"Fir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conquer with this blade, Franks shall be slain, and France a desert made." The dozen peers are, at this word, away, Five score thousand of Sarrazins they take; Who keenly press, and on to battle haste; In a fir-wood their gear ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... April, When the sap begins to stir! Make me man or make me woman, Make me oaf or ape or human, Cup of flower or cone of fir; Make me anything but neuter When ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... trembling glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still in her face, and the exquisite touch of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... distemper. I cannot give a full account of their arguments on both sides; only this I remember, that they caviled very much with one another. Some were for fires, but that they must be made of wood and not coal, and of particular sorts of wood too, such as fir, in particular, or cedar, because of the strong effluvia of turpentine; others were for coal and not wood, because of the sulphur and bitumen; and others were neither for one or other. Upon the whole, the ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... called by the ancients Marmor Thasium, from Thasos, now Thapso, an island in the north of the AEgean Sea, off the coast of Thrace. The marble dug from the rocky sides of Mount Ipsario—a romantic hill thickly covered with fir trees, and rising three thousand four hundred and twenty-eight feet above the sea—enjoyed considerable reputation among the ancients. In Rome it must have been very common, if the name of Thasian is to be given to all the fragments of nondescript dusky ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... next days making our Christmas preparations, determined to keep the feast. We decorated the sand-bag cabin—oh, yes! Over the pictures of our people, pinned to the sand-bag walls, we placed sprigs of a small-leaf holly that grew on the Peninsula. We planted the little fir in a disused petrol-tin, and, after a visit to the canteen, decorated it with boxes of Turkish delight, sticks of chocolate, packets of chewing-gum, oranges, lemons, soap, and bits of Government candles. It was a Christmas tree of ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... said, "came from Bavaria. The family estate was at the edge of the far-famed Black Forest, and my father, with his pack of black hounds, killed many a wolf that lurked in the dark shadows of the fir trees. But hunting was not a profitable business, and there was nothing better for me, a younger son, to do than to become a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... the chalk formation of the soil in this section of the front, the excessive moisture of this season of the year drained rapidly, leaving exposed an undulating section on which were small forests of fir trees. The nature of the ground made it an easy matter to move troops even in winter. General Joffre took advantage of this fact, and assembled a quarter of a million men against the German lines in Champagne. This caused the German commanders to mass ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was light as I entered the room, for I was shod in white satin slippers, but Martin heard it, and I saw his eyes fluttering as he looked at me, and said something sweet about a silvery fir tree with its little ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Latin, remarks concerning "many birds which are called Bernacae: against nature, nature produces them in a most extraordinary way. They are like marsh geese, but somewhat smaller. They are produced from fir timber tossed along the sea, and are at first like gum. Afterward they hang down by their beaks, as if from a seaweed attached to the timber, surrounded by shells, in order to grow more freely," Giraldus is here evidently describing the barnacles ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... is very different in Finland to what it is in Russia; in place of the marshes and plains which surround St. Petersburg, you find rocks, almost mountains, and forests: but after a time, these mountains, and those forests, composed of the same trees, the fir and the birch, become monotonous. The enormous blocks of granite which are seen scattered through the country, and on the borders of the high roads, give the country an air of vigor; but there is very little life around these great bones of the earth, and vegetation ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... the eastward of the little town, where the gardens of the villas trail their willow-fringes in the water. Among them, a varnished yellow chalet lifted its tiers of glassed-in galleries among the heavy green of fir-trees; its door, close beside the road, was guarded by a gate of iron bars. The big car slid to a standstill beside it with a scrape of tires ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... with fighting cries. With frenzy seiz'd, I run to meet th' alarms, Resolv'd on death, resolv'd to die in arms, But first to gather friends, with them t' oppose (If fortune favor'd) and repel the foes; Spurr'd by my courage, by my country fir'd, With sense of ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... deceived, not only by others but in themselves. Or so I venture to think, and even then reflected, as I shook my dear lad's hand by the side parapet of the moonlit terrace, and watched him run down into the shadows of the fir-trees and so out of my sight with two dark and stalwart figures that promptly detached themselves from the shadows of the shoemaker's hut. A third figure mounted to where I now sat listening to the easy, ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... ecstacy—visiting every tree that I had planted and fenced round years ago. Each of these I pruned, and even had the temerity to steal into the green-house, which was close to the library, and procure the gardener's saw, with which I climbed up into an old Scotch fir, and dismembered a large limb which over-hung and injured a lime-tree I had planted in the dell below. Having sawed the limb into portable pieces, I concealed the ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... itself was small, and lighted by two little windows, which opened into the courtyard. The entire apartment was made of wood. The floor was of unpainted fir boards. The walls were of the same material, painted blue from the floor upwards to about three feet, where the blue was unceremoniously stopped short by a stripe of bright red, above which the somewhat fanciful decorator had laid on a coat of pale yellow; and the ceiling, by way of variety, was ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... from my front wheel; and on the same day I came upon a green woodpecker enjoying a dust-bath in the public road. He declined to stir until I stopped to watch him, then merely flew about a dozen yards away and attached himself to the trunk of a fir tree at the roadside and waited there for me to go. Never in all my wanderings afoot had I seen a yaffingale dusting himself like ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... as bad as ever, it was for the most part downhill, and the patches of snow lying in the jagged hollows on either side of the pass were less frequent, while the sheltered slopes and hollows were greener with groves of stunted fir and grass, and, far below, glimpses were obtained of deep valleys branching off from the lower part of the pass, whose sides were glorious in the sunshine with what seemed ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... perhaps, the true thought of his heart, and represented the regular tenor of the man's reflections; but the latter burst forth from time to time with an unruly violence, and then he would forget all consideration, and go up and down his house and garden or walk among the fir-woods like one who is beside himself with remorse. To equable, steady-minded Will this state of matters was intolerable; and he determined, at whatever cost, to bring it to an end. So, one warm summer afternoon he put on his best clothes, took a thorn switch in his hand, and set out down ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to market to buy Fir, Oak, and Sackerdijne Wood, and to order that the Shop may be neatly built and set up. And you are happy, that Master Paywell, who is a very neat Joiner and Cabinet-Maker, is of your very good acquaintance, and so near by the hand: He knows how to fit and join ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... about 38 in. The soil in the valleys and plains of the department, especially in the Bresse, is fertile, producing large quantities of wheat, as well as oats, buckwheat and maize. East of the Ain, forests of fir and oak abound on the mountains, the lower slopes of which give excellent pasture for sheep and cattle, and much cheese is produced. Horse-raising is carried on in the Dombes. The pigs and fowls of the Bresse and the geese and turkeys of the Dombes are largely exported. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in the scene to justify an average amount of enthusiasm. Those steep broken hills in the background form the frontier fortress of the maritime Alps, the last outwork of which is the rocky spur on which Molyneux and his companion are lying. Fir woods feather the sky-line; and from among these, here and there, the tall stone pines stand up alone, like sentinels—steady, upright, and unwearied, though their guard has not been relieved for centuries. All around, wild myrtle, and heath, and eglantine curl and creep up the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... sense, which temper'd ev'ry thing she said; Judgment, which ev'ry little fault could spy; But candour, which would pass a thousand by: Such finish'd breeding, so polite a taste, Her fancy always for the fashion pass'd; Whilst every social virtue fir'd her breast To help the needy, succour the distrest; A friend to all in misery she stood, And her chief pride was plac'd in doing good. But now, my Muse, the arduous task engage, And shew the charming figure on the stage; Describe her look, her action, voice and mein, The ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Hugh John, who was engaged in eating grass like an ox, "we know it is true about Rob Roy. She read us one whole volume, and there wasn't no Rob Roy, nor any fighting in it. So we pelted her with fir-cones to make her stop and read over Treasure Island to ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... lone field where Major Andre was executed. It is planted with potatoes, but the plough spares the spot on which was once his gallows and his grave. A rude heap of stones, with the remains of a dead fir tree in the midst, are all that mark it; but tree and stones are covered with names. It is on an eminence commanding a view of the country for miles. I gazed on the surrounding woods, and remembered that on this selfsame spot, the beautiful ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... were drawn the grotesque shadow of a fir-tree stood against the window; silhouettes moved past. Picket fences marched crookedly along. At each intersection of streets a white arc-light dangled, hissing and spreading its radiance to the very ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... sylvestris, or Scotch fir, from which this new product is derived, has been long esteemed in Germany for its many valuable qualities; and instead of being left to its natural growth, is cultivated in plantations of forest-like ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... of the violent weather, when they were tied together by the ropes of running wind; for these were visiting days— all manner of strangers dropped in upon them from distant walks in life, and they never knew whether the next would be a fir-cone or one of those careless, irresponsible travellers, a bit ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Blorenge mountains, with the outlines of the Hatterals, perfect the scene in this direction; whilst the ever-varying and amphitheatrical boundary of this natural basin, may be traced over the Blaenavons, Craig-y-garayd, (close to Usk,) the Gaer Vawr, the round Twm Barlwm, the fir-crowned top of Wentwood forest, Pen-cae-Mawr, the dreary heights of Newchurch and Devauder; the continuation of the same range past Llanishen, the white church of which is plainly visible; Trelleck, Craig-y-Dorth, and the highlands above Troy Park, where they end." We were going on in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... vanished before something more tangible in the haze of the valley. This was the flutter of a dirty white rag which seemed to come and go among the fir trees. ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... three of you," cried Alfred sharply. "You're not going away to leave Father Swythe like this. Go and fetch the big fir-pole that we laid across to begin the dam. If that's laid down here Father Swythe can ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... represents of course the Vegetation), carried down into the underworld by the evil powers of Darkness and Winter. And in Greece there was a yearly ceremonial and ritual of magic for the purpose of restoring the lost one and bringing her back to the world again. Women carried certain charms, "fir-cones and snakes and unnamable objects made of paste, to ensure fertility; there was a sacrifice of pigs, who were thrown into a deep cleft of the earth, and their remains afterwards collected and scattered as a charm over the fields." (1) Fir-cones and snakes from their very forms were emblems ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... forests are very impressive and solemn as the day of judgment; giant fir-trees, pines and spruces, beautifully clothed in perpetual green even to the lower dead limbs which nature has covered with a verdure of moss—like our dead hopes, blasted by the fires of adversity but made radiant by the fore-gleams of immortality. There the bright mistletoe is suspended ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... watched a woman loll Like to a clot of seaweed thrown ashore; Heavy and limp as cloth soaked in black dye, She glooms the noontide dazzle where a bay Bites into vineyarded flats close-fenced by hills, Over whose tops lap forests of cork and fir And reach in places half down their rough slopes. Lower, some few cleared fields square on the thickets Of junipers and longer thorns than furze So clumped that they are trackless even for goats I know two ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... anatomical plates. Then phonetic changes; followed by a chapter on "Grimm's Law," which would give work enough for a lifetime. We next plunge into botany, and have a whole chapter on the "words for fir, oak, and beech," which shows that the author, like our own Mr. Marsh, has studied the literal roots as well as the symbolic. Later, we come to astronomy, whence one of our author's favorite theories conducts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... being almost surrounded by pine forests, which cover most of the Hartz Mountains. If the day is at all clear a high and rather rounded hill is visible to the eastward, conspicuous for its bleakness, standing well above the dark intervening fir-clad hills. This is the Brocken, the highest mountain in Northern Germany, on the summit of which Goethe's Faust was evolved. It is difficult to realise that it is, roughly, 5,000 feet above sea level, or the camp 2,000. The ascent ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... Fir-tree, yields common [577] Turpentine; and to sleep on a pillow made from its yellow shavings is a capital American device for relieving asthma. Fir cones are ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... in the depths of a great green rustling wood, there lived a Fir-tree. She was tall and dark and fragrant; so tall that her topmost plumes seemed waving about in the clouds, and her branches were so thick and strong and close set that down below them on the ground it was ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... across the lawn at its bottom was frozen to-day and lay like a band of jewelled samite trailed through the olive verdure. Along its margin evergreens grew. No pine nor spruce nor larch nor fir is native to these portions of the Shield; only the wild cedar, the shapeless and the shapely, belongs there. This assemblage of evergreens was not, then, one of the bounties of ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... England. It lay on the fringe of the Chase and contained, within its slopes and glades, now tracts of primitive woodland whence the charcoal burners seemed to have but just departed; now purple wastes of heather, wild as the Chase itself; or again, dense thickets of bracken and fir, hiding primeval and impenetrable glooms. Maudeley House, behind them, a seemly Georgian pile, with a columnar front, had the good fortune to belong to a man not rich enough to live in or rebuild it, but sufficiently attached to it to spend upon its decent maintenance ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the forest, and the good folk of the forest and river were proud to point to him as a "proper figure of a man." "Johnnie," as he was familiarly styled by his associates, stood a good two inches over six feet, was straight as a fir and tough as a young oak. He had just turned his twentieth year, and was as fleet of foot as the stags that he guarded. Dark-eyed and handsome, light-hearted and jovial, a good singer of a good song, he was ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... too, about that cold weather; fun with the snow-man in the Park; fun in learning to skate on the frozen pond, shut in so nicely with the fir-trees; and fun in the real Christmas treats, ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... which act upon and dissolve, or decompose or disintegrate its parts, then the free edges of these scales rise up, they "set their backs up," so to say. They, in fact, stand off like the scales of a fir-cone, and at length act like the fir-cone in ripening, at last becoming entirely loose. As regards wool and fur, these scales are of the utmost importance, for very marked differences exist even in the wool of a single ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... from utmost fairyland Across the wintry snows; He makes the fir-tree and the spruce To blossom like ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... always be accompanied with gestures,—simple, free, unstudied motions, descriptive, perhaps, of the sweep of the mother bird's wings as she soars away from the nest, or the waving of the fir-tree's branches as he sings to himself in the sunshine. This universal language is understood at once by the children, and not only serves as an interpreter of words and ideas, but gives life ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... which could be was built of wood. They have the fir, which is very indestructible; it is supposed to show no mark of change ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... St. Hospice, is a round tower, the remains of the fortifications razed by the Duke of Berwick in 1706. The more ancient crumbling masonry around belonged to a stronghold of the Saracens, whence they were driven in the 10th cent. "Afir-clad mound amid the savage wild bears on its brow a village, walled and isled in lone seclusion round its ancient tower. It was a post of Saracens, whose fate made them the masters for long years of lands remote and scattered o'er a hundred strands." —Guido ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... just like a block of rough, unpolished marble. Notice, in proof of this, how much Mr. Neill and Mr. M'Gregor [the tutor] know, and observe how little a man knows who is not a good scholar. On my way to Fochabers I passed through many thousand acres of Fir timber, and saw many deer running in ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of the picturesque, whether of man or nature. Four harsh, dominant tones, which never overlap or intermingle: blue sky, white snow, black fir-woods, green fields, and, if you insist upon having a fifth, then take—yes, take and keep—that theatrical pink Alpengluehen which is turned on at fixed hours for the delectation of gaping tourists, like a tap of strontium light or the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... AND THE PEOPLE.—Ancient Phoenicia embraced a little strip of broken sea-coast lying between the Mediterranean and the ranges of Mount Lebanon. One of the most noted productions of the country was the fine fir-timber cut from the forests that crowned the lofty ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The "cedar of Lebanon" holds a prominent place both in the history and the poetry of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... out, and the moors have been so wed examined, that none has been found of late.** Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them; and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree. (* See his Hist. of Staffordshire.) (** Old people have assured ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... down the tree, and then to saw it into plank, it must be acknowledged that it required great patience and perseverance even to make a wheelbarrow; but Humphrey was not only persevering, but was full of invention. He had built up a hen-house with fir poles, and made the nests for the hens to lay and hatch in, and they now had between forty and fifty chickens running about. He had also divided the pigsty, so that the sow might be kept apart from the other pigs; and they expected very soon to ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... they were encamped in a clump of fir trees with a huge fire of dry branches burning before them, its warmth ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... is the key-stone of my destiny. Betrayer I am now denounced, though, thank God, I am clear from the guilt! It only follows that I should be betrayed, and the evil prophecy will be fulfilled to the very letter." fir? ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... attention was completely strained, and my eyes filled with tears; every thing around was so wild and magnificent that man appeared as nothing, and I felt myself as if climbing the steps of the altar of the great temple of God. The trees, as we advanced, were in a large proportion fir and cedar; but many were ilex, and to my surprise I still saw, even in these wild Alpine tracts, many venerable Peepul trees, on which the white monkeys were playing their gambols. Tigers used to be very common and mischievous; but since the English have begun to frequent the country, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... special tools and sizes and colors of eyes needed), a jar of liquid cement, dry glue (for melting up for papier-mache), dry paper pulp, plaster of paris, Venetian turpentine, boiled linseed oil, boracic acid, some refined beeswax, a little balsam-fir, white varnish, turpentine, alcohol, benzine and a student's palette of tube oil colors (such as vermilion, rose madder, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow middle, zinc white, cobalt blue, ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... percent alcohol 2 quarts, and add to it the following articles: oils of sarsafras and hemlock, spirits of turpentine, balsam of fir, chloriform, tincture of catechu and guaiacum, of each 1 oz., oil of origanum 2 oz., oil of wintergreen 1/2 oz., and gum of camphor 1/2 oz. Let it all be well incorporated and you have the most excellent pain killer that was ever made. It is good for rheumatism, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... The fir trees on the point moved softly and whispered together. The whole world sang of spring and resurrection and life; and behind him Naomi Clark's dead face took on the peace that ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... screech comin' jist i' top o' tha blastin' roar; an' I ran, an' ran—na gaze-hound fleeter. An' we couldna raise it—me an' Tam, an' Job, an' Gideon o' the Mere, an' Moses Legh o' Wissen Edge, a' strong min and i' our prime. We couldna stir it, till Moses o' Wissen Edge he thoct o' pittin' fir-poles underneath—poles as was sharp an' slim i' thur ends, an' stout an' hard further down. Whin tha poles was weel thrust under we heaved, an' heaved, an' heaved, and got it slanted o' one side, and drawed him out; an' thin it were too late, too late! A' tha brist was crushit in—frushed ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... of needles like a porcupine's quills. It looks beautiful in the woods, but it wouldn't look so pretty in the parlor. And that cedar yonder is too thick to hang the presents and the ornaments on.—Yes, that hemlock is pretty, and that fir—but I guess we'll stick to the spruce. Let's find one that's shapely and just the ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... they don't belong to the Royal Forest; they belong to the farm-ground. In part the people do sow them with all manner of crops. Here, on the right hand, they have sown fir-cones (KIENAPFEL)'. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... half a dozen or so kept together for a time, and then, in joyous rivalry, shot out and in along the icy stretches between the granite, fir-clad islands that on that lake were so numerous. As further they advanced they became more and more separated, until Alec found himself alone with a young clerk from the trading post, who prided himself on his skill and ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... the weather very boisterous and a great sea, the boatswain wanted a boat, but finding no appearance of any coming aboard, brought a quarter-deck gun, a four pounder, to bear on the captain's hut, and fir'd two shot, which went just over the captain's tent. This day, being resolv'd to contrive something like a house, to secure us from the inclemency of the rain, and severity of the weather, we hawl'd up the cutter, and propping her up, we made a tolerable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... of the mound, Pencroft and his two companions set to work, with no other tools than their hands, to despoil of its principal branches a rather sickly tree, a sort of marine fir; with these branches they made a litter, on which, covered with grass and leaves, they could ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... they would scorn the services of the tug that went out to meet them and come ramping into the bight, all their white sails set and the glory of the sun upon them; as they swept past, far below The Laird, they would dip his house-flag—a burgee, scarlet-edged, with a fir tree embroidered in green on a field of white—the symbol to the world that here was a McKaye ship. And when the house-flag fluttered half-way to the deck and climbed again to the masthead, the soul ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... so early," thought Wayland. Fir trees stood out from the shifting gray haze. Among them, did he see shadows moving? They might be deer coming down to water. Involuntarily, he stepped behind some alder brush off the trail. Another flutter of wind thinning the turbid mist. There was a whiff of camp smoke. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sweet music heard, too soft for even the listening ear to catch by day. Every breath of summer wind that steals through the pine-forests wakes this music as it goes. The stiff spiny leaves of the fir and pine vibrate with the breeze, like the strings of a musical instrument, so that every breath of the night-wind, in a Norwegian forest, wakens a myriad of tiny harps; and this gentle and mournful music may be heard in gushes the whole night through. This music, of course, ceases when each ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... belief; and deep was the enmity between the large proprietors and the labourers around them. The oldest men and women, and children scarcely able to walk, were found trespassing day by day in all plantations, with bags, aprons, or pinafores, full of fir-cones, and wood snapped off from the trees, or plucked out of the hedges. There was no end to repairing the fences. There were unpleasant rumours, too, of its being no longer safe to walk singly in the more retired places. No such thing as highway robbery had ever before been ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a scanty plantation of straight-limbed fir-trees, that grew in rows and shook their sturdy winter foliage defiantly in the very teeth of the frosty breeze. A straight graveled carriage-drive ran between these straight trees across a smoothly kept lawn to a square red-brick mansion, every window of which winked and glittered ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... undulating plain rolling far away out of the range of vision. Scattered houses dotted the plain of Aluga, and the children came to stare, and brought us, with the shyness of wild deer, little baskets of strawberries, which in some places in the fir forests almost reddened the ground, and, having pushed the offerings in at the door, ran like wild creatures, as if to escape being noticed. Huge haystacks dotted the plain, and the population seemed prosperous. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... and your visit, if you pay me one, will begin the good associations with the place. And this place; you may be acquainted with it, not unlikely. It is a hamlet on a hilltop, surrounded by mountains covered with fir—being the ancient Cartusia whence our neighbors the monks took their name; the Great Chartreuse lies close by, an hour's walk perhaps: this hamlet is in their district, 'the Desert,' as they call it; their walks are confined to it, and you meet ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... be even harder to guess is that of the word spruce. We now use this word to describe a kind of leather, a kind of ginger beer, and a variety of the fir tree, and also in the same sense as "spick and span." The word used to be pruce, ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... Freddy. "I have always had such a longing to get folk to dance. But the funniest thing of all is this gun, for it brings down almost anything that I aim at, however far it may be off. Do you see that magpie yonder, sitting in the spruce fir? What will you give me if I hit ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... mountain is the rustic but not uncomfortable establishment of Sallires-les-Bains; pension per day, with baths, 9 frs. The treatment is called "Sudations rsineuses." The bath resembles a large oven, in which, after having been heated with resinous fir-wood, the patients sit as in a Turkish bath. Open from 15th June to 15th September. The landlord is likewise proprietor of a large part of Mt. Glandaz, whence he receives his supplies of fir-wood. On the top of a hill on the other side of the Drme is a similar establishment, called the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... and there the way was narrow, and the hedges so high that the hawthorns almost met overhead; and here and there, where tall fir trees lined the road on either side, it was very ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... The affair was regarded in a different light by Obwalden, and, under the name, it is true, of an embassy to mediate between the parties in the valley, a delegation was sent thither, accompanied, however, by twenty-eight young men adorned with fir-twigs, the defiant badge of the old party. Instead of reconciliation they brought fiercer quarrels. The friends of the Reformation were roused, when they ventured to call them heretics. Deputies from both sides now hastened to Bern, with ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... by the church," he thought, and he climbed the cliffs to look out. A line of fir-trees grew there, a comb of little misshapen ghoul-like things, stunted by the winds that swept over the seas in winter. In a fork of one of these a bird's nest of last year was still hanging; but it was now empty, songless, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... of white stone, thy young bride? When spring cometh, all the lakes will be aflood, all the trees will be clothed with verdure, heavenly birds will warble therein with voices angelic: in the desert thou wilt have none of this; thy food will be fir-bark, thy drink marsh-water." Nevertheless, "Joseph Tzarevitch" persists in his intention, and Mother Desert receives him at last. Most versions of this ballad are full of genuine poetry, but a few are rather ludicrous: for example, "Mother Desert" asks Joseph, "How canst thou leave thy sweet ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... all the Cedars and Firs, though she was sure her cousin from Lebanon would not come, but all the rest yielded easily to her entreaties. Mrs. Rose was delighted with the success of Lady Acacia and Mrs. Larch in their solicitations with the Forest and Fir Trees, whose majestic appearance and respectable characters she imagined would dignify her fete, never considering her own littleness might appear to them despicable; but from them she had nothing to fear, as they were too well bred to attend any meeting ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. Their words also were ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... spirit of the old man burst out again: it was the day when the gayly-decked fir bush was stuck upon the finished gable of the new schoolhouse.[R] The carpenters and masons came, dressed in their Sunday clothes, preceded by a band of music, to fetch "the master." The old fiddler, Hans, was the whole day long in high spirits—brisk and gay as in his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... "it's a poor leader who is afraid to take chances with his men. I'm going first"—he said fir-rst. "It's a small thing, as I've told you—a bit of skin and it's over. Go in smiling and come out smiling! Are you ready, sir?" ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fir, a kind of tree. fort, a stronghold. fur, soft hair. forte, one's strong point. faint, weak; languid. forth, forward. feint, a pretense. fourth, the next after third. fair, clear; handsome. fare, food; ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Certain trees, like the fir and the pine, flourish most in the mountains on account of the eager air, while in this region where it is more temperate the poplars and the willows thrive best. Again the arbute and the oak prefer ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... evident, because those waterish or volatil parts issuing out of the fired Wood, every way, not onely shatter and open the body, the better for the fire to enter, but issuing out in vapours or wind, they become like so many little aeolipiles, or Bellows, whereby they blow and agitate the fir'd part, and conduce to the more speedy and violent consumption or ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... cave in the fir-wood that slopes down the hills to the sea Still is haunted, perhaps, by young pirates as wicked as we: Though the fir with the magpie's big mud-plastered nest used to hide it so well, And the boys in the gang had to swear that they ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... whatever Mr. Asher may say to the contrary. I want to ask you a question, on the bare chance of your being able to answer it, but if you cannot, please do not take the trouble to write. The lateral branches of the silver fir often grow out into knobs through the action of a fungus, Aecidium; and from these knobs shoots grow vertically (753/2. The well-known "Witches-Brooms," or "Hexen-Besen," produced by the fungus Aecidium elatinum.) instead of horizontally, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... sound did come—when the wind swept over the fir-trees, and made the branches which hung over the caravan creak and sway to and fro—Rosalie trembled with fear. Poor child! the want of sleep the last few nights was telling on her, and had made her nervous and sensitive. At last she found the matches and lighted ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... The country is little more than a strip of rugged seacoast reaching northward to well within the Arctic Circle. Were it not for the influence of the "Gulf Stream drift," much of Norway would be a frozen waste for the greater part of the year. Vast forests of fir, pine, and birch still cover the greater part of the country, and the land which can be used for farming and grazing does not exceed eleven per cent of the entire area. But Norway, like Greece, [2] has an extent of shore-line out ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... weep. The leader declared that they might just as well be shot at once as sent to certain death. The expedition was absolutely impossible, not only from the strength of the current, but because the tributaries had brought into the Danube a great quantity of fir trees recently cut down in the mountains, which could not be avoided in the dark, and would certainly come against the boat and sink it. Besides, how could one land on the opposite bank among willows which would scuttle the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of church decoration may possibly have been suggested by a verse in the first lesson appointed to be read on Christmas eve—lx. Isaiah, 13. "The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary." Some years ago, at the commencement of the great Church revival, the Christmas decorations in churches were very elaborate, but they are now, as a rule, much quieter, and the only admissible evergreens are ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... for fully half-an-hour. As he reached the edge of a boggy stretch, Andy saw, directly beyond, the top of a house poking up among a grove of fir trees. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... Atlantic great shipbuilding plants arose by some superior magic of construction in ports where the building of ships had been a minor industry. In this Vancouver did not lag. Wooden ships could be built quickly. Virgin forests of fir and cedar stood at Vancouver's very door. Wherefore yards, capable of turning out a three-thousand-ton wooden steamer in ninety days, rose on tidewater, and an army of labor sawed and hammered and shaped to the ultimate confusion ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shining on the remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... dropping down behind the distant mountains, pine- and fir-clad. She had never looked upon so grand a scene and was filled with a tremulous sort of awe. Up there the St. Charles river, here the majestic St. Lawrence, islands, coves, green points running out in ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in it for ye by half after two with a bed and blanket for Moriarty, he bid me say on account he forgot to put it in the note. In the Sally Cove the boat will be there abow in the big lough, forenent the spot where the fir dale was cut last seraph by ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the mansion and the grounds are nearly as they were left by Washington, and the whole looks down upon the river, calling upon the passer-by for a thought upon the great man whose dust lies beneath the fir trees. After passing Mount Vernon, nothing of special interest was seen except the broad expanse of waters of this magnificent stream. A few large mansions, a few inferior houses, and now and then a little hamlet, appeared on the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... proper slope and adjustment of the breadths come by art, not chance; but Harper's Bazaar patterns are easily obtained by mail. The best tailors adjust the skirt while the wearer sits on a side saddle, and there is no really good substitute for this, for, although one my guess fairly well at the fir of the knee, nothing but actual trial will show whether or not, when in the saddle, the left side of the skirt hangs perfectly straight, concealing the right side, and leaving the horse's body visible below it. When your ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... flower-garden. To the left of this stood the village, the houses grouping prettily with the big church, and a little farther in this direction was an avenue of graceful birches. On the extreme left were fields, bounded by a dark border of fir-trees. Could the spectator have raised himself a few hundred feet from the ground, he would have seen that there were fields beyond the village, and that the whole of this agricultural oasis was imbedded in a forest stretching ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... flower. And they produce an immense quantity of pollen, as otherwise there would be little chance that any would reach the female flower. Every one must have noticed the clouds of pollen produced by the Scotch Fir. When, on the contrary, the pollen is carried by insects, the quantity necessary is greatly reduced. Still it has been calculated that a Peony flower produces between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 pollen grains; in the Dandelion, which is more specialised, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... the first of the summer Miss St. John had dismissed him earlier than usual, and he had wandered out for a walk. After a round of a couple of miles, he returned by a fir-wood, through which went a pathway. He had heard Mary St. John say that she was going to see the wife of a labourer who lived at the end of this path. In the heart of the trees it was growing very dusky; but when he came to a spot where they ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... of deodar, blue pine, fir, and oak in the Himalaya above the level of 5000 feet. The hill forests occupy the lower spurs, the Siwaliks in Hoshyarpur, etc., and the low dry hills of the north-west. A strong growth of chir pine (Pinus longifolia) is often ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... my horse, I must really come in first," began Mr. Francis, loosening his rein as they neared the fir-tree. ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... uniform. From its mouth to the first fork, is a growth of cedar, on either bank, intermixed with hemlock, pine, birch, and a few scattered maples. Thence to the third fork, denoted on the map, the growth is exclusively pine and fir. This river is sluggish and deep, and is navigable for boats of ten to fifteen tons burden, without any obstruction to the third forks. Its width is uniform, about sixty to ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... spring evening, Helen Caniper walked on the long road from the town. Making nothing of the laden basket she carried, she went quickly until she drew level with the high fir-wood which stood like a barrier against any encroachment on the moor, then she looked back and saw lights darting out to mark the streets she had left behind, as though a fairy hand ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... ground rose into a low hill, covered with oak and elm and ragged hickory trees. Here, for a space, there was little undergrowth, and save under the heaviest of the trees the ground was green with short, coarse grass. Danton took a hatchet from the canoe, and trimmed a fir tree, heaping armfuls of green boughs at the foot of an oak near the top of the slope. Over these he threw a blanket. The maid came slowly up the hill, in response to his call, and with a weary little smile of thanks she sank ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... timbers or ribs, which are five or six inches apart, and the stem and stern, are of whalebone; and they are covered with the skins of the seal or walrus sewed neatly together. When driftwood can be found, they employ it. The paddle is double, and made of fir, the edges of the blade being covered with hard bone to secure them ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... size reach up into the blue and give us shade. Ozone sweeps gently through the forest impregnated with the perfume of fir, ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... [Footnote: [Greek: oi] supplied by Reiske.] Sulla that bulletined the names of others, but Nero bulletined his own name? What victory less deserves the name than that by which one receives the olive, the laurel, the parsley, or the fir-tree garland, and loses the political crown? And why should one bewail these acts of his alone, seeing that he also by treading on the high-soled buskins lowered himself from his eminence of power, and by hiding behind the mask lost the dignity of his sovereignty to beg in the guise of a runaway ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... law. But I had other ideas regarding the whereabouts of the murderers. An old gentleman living on Mill Creek, east of Prineville and about thirty miles from the scene of the murders, had told me of the finding of a cabin concealed in a fir thicket and that it contained both provisions and horsefeed and had the appearance of having been much used, but that there was no trail leading to it. As soon as I learned of the murders I made up my mind that the murderers would go to ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... gone now, dying over fir-clad hills; but yet, before it went, poured a last flood of rich, red light, such as only the mountains and the valley boast, upon the beautiful sloping meadow, stretching its green and dewy sea in front ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... O people, on the shoulders of her vassals Throned like a queen to her palace on the height, Up the rocky steeps where the fir tree tassels Nod to her, and touch her with a subtle, vague delight, Like a whisper of home, like a greeting and a smile From the fir-tree walks and gardens, the wood-embowered castles In the north among the clansmen of Argyle. Now the sullen plunge of waves for many a mile Along the roaring Ottawa ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... and to Drift beyond them. Wild sweeps of fell and field faded on the sight to those dim and remote hues of distance only visible upon days of exceeding aerial brilliancy. Immediately beneath the eminence subtended ragged expanses of rainbow-colored heath and fern and furze spotted with small fir trees which showed blue against the tones of the moor. The heather's pink clearly contrasted with the paler shades of the ling, and an additional silvery twinkle of light inhabited the latter plant, its cause last year's ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... heard of a stork that when it met with a fir tree demurred as to its right to build its nest there; and I never heard of a coney yet that questioned whether it had a permit to run into the rock. Why, these creatures would soon perish if they were always doubting and fearing as to whether they had ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... Rosy as a (peach); (chestnut) colored hair; (tulips) like a (cherry); skin a pale (olive). In fact, she was as beautiful (as pen) or brush ever portrayed. The day he met her she wore a jacket of handsome (fir). He was of Irish descent, his name being (Willow) 'Flaherty. He was a (spruce) looking young fellow. Together they made a congenial (pear). But when did the course of true love ever run smooth? There was a third person to be considered. This ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... there would have been exceedingly pleasant under ordinary conditions but it was impossible not to chafe at the delay occasioned by the caravan. Traveling southward for two days over bare brown mountain-sides, their monotony unrelieved except by groves of planted pine and fir trees, we descended abruptly into the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... From the fir the faggot take, Keep it, heap it hard and dry, That the gathered flame may break Through the furnace, wroth and high. When the copper within Seethes and simmers—the tin Pour quick, that the fluid that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... disturb the solemn silence which reigned there at night, became on a sudden, animated, noisy, riotous, and resplendent with light. By the smoky flames of torches, which threw a red glare upon the dark fir-trees, and the white tombstones, many grave-diggers worked merrily, humming snatches of some favorite tune. Their laborious and hazardous industry then commanded a very high price; they were in such ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the pines, I wakened thirsty. My tin was standing by me, half full of water. 5 I emptied it at a draft. The stars were clear, colored and jewellike, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the packsaddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the 10 length of the tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... begin this story of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen angel called ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... women and children might be seen in the fields, with white pinched faces, gathering nettles to make soup, and digging for roots that were often little better than poison. They ground the bark of the fir trees, and mixed it with the little flour they could get; and they ate such beasts as never are eaten except ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... remember, The fir trees dark and high: I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heaven Than when I was a boy. 1472 HOOD: I ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... willingly after her. It was an alluring lane, even in November, for the ghostly gray branches of old trees met and interlocked close overhead, fir trees, mingling with the silver white trunks of slender birches, walled it either side, a whirring of invisible wings added to its apartness and the little stream, tumbling ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... some confirmation of the views suggested in the preceding question, my friend Captain Thomas pointed out to me, after the Address was given, that the name of the fort in St. Kilda was, as stated by Martin and Macaulay, "Dun Fir-bholg."] ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... edge of the clearing, under the boughs of the pine trees, a huge pile of trimmed logs of oak, chestnut, pine and fir, with a scarcely smaller heap of cut lengths of boughs and branches. Under a lean-to shed was a small store of cut fire-wood. In a corner of the same shed were four big cornel-wood mauls and eleven good iron wedges, not one of them bearing ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... ideas in a decorous manner. The old belief was retained, but in a mysterious or sublimated form. As symbols of the male, or active element in creation, the sun, light, fire, a torch, the phallus or lingam, an erect serpent, a tall straight tree, especially the palm or fir or pine, were adapted. Equally useful for symbolism were a tall upright stone (menhir), a cone, a pyramid, a thumb or finger pointed straight, a mask, a rod, a trident, a narrow bottle or amphora, a bow, an arrow, a lance, a horse, a bull, a lion, and many other animals conspicuous for masculine ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... wished he had taken, instead of a fir-tree, an apple-tree he had seen in October, full ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... atmosphere the airiest, most nebulous, fragile, ghostly simulacrums of themselves you could imagine in the realms of fairy-land. They seemed actually to float, to poise like cloud-shapes about to dissolve. And against them were cast the