green with pasture. A road, hedged with briskly-aspiring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... moment Diana de Laurebourg made her appearance; but as soon as she saw the Duke she uttered a faint cry of alarm. She was inclined to turn and fly, but her strength failed her, and, extending her hands, she grasped the boughs of a slender birch tree that grew close by, to prevent herself from falling. The Duke was quite as much astonished as the young lady. He had expected to see a peasant girl, and here was the daughter of the Marquis de Laurebourg. But ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... lap-dogs to tend, or sort rags in a workhouse? Does it make much difference whether we shall hide our gray heads beneath lace or a handkerchief striped with blue and red; whether we sweep a crossing with a birch broom, or the steps of the Tuileries with satins; whether we sit beside a gilded hearth, or cower over the ashes in a red earthen pot; whether we go to the Opera or look on in the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... height with the other; and these trees, in the way of joists or planks, were levelled with earth or gravel. There were betwixt the trees, growing naturally on their own roots, some stakes fixed in the earth, which, with the trees, were interwoven with ropes, made of heath or birch-twigs, up to the top of the Cage, it being of a round or rather oval shape, and the whole thatched and covered over with bog. This whole fabric hung, as it were, by a large tree, which reclined from the one end, all along the roof to the other, and which gave it the name ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... after he found seven grains of this cereal on the sea-shore and consulted the birds how best to plant them. They advised him to fell the forests, burn the branches, and plant the barley in the land thus cleared. While obeying these directions in the main, Wainamoinen allowed the birch to stand, declaring there must be some place where the cuckoo and the eagle could build their nests. These two birds, greatly pleased by this attention, watched Wainamoinen as he sowed his seed, and heard him chant a prayer to Ukko, Father of Heaven, to send down rain to help it germinate. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... windy upland perch, Mine eyes have seen the forest break in bloom, The rose-red maple and the golden birch, The dusty yellow of the elms, the gloom Of the tall poplar hung with tasseled black; Ah, I have watched, till eye and ear and brain Grew full of dreams as they, the moted plain, The sun-steeped wood, the marsh-land ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... towel and comb and ran away as fast as their feet could possibly carry them. The dogs were after them, but they threw them the cookies that were left; the gates did not open themselves, but the children smoothed them with oil; the birch tree near the path almost scratched their eyes out, but the gentle girl fastened a pretty ribbon to it. So they went farther and farther and ran out of the dark forest ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... furniture in the old-fashioned snug parlor was so essential as we? How could the fragrant hickory and birch sticks have sent their cheering light and warmth over the faces of the happy family ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... bow of a canoe, where the paddle at every stroke comes within eighteen inches of them. I know nothing which can be eaten that they will not take, and I had one steal all my candles, pulling them out endwise, one by one, from a piece of birch bark in which they were rolled, and another pecked a large hole in a keg of castile soap. A duck which I had picked and laid down for a few minutes had the entire breast eaten out by one or more of these birds. I have seen one alight in the middle of my canoe and peck away at the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... the Ohio from Lake Erie commenced at the extreme southwestern end of that inland sea. The voyagers entered Maumee Bay and ascended the Maumee River, hauling their birch canoes around the rapids between Maumee City and Perrysburgh, and between Providence and Grand Rapids. Surmounting these obstacles, they reached the site of Fort Wayne, where the St. Joseph and St. Mary rivers unite, and make, according to the author of the "History of the Maumee Valley," ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... The green-birch fire snapped merrily in the range. The draft sang in the flue. Outside, a soft, feathery snow was falling, for winter came early in the uplands of Vermont this past year. To Cora McBride, however, the winter meant only hardship. Within another week she must go into town and secure ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... that Rameses II., or the Great, has features superbly European; whereas Knox, another firm believer in the specific distinctness of the races of man ('Races of Man,' 1850, p. 201), speaking of young Memnon (the same as Rameses II., as I am informed by Mr. Birch), insists in the strongest manner that he is identical in character with the Jews of Antwerp. Again, when I looked at the statue of Amunoph III., I agreed with two officers of the establishment, both competent judges, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the house a few trees were growing. Some were cherry trees, and one was a birch, with long, slender branches which swayed in the wind, and with every breeze its leaves touched the dilapidated moss-covered straw thatch of the roof; when the stronger gusts of wind bent its boughs to the wall, and pressed its twigs and the waves of leaves against ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... our old literature, reading the jolly play, will feel that, though he could handle the birch upon occasion, there was in him a fine genial vein. This was the first English comedy. The first English tragedy, too, Gorboduc, was acted first by students,—this time students of law of the Inner ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Birch Island. The swells threw us about amazingly. There is much strength and friskiness in these fresh-water surges. Those were wild moments. Fred, Farr and Scott were pulling with might and main. The spray flew over us; the spatters drenched us. I expected every moment that we should be ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... more a log was hollowed out the better it would float; and so the dug-out was invented. Log, raft, and dug-out all belong to the first and simplest type, in which there are no artificial parts to fit together. The second type is exemplified by the birch-bark canoe, which has three parts in its frame—gunwale, cross-bars, and ribs—and a fourth part, the skin, to complete it. The third type is distinguished from the second by its keel, as clearly as vertebrate animals are distinguished from invertebrates by their backbone. The common keeled boat, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... old mass of red brick that makes three clumsy jumps before it clears the river, the green rushes growing about its feet. And the glory of the bend below, with the fluff of elm, birch and maple melting ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... fine wet grass, soft as a breath, soft and more delicate and more beautiful than the touch of any woman; and then to sting one's thigh against the living dark bristles of the fir-boughs; and then to feel the light whip of the hazel on one's shoulders, stinging, and then to clasp the silvery birch-trunk against one's breast, its smoothness, its hardness, its vital knots and ridges—this was good, this was all very good, very satisfying. Nothing else would do, nothing else would satisfy, except this coolness and subtlety of vegetation travelling into one's ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... part of the summer. At last, having completed our arrangements for the journey, we received orders to proceed, and on the 26th of July, accompanied by my father and brothers and a few friends, I repaired to the place of embarkation, where was prepared a birch bark canoe, manned by nine Canadians, having Mr. A. M'Kay as commander, and a Mr. A. Fisher as passenger. The sentiments which I experienced at that moment would be as difficult for me to describe as they were painful to support; for the first time in my life ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... view. The woodman's axe had opened only here and there a patch of the woods to the light of the sun. These forests abounded with game, and had long been the hunting ground of the red men. The river swarmed with water-fowl of various names and plumage, and often the Indian's birch canoe darted over its waters ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... it is very important to pitch our camp somewhere near the right kind of a tree and not be obliged to carry our firewood a long distance. The best "green wood" for the campers' fire is hickory, although birch is excellent. Hickory is also the best dry wood. Other trees that will burn well when green are cedar, white ash, locust or white oak. There are comparatively few places, however, where dry wood is not available and of course it is always best to ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... hemp abajo, below abaratamiento, cheapening abarcar, to embrace, to include abarrotado, glutted, cram full abastecerse, to supply oneself abasto, supply abedul, birch abeto, fir ablandar, to soften abogado, lawyer, solicitor, barrister abogar, to plead abolir, to abolish abonar, to speak for, to recommend, to credit abordar, to accost, to approach, to board abrigar, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... was done to keep the rain from filling it, I reckoned," replied the Maine boy. "They do that up my way too; because you see, if water stays very long in a boat it rots it. No matter what it's built of, canvas, cedar, or birch bark, water in a boat is a ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... tell them from each other: In the sycamore, the bark is mottled; in the white birch, it is dull white; in the beech, it is smooth and gray; in the hackberry, it is covered with numerous corky warts; in the blue beech, the trunk of the tree is fluted, as in Fig. 54, and in the ironwood, the bark peels in ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... occupying the concave recesses of the bank, gave at once beauty and variety to the landscape. Above these scattered woods rose the hill, in barren, but purple majesty; the dark rich hue, particularly in autumn, contrasting beautifully with the thickets of oak and birch, the mountain ashes and thorns, the alders and quivering aspens, which checquered and varied the descent, and not less with the dark-green and velvet turf, which composed the level part ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... green birch trees—amid whose boughs hung gay lamps—and the rose bushes which surrounded a fountain of perfumed water, and Eva had already followed the Swiss knight across the threshold when she saw among the branches at the end of the room ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... may mean the short birch for me, Steele," said the factor gloomily. "Lac Bain is just now the emptiest, most fallen-to-pieces, unbusiness-like post between the Athabasca and the Bay. We've had two bad seasons running, and everything has gone wrong. Colonel Becker is a big one with the company. Ain't no doubt ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... toiled and fought, But gay to-day is our communion. BRITANNIA'S helm is crowned with flowers, BRITANNIA'S trident's wreathed with posies, And Fancy sees in Flora's showers Thistles and Shamrocks blent with Roses. The Indian Lotus let us twine With gorgeous bloom from Afric's jungles Canadian Birch with Austral Pine. Tape-bound Officialdom oft bungles; Some blow too hot, some breathe too cold, O'er-chill are some, and some o'er-gushing; But the same blood-stream, warm and bold, Through all our veins is ever rushing; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... to this cry was confirmed by King John and afterwards by Charles—must listen, and every one must heed. That cry of Haro makes the workman drop his tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his babble, to await the judgment of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... clashing, grinding sounds that ever grated the ears of a Vandal; thus, rasped, scratched, wrenched, bridled, fangled, birchen, hardened, strengthened, quickened, &c. almost frighten us when written as they are actually pronounced, as rapt, scratcht, wrencht, bridl'd, fangl'd, birch'n, strength'n'd, quick'n'd, &c.; they become still more formidable when used contractedly in the solemn style, which never ought to be the case; for here instead of thou strength'n'st or strength'n'd'st, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... but much timber has been cut off during the last century, and forest-fires have devastated portions at different times; yet there is still an abundance left. Whitney speaks of the region as abounding in oak of various kinds, chestnut, white ash, beech, birch, and maple, with some butternut and walnut trees. The vigorous growth of the primeval forest indicated the strength and richness of the soil which has since been turned to such profitable use by the farmers. The houses in which the people live are all substantial, convenient, and, in many ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Mechanical dispersal is chiefly by means of air-currents, and large numbers of seeds are specially adapted to be so carried, either by being clothed with down or pappus, as in the well-known thistle and dandelion seeds; by having wings or other appendages, as in the sycamore, birch, and many other trees; by being thrown to a considerable distance by the splitting of the seed-vessel, and by many other curious devices.[139] Very large numbers of seeds, however, are so small and light that they can be carried enormous distances ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... swamps around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and disappointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch tapped by the earliest woodpecker, whose drumming throbbed through the young man's deep ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... it here. Mr Rebble, give these boys heavy impositions, and you will both of you stop in and study every day for a fortnight under Mr Hasnip's directions. Some principals would have administered the cane or the birch, but I object to those instruments as being, like fighting, savage, brutal, and cruel, only to be used as a last resource, when ordinary punishments suitable for gentlemen fail. I presume that you make no defence?" He ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... settled about 1638, was set off from Springfield as an independent township in 1848, and was chartered as a city in 1890. Chicopee Falls was the home of Edward Bellamy. The name of the city is an Indian word meaning "cedar-tree" or "birch-bark place." ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of the struggle between trees in the forests of Denmark, from the researches of M. Hansten-Blangsted, strikingly illustrates our subject.[8] The chief combatants are the beech and the birch, the former being everywhere successful in its invasions. Forests composed wholly of birch are now only found in sterile, sandy tracts; everywhere else the trees are mixed, and wherever the soil is favourable the beech rapidly drives out the birch. The latter loses ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... find her at West Ways Farm, and he did so. Slim and straight as a young birch tree, and elate with her ride in the morning air, she stood silhouetted in her black habit against the ancient whitewashed brick porch ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... favourite stamping ground. Here they were assembled on this particular evening. There was a grove of young spruces in this hollow, with a tiny, grassy glade in its heart, opening on the bank of the brook. By the brook grew a silver birch-tree, a young, incredibly straight thing which Walter had named the "White Lady." In this glade, too, were the "Tree Lovers," as Walter called a spruce and maple which grew so closely together that their ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The birch was brought in to disannex the boy from his foolishness, but this only seemed to make him cling the closer to what he was pleased to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... their parallels in most European collections. As an example of the close kinship which prevails among the jests which make merry the hearts of men far apart from each other, we may take the Indian story of "Foolish Sachuli," and compare it with the Russian tale of "The Fool and the Birch Tree" (Afanasief, vol. v., No. 22). Sachuli kills a woman; his Russian counterpart kills a man. The corpse of the woman is hidden away in a well, that of the man in a cellar. In each case the fool's sensible relatives, knowing ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... On Wednesday I was well, and after dinner wrapped myself up warm, and walked with Sarah Hutchinson, to Lodore. I never beheld anything more impressive than the wild outline of the black masses of mountain over Lodore, and so on to the gorge of Borrowdale. Even through the bare twigs of a grove of birch trees, through which the road passes; and on emerging from the grove a red planet, so very red that I never saw a star so red, being clear and bright at the same time. It seemed to have sky behind it. It started, as it were from the heavens, like an eye-ball of fire. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... birds' feathers. They are clothed with beasts' skins as well the men as women, but that the women go somewhat straighter and closer in their garments than the men do, with their waists girded. They paint themselves with certain roan colours. Their boats are made with the bark of birch trees, with the which they fish and take great store of seals, and, as far as we could understand since our coming thither, that is not their habitation, but they come from the mainland out of hotter countries to catch the ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... horse whinnying for his corn; And sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows, 15 The cattle shake their walnut bows; While peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... he could reconcile Patty's parents to the long hoped-for marriage, and deliver his mistress from anxieties which had for some time made life almost intolerable. He dined in the servants' hall. About the same time Clare also visited by invitation General Birch Reynardson, of Holywell Park—a visit full of romance, as narrated by Mr. Martin, a beautiful young lady, governess to the General's children, having to all appearances fallen desperately in love with the poet at first sight. The only unromantic incident of the day was the customary ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... might not understand the life we lead; If we asked Dr. Birch to play, no doubt he'd rather read; He hates all scrambling restlessness, and chattering, scuffling noise; If he could catch us we should fare ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... brilliant conversationalist Mr. Grantley Berkeley has recorded a good story in 'My Life and Recollections.' Walking down St. James's Street, Lord Chelmsford was accosted by a stranger, who exclaimed "Mr. Birch I believe?" "If you believe that, sir, you'll believe anything," replied the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... sun that growing things yield up their innermost vitality and emanate their fragrant essence. I have seen fields of tobacco under a hot sun that smelt as blithe as a room thick with blue Havana smoke. I remember a pile of birch logs, heaped up behind a barn in Pike County, where that mellow richness of summer flowed and quivered like a visible exhalation in the air. It is the goodly soul of earth, rendering her health and sweetness to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... men and women than by calling your attention to the difference between vegetation in valleys and upon mountains. In the valley you find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the birch, the spruce, the fir, and finally you come to little dwarfed trees, that look like other trees seen through a telescope reversed—every limb twisted as though in pain—getting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices of the rocks. You go on and on, until at last the highest crag is ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... planting, I give pre-eminence to the cut-leaf weeping birch. Possessing all the good qualities of the white birch, it combines with them a beauty and delicate grace yielded by no other tree. It is an upright grower, with slender, drooping branches, adorned with leaves of deep rich green, each leaf being ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... which is situated the town of Mariehamn with a population of 1171. The inhabitants are mostly of Swedish descent, and are hardy seamen and fishermen. The surface of the islands is generally sandy, the soil thin and the climate keen; yet Scotch fir, spruce and birch are grown; and rye, barley, flax and vegetables are produced in sufficient quantity for the wants of the people. Great numbers of cattle are reared; and cheese, butter and hides, as well as salted meat and fish, are exported. There are several excellent ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... openings in the primeval forest, either natural or artificial, on the banks of streams and lakes, several small conical structures may be seen, composed of long stakes, stuck in the ground in circular form, and fastened at the top. The walls consist of large sheets of birch-bark, layer above layer, fastened to the stakes. On the lee-side is left a small opening for ingress and egress, which can be closed by a sheet of bark, or the skin of a wild animal. At the apex, also, an aperture is allowed to remain for the escape of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... its mode of flight, but quickly carried it back to the wood. He possessed true instincts of topography, and could conceal choice things in the bush and find them again.... If Thoreau needed a box in his walk, he would strip a piece of birch bark off the tree, fold it, when cut straightly, together, and put his tender lichen ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... birch leaves hung here and there on the white walls and festooned the carved pulpit. Green wreaths crowned the golden angels that supported, each with one lifted hand, the sculptured altar-piece; while ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... A stretch as long as this room—six ash-trees, one butternut, and a birch sapling thrown in for a witch spectre. Say no more, Paul. Sit you down and keep Olive company. I will go, if only for the sake of showing these silly little hussies that there is no call for a gospel woman with prayer in her ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... under Miss Evelyn's care; you must obey her in all things; she will teach you your lessons, as I am unable to do so any longer." Then, turning to our new governess, "I fear you will find them somewhat spoiled, and unruly; but there is a horse, and Susan will make you excellent birch rods whenever you require them. If you spare their bottoms when they deserve whipping, you will seriously offend me." As mamma said this, I observed Miss Evelyn's eyes appeared to dilate with a sort of joy, and I felt certain that, severely as mamma had ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... second season of the thirty-fifth year of Darius I.: Khabbisha's rebellion therefore broke out between June and September, 486. Stern makes this prince to have been of Libyan origin. From the form of his name, Revillout has supposed that he was an Arab, and Birch was inclined to think that he was a Persian satrap who made a similar attempt to that of Aryandes. But nothing is really known of him or of his family previous to his insurrection ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Van Brunt was at home. Ellen wanted to become acquainted with them, as well as with the little flowers that grew at their feet; and he tried to teach her how to know each separate kind by the bark and leaf and manner of growth. The pine and hemlock and fir were easily learnt; the white birch, too; beyond those, at first, she was perpetually confounding one with another. Mr. Van Brunt had to go over and over his instructions never weary, always vastly amused. Pleasant lessons these were! Ellen thought so, and Mr. Van ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... runaway, Hassell, had arrived many hours before them, and to excuse his flight told so frightful a story of the fate of his comrades that his hearers were seized with a panic, shamefully abandoned their post, and set out for the settlements, leaving a writing on a piece of birch-bark to the effect that all the rest were killed. They had left a supply of bread and pork, and while the famished eleven rested and refreshed themselves they were joined by Solomon Keyes, the man who, after being thrice wounded, had floated ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... and he thought: "That was a merry time! But it can come! it can come! Klumpy-Dumpy fell down stairs, and yet he got a princess! Maybe I can get a princess too!" And all of a sudden he thought of a nice little Birch Tree growing out in the woods: to the Pine, that would ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... struck led us to the wood of Vaujours. There Moiselet stopped, and having looked carefully about him, went towards some bushes. I saw him then stoop, plunge his arm into a thick tuft, whence he took out a spade: arising quickly, he went on some paces without saying a word; and when we reached a birch tree, several of the boughs of which I observed were broken, he took off his hat and coat, and began to dig. He went to work with so much good-will, that his labour rapidly advanced. Suddenly he stooped down, and then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... must be, X-Ray," the other told him; "they've nailed birch bark all over the sides of the log hut, you see, just ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... forget it as long as they live. The hit does that; for a kick is a very striking thing, that's a fact. There has been no good scholars since birch rods went out o' ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a clearing in the wood where a tournament of knights might have been held. Ranged on two sides were rows of larches, and forward, fit to plume a dais, a clump of tall firs stood with a flowing silver fir to right and left, and the white stems of the birch-tree shining from among them. This fair woodland court had three broad oaks, as for gateways; and the moon was above it. Moss and the frosted brown ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... luminous as though promising snow—careered out of the north and followed me along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the Allier, and away from the ploughing oxen and such-like sights of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, woods of birch all jewelled with the autumn yellow, here and there a few naked cottages and bleak fields,—these were the characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and hill; the little green and stony cattle-tracks wandered in and out of one another, split into three ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the branches of the silver birch before the house a thrush was singing, while the swallows were already ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... from Birch Grove to Rathnllan House the next day when he was met by Barney Casey, who had been on the lookout for him. Barney, who knew not his person, was not capable of determining whether he was the individual whom he wanted or ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 6,000,000 tons annually. But the consumption of sugar per inhabitant is only seven pounds annually, as against eighteen pounds per inhabitant in Germany. A universal industry throughout Russia is TANNING, and Russia leather, with its fragrant birch-oil odour, is a highly prized commodity the world over. But the amount manufactured is only 114,000 tons yearly, and ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... of the steepest mountains, where the little juniper stands, no other tree can follow from all the forest lands. Halfway to the hilltop the shivering pine catches hold; the birch has actually passed him, though sneezing with a cold. But a little shrub outstrips them, a sturdy fellow he, and stands quite close to the summit, though he measures barely a yard. They look like a train from the valley below with the shortest one for the guard. Or else perhaps he's ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the power of avoiding which is "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Imbued with this feeling, the more speculative of past ages have frequently attempted to arrive, by external ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... came to the house. They stopped at the door and asked for milk; the mother brought them brimming bowlsful, and the shy little girl crept up behind her mother with her birch-bark baskets of berries. The gentlemen took them and thanked her, and one told of his own little Mary at home, far away over the great sea. Jeannette often thinks of her, and wonders whether her papa has gone ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... and therefore cannot be appealed to as evidence for original incidents. But the Lancelot in its original form was held by so competent an authority as the late M. Gaston Paris to have been one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, of French prose texts. (Cf. M. Paris's review of Suchier and Birch-Hirschfield's Geschichte der Franz. Litt.) The adventure in question is a 'Gawain' adventure; we do not know whence it was derived, and it may well have been included in an early version of the romance. Apart from the purely literary question, from the strictly critical ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... all the village, old and young, Had trooped to church when the church bell rung. The windows were open, and breezes sweet Fluttered the hymn books from seat to seat. Even the birds in the pale-leaved birch Sang as ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... of appearances, to wear cotton and woollen and silk; and beads and trinkets are in no extraordinary demand. Beavers and furs are seen upon our streets; and the sound of the piano heard in the land, is not a very unusual disturbance. Our boys, as of old, smoke cigars in secret, fearful of ancient birch, and gum drops still adhere to the pockets of our girls in school. We don't see a very remarkable difference between the children about us and those we knew at a somewhat early age. Brick and stone rise with us into comfortable and even aspiring buildings, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I have never repelled a workman nor hindered a shepherd. I gave alike to the widow and to the married woman, and have not preferred the great to the small in my gifts." And we have the high authority of the late Dr. Samuel Birch for the statement that the inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty abound in injunctions of a high ethical character. "To feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead, loyally ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and on the grass were scattered like seeds by the passing of the light carriage; the occupants as they rolled along caught glimpses of the mysterious visions of the woods,—those cool depths, where the verdure is moist and dark, where the light softens as it fades; those white-birch glades o'ertopped by some centennial tree, the Hercules of the forest; those glorious assemblages of knotted, mossy trunks, whitened and furrowed, and the banks of delicate wild plants and fragile flowers which ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... have hung festoons from laburnum trees, And clothed the lilac, the birch and broom; I've wakened the sound of humming-bees, And decked all ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... no necessity for making the woodwork that is to be painted unnecessarily substantial or elaborate. Woods such as white maple, holly, poplar, for the light effects; black birch, cherry, mahogany, for darker. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... absolutely whistled, though on a moderate key. But boldness breeds boldness, and shortly I plunged into a Vineyard, in the full light of the moon, and captured a gallon of superb grapes, not even minding the presence of a peasant who rode by on a mule. Denny and Birch followed my example. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the City of London Tavern: at the mention of white bait, his lips smack together with joy, and he lisps out instinctively Blackwall: talk of a rump steak and Dolly's, his eyes grow wild with delight; and just hint at the fine green fat of a fresh killed turtle dressed at Birch's, and his whole soul's in arms for a corporation dinner. Reader, I have been led into this strain of thinking by an excursion I am about to make with Alderman Marigold and family, 89to enjoy the pleasures ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of the Medici collection, and contains some of the finest Italian and Spanish specimens," remarked the blind connoisseur. "Birch of the British Museum is quite right in declaring that the seal, portable and abounding in detail, not difficult of acquisition nor hard to read if we set about deciphering the story it has to tell, takes us back as we look upon it to ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The Oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year; And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone, Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.— The Knight's bones are dust, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... dwarfish trees. The ravine was deep and had washed-out clay slopes. High above it stretched a muddy, uneven strip of grey sky, which poured an unceasing rain upon the soaked red clay, upon the small wet birch trees, and the group of soldiers, who had lost their way and driven by ...
— The Shield • Various
... but many ranges of hills. Norway monopolizes almost entirely the mountain system of the great northern peninsula, but the large forests of pine, fir, and birch, which cover so much of the country, are common to both. Though iron is found in large deposits in Norway, it is still more abundant in Sweden, where it is chiefly of the magnetic kind, yielding when properly smelted the best ore for the manufacture of steel. It is ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... much more substantial than the wigwams of the Canadian Indians, which are formed in a conical shape by uniting at the top a dozen straight poles stuck in a circle in the ground, and by covering them thickly with birch-bark. In both cases a hole is left at the top to serve as a chimney. Inside the tents of my present friends the ground was spread with mats all round the edges, except in the centre, where a bare spot was ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... or 10 per cent. birch tar, which has a characteristic pungent odour and is recommended as a ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... a rude representation of the signs of the zodiac around the border. Another fancied he could discover numerals, and even dates. No one could even offer any explanation of the objects or the circumstances of its discovery. The figures bear a close resemblance to rude drawings executed on birch-bark and rock surfaces by the American Indians. But by what means were they etched? And by what means was the uniform thickness of the ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among the Siberian horses and cattle. They are enduring; they can feed upon the Polar birch in case of need; they resist cold and hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable of carrying half the weight which a European horse carries with ease; no Siberian cow gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... tradition? I wonder," he said to himself. "It must be something to eat, I am excessively hungry." He looked round and saw a birch tree standing by. "Ah! that must be the tradition my mother meant, when she said, 'There is a tradition.' Yes, her trunk is pointing to it." So he pulled up the birch tree and devoured it, as well as he could. The ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... feet, and at Bear Lake, in latitude 64 degrees, not more than twenty inches. The frozen substratum does not of itself destroy vegetation, for forests flourish on the surface, at a distance from the coast.") In a like manner, in Siberia, we have woods of birch, fir, aspen, and larch, growing in a latitude (64 degrees) where the mean temperature of the air falls below the freezing point, and where the earth is so completely frozen, that the carcass of an animal embedded in it is perfectly preserved. (5/10. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... snow was flooded in moonlight and the birch trees wavered their stark shadows across it like supplicating arms. Suddenly I heard the soft padded sound of snow falling upon snow, to slowly perceive a figure, the slender figure of a young child attempting to arouse ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... were being rubbed against the birch broom that, rooted at Kentish back doors, stands to receive on its purple twigs the scrapings of ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... his brothers built castles but he always built churches. He received an elementary education from the chaplains of his uncle, the Bishop of St. David's; he seems to have been slow at learning when a child, and his tutors goaded him on not by the birch rod, but by sarcasm—by declining "Stultus, stultior, stultissimus." His higher education was not obtained in Wales, and it is singular that he does not notice any place of learning in Wales in all his writings. He studied at Gloucester, and then at Paris, the greatest mediaeval university. ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... loves the laurel bright, The Bard the myrtle bough, And smooth shillalas yield delight To many an Irish brow. The Fisher trims the hazel wand, The Crab may tame a shrew, The Birch becomes the pedant's hand, But Bows ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch-tree! The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, And whistled and roared in the winter alone, Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.— The knight's bones are dust, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... off by hiding in the stalks of a large yucca.(10) The sheep passed within five steps of him, and again when the time to pull the bow came his arm stiffened. The crow people were watching him all the time. He again followed the sheep and got ahead of them and hid behind a birch tree in bloom; he had his bow ready, but as the sheep approached him they became gods. The first one was Hasjelti, the second was Hostjoghon, the third was Naaskiddi, the fourth one was Hadatchishi. At this strange metamorphosis the youth was greatly ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... Montpellier there are dug up whole cart-loads of trees converted into jet, though the original forms are so perfectly preserved that he could often detect the species; and, among others, he mentions birch and walnut. What is even more remarkable, he found a wooden pail and a wooden shovel converted into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... deluded race!" One hears the cauliflowered god exclaim, mournfully shaking the powder out of his ambrosial curls, "What strange new folly is this? What new deity do you worship? Know ye what ye do? Know ye that your new idol hath little Latin and less Greek? Know ye that he has never tasted the birch at Eton, nor trodden the flags of Carfax, nor paced the academic flats of Trumpington? Know ye that in mathematics, or logic, this wretched ignoramus is not fit to hold a candle to a wooden spoon? See ye not how, from describing law humours, he now, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... vanishing to reappear again, Pulling their mother with them to the sight. Still we kept on, with turnings left and right, Past farmsteads grouped in cheerful neighborhoods, Or solitary; then through shadowy woods Of pine or birch, until the road, grass-grown, Had given back to Nature all her own Save a faint wheel-trace, that along the slope, Rain-gullied, seemed to stop and doubt and grope, And then quite ceased, as if 't had turned ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Liquid ester C8H8O3 obtained from the leaves of wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) or the bark of a birch (Betula lenta); now made synthetically, and used as a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... going down of the wind, the air seemed warmer. The sky was still dull and heavy, and they were afraid it might snow again at any moment. Where the footing was good they almost ran, so eager were they to get back to Birch Tree Inn. ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... he had carefully examined every spot and relic in Dean Forest likely to denote the site of Dud Dudley's enterprising but unfortunate experiment of making pig-iron with pit-coal," no remains had been found. It was the same with the like operations of Cromwell, Major Wildman, Captain Birch, and other of his officers, doctors of physic and merchants, by whom works and furnaces had been set up in the ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... raised her to my arms: spiling thereby a new weskit and a pair of crimson smalcloes. I rushed forrard. I say, very nearly knocking down the old sweeper who was hobbling away as fast as posibil. We took her to Birch's; we provided her with a hackney-coach and every lucksury, and carried her ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... about a hundred yards, leaving an open space or lane between them of about five yards' distance; then the offender, being naked to the waist, was brought to one end of the lane or open place. The people had rods or switches of birch given to as many as would take them; the offender was to run or go, as he pleased (and one of them walked but a Spanish pace), from one end of the lane of people to the other, twice or thrice forward and backward; ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... made by European residents, strongly prejudiced in favour of masterful English ways of discipline. (I recollect that an English Yokohama paper, in this connection, advocated the introduction of the birch.) My own observations have convinced me, as larger experience has convinced some others, that in most instances of pupils rebelling against a teacher, reason is upon their side. They will rarely insult a teacher whom they dislike, or cause any disturbance in his class: they will ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... usefulness as implements of persuasion, being now employed exclusively as foot-gear. The lissom birch thrives ungarnered in the thicket, where grace and gentleness supply the whilom vigor of its sway. The unyielding barrel-stave, that formerly occupied a place of honor and convenience in the household, is now relegated, a harmless thing, to a forgotten ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... child; "but when I became a man, I put away childish things." The experience and observation of years often make salutary corrections, which you would in vain attempt to effect in early childhood, by all the laws of a ponderous octavo, or by all the birch saplings to be found ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... its way through the landscape in long curves. From the south bow window in the hotel, the mother and daughter followed its course through tangled underwood and birch forest; sometimes it disappeared, and then shone out again, and at last became fully visible. There was a great deal of traffic going on, the hum of it reached ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... want of pity, to the time it was your rods and cloaks made a little tent for me where there'd be a birch tree making shelter and a dry stone; though from this day my own fingers will be making a tent for me, spreading out my hairs and they knotted with the rain. [Lavarcham and Old Woman come in stealthily on right. ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge |
