"Blue-bottle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be protected against hares and rabbits, so must fruit be from other enemies. Birds in some seasons are most destructive, attacking the finest fruit, pecking a piece out near the stalk. Such fruit soon decays. Wasps and blue-bottle flies feast on ripe or injured fruit. Mr Cheal in his "Fruit Culture" recommends that galvanised wire netting be put over the whole ground. This may do for small plantations, not for large, nor for places where the trees rise beyond ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... "That's Blue-bottle Creek," announced Red Morton. "Queer that we don't see any cattle. There's not a steer in sight. They ought to ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... green curtains partially obscured the bright sunshine which beat upon the windows. The wall-paper was cheap, vulgar, faded. On the floor was an old ingrain carpet full of patches and spattered with ink stains. A blue-bottle fly buzzed and butted his head against the walls, and through the open casement hummed the traffic of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... inhuman, Christian and Injun, white, red, black, and party-coloured. Show me anngelliferous madam, and then show me the abbregynes; and if you ever seed fighting, 'tarnal death to me, but you'll say it war only the squabbling of seed-ticks and blue-bottle flies! I say, sodger, show me anngelliferous madam: you cut the halter, and you cut the tug; but it war madam the anngel that set you on: wharfo', I'm her dog and her niggur from now to etarnity, and I'm come to fight for her, and lick her enemies till you shall see nothing left of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... town of St. James, that numerous people have been ruined, and the governor calls out for aid against them. In other so-called new countries a wave of English weeds follows the tide of English emigration, and so with insects; the European house-fly chases away the blue-bottle fly in New Zealand. Settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles and boxes for their new locations, but what European insect will follow us and extirpate the tsetse? The Arabs have given the Makonde bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go, the blue-bottle and another like the house-fly, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... and distress, looking like a man who has lost something, and knows not where to seek for it. His eyes wander from the carpet to the ceiling; at one moment he is engaged in counting the panes in the window, and the next in watching the discursive flights of a blue-bottle round the apartment. But while he appears anxiously seeking for some object on which to fix his attention, he carefully avoids looking towards his innamorata; and should their eyes meet by chance, his cheeks assume the tint of the beet-root ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... trade. For every vantage-point as big as a match-head on our face and hands the "bull-dog" contests with the mosquito. An interesting study is the "bull-dog." He looks like a cross between a blue-bottle fly and a bumble bee, and we took leisure as we went along to examine the different parts of his person under a microscope that some one carried as a watch-charm. The head of the insect (if he is ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... always lived in one corner, curled up, watching for prey, and when a blue-bottle was put in, and began buzzing, she then rushed up one tunnel and down another until she could ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... "Blue-bottle" and "March" flies provide another sort of cheerful sport in which no little malice is blended. Some boys make tiny spears from the midrib of the frond of the creeping palm (CALAMUS OBSTRUENS), which, balanced on the palm palm of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... conclusions he had drawn. Though usually adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general dulness. Because a blue-bottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... must shun regard >From painter, player, sportsman, bard, Wasp, blue-bottle, or butterfly, Insects that swim ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... voice. Hearing it by accident when I was humming about the house like a blue-bottle, he asked me to let him hear it again in a place where he could judge of it to more advantage. That turned out to be a theatre—yes, indeed, a theatre—but it was the middle of the morning, and nobody was there except ourselves and a couple of cleaners, so Aunt Anna needn't be afraid. Yes, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... whispering to other Senators, and then having sat down to rise suddenly as though some great impulse had come to him and hurry into the cloakroom. He inherited the chairmanship of the railroad committee, and all employees came to him for their railroad passes; so he was the god of the blue-bottle flies of politics that feed on legislatures, and buzz pompously about the capitol doing nothing, at three dollars a day. In that session Handy was for the "peepul." He patronised the State Shippers' Association, and told their committee ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... others I chose for my experiment the corn-marigold, or Chrysanthemum segetum. It is also called the golden cornflower. In the wheat and rye fields of central Europe it associates with the blue-bottle or blue corn-flower. It is sometimes cultivated and the seeds are offered for sale by many nurserymen. It has a cultivated variety, called grandiflorum, which is esteemed for its brilliancy and long succession of golden bloom. This variety has larger flower-heads, surrounded with a ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... though both may pass the same acres every morning. It is inevitable that it should be so. It is easy in London to forget that it is midsummer, till, going some day into Covent Garden Market, you see baskets of the cornflower, or blue-bottle as it is called in the country, ticketed "Corinne," and offered for sale. The lovely azure of the flower recalls the scene where it was first gathered long since at the edge of ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... hungry, and they were feeding close inshore, and the Babe was having great sport. The fish were not large, but they were clean, trim-jawed, bright fellows, some of them not far short of the half-pound; and the only blue-bottle in the ointment of the Babe's exultation was that Uncle Andy was not on hand to see his triumph. To be sure, the proof would be in the pan that night, browned in savory cornmeal after the fashion ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... just behind our lines an aeroplane buzzed up. At the tremendous height it looked like an immense blue-bottle fly. At first the enemy's aeroplanes came out to meet ours, but a few encounters with our men soon convinced them of the futility of this. After that they relied on their artillery. In the air all around the tiny speck we could see white puffs of smoke where their shrapnel was exploding. Sometimes ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... but for one thing I might have slept. And had I fallen on sleep then no one of us might have waked so easily. What I heard was no more than this—once or twice the flame of the candle gave a smart little "spit," as if a moth or a fat blue-bottle had forwandered into it and fallen spinning to the ground with burned wings. Yet there were no moths in the chambers, or we should have seen them circling about the lights at the time of supper. Nevertheless, ere long I heard again the quick, light "plap!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was trying to catch a blue-bottle to add to his collection, and was indisposed to give up the chase; but he presently saw that the Master had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt himself drawn in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... are the only care-free, really happy ones of the world, the only wives without a big, poison, blue-bottle fly ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window, with the object of hitting a bluebottle which was sporting ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... Napoleon (see Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, p. 304, and Don Juan, Canto 1. stanza ii. line 7, note to Buonaparte). Inkel seems to be meant for Byron himself, and Tracy, a friend, not a Lake poet, for Moore. Sir Richard and Lady Bluebottle may possibly symbolize Lord and Lady Holland; and Miss Lilac is, certainly, Miss Milbanke, the "Annabella" of Byron's courtship, not the "moral Clytemnestra" of his marriage ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... he still keep ticking? Why does his round white face Stare at me over the books and ink, And mock at my disgrace? Why does that thrush call, 'Dunce, dunce, dunce!'? Why does that bluebottle buzz? Why does the sun so silent shine? — And what do I care if ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... no life, nothing but the thin shadow And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat Rasping a crust? Or at the window pane No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider? The windows frame a prospect of cold skies Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation, Abstract, confusing welter. Face about, Peer rather in the glass once more, take note Of self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled, Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... he whispered his teacher— "If 'tisn't impertinent, may I ask why "Should a Bullock, that useful and powerful creature, "Be thus offered up to a bluebottle Fly?" ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gossiping for an hour, half sleepy with reaction from the fatigues of the day, smoking slowly, enjoying themselves. Everything was very peaceful—the long slant of a sunbeam through dust motes, the buzz of an early bluebottle, the half-heard activities of some of the servants in the pantry beyond, preparing for the rush of the cocktail hour. Suddenly Johnny raised his head and pricked up ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... did old Marmaduke sleep, was the question she was asking herself. She could see that the large hands folded across his stomach rose and fell with steady rhythmic ease. Then she saw a fly—a huge, buzzing, bluebottle fly—settle for a moment on the round, bald pate of the innkeeper, and still the sleeper did not stir. Surely if a fly could not waken him, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... table. A bowl of flowers stood in the center. A small silver tray with a finely blown glass and a round-bellied silver pitcher of water stood at one side. A few leather-bound books were all else to be seen, except—if one could count that—a bluebottle fly that buzzed, lit on the flowers, and ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... clutched the bill book where lay the tender little poem. There at her elbow lay the copy she had so carefully made. The air of the room was warm and drowsy, and the stillness was only broken by the low buzzing of two great bluebottle flies that struggled futilely against the high window panes. Dear little tired Betty! Dreaming,—of whom? The breath came through her parted lips, softly and evenly, and the last ray of the sun fell on her flushed cheek and brought out the touch of ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... imagination enough to take the thought in at all, put it to himself in a form suited to his previous knowledge and conceptions. It would seem to him that The Wasp flew about the skies with the world in his mouth, as he carries a bluebottle fly; and that would be the astronomy of his tribe henceforth. Absurd enough; but—as every man who is acquainted with old mythical cosmogonies must know—no more absurd than twenty similar guesses on record. Try to ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... physical beauty he had a fine head—but these talents were wholly and unsparingly devoted to one pursuit: he was an entomologist. With a black beetle and a microscope he was happy for the day. Piles upon piles of manuscripts had he written upon the forms and classification of the bluebottle fly. He could tell you how many legs are flourished by the house-spider, and was thoroughly versed in the anatomy of the common gnat. This pursuit, or science as he called it, engrossed his whole attention. It was fortunate he had such an absorbing occupation, inasmuch ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... The original Organ-grinder, Bourbon Whisky, Civita Vecchia Olives, Hadrian's Mausoleum, Harper's Magazine, The Laurel Shade, Murray's Hand-book, Cicerones, Englishmen, Dogcarts, Youth, Hope, Beauty, Conversation Kenge, Bluebottle Flies, Gnats, Galignani, Statues, Peasants, Cockneys, Gas-lamps, Dundreary, Michiganders, Paper-collars, Pavilions, Mosaic Brooches, Little Dogs, Small Boys, Lizards, Snakes, Golden Sunsets, Turks, Purple Hills, Placards, Shin-plasters, Monkeys, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... and helped himself, and drained his glass, and stood it bottom upward on the table, as though he had just caught a bluebottle in it. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... pleasure after," as the bluebottle said when, after circling three times about the breakfast-table, he alighted ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... in nothing but contradiction. They return home from Mrs. Bluebottle's dinner-party, each in an opposite corner of the coach, and do not exchange a syllable until they have been seated for at least twenty minutes by the fireside at home, when the gentleman, raising his eyes from the stove, all at once ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... men looked at him with aversion, but the women, although shocked, did not think him repulsive. Was he not a tall, broadshouldered, graceful lad, with a complexion like milk and blood, and eyes the colour of a bluebottle, and did he not trim his moustaches and beard like a nobleman? It was a pity he was not a foreman with plenty of opportunities of ordering the girls about! The men, however, were whispering among themselves that he was a scoundrel who would come to ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... deposit their eggs on open sores or on wet, filthy parts of the skin, where their larvae or grubs give rise to serious trouble: Lucilia caesar (bluebottle), Cochliomyia macellaria (screwworm fly), Musca vomitoria (meat fly), and Sarcophaga carnaria (flesh fly). To prevent their attacks, wet, filthy hair should be removed and wounds kept clean and rendered antiseptic by a lotion ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... acknowledged the introduction with an inhospitable stare, a look which gave way to one of anxiety as Mrs. Tipping, stepping into the rigging, suddenly lost her nerve, and, gripping it tightly, shook it in much the same fashion as a stout bluebottle shakes the web of ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs |
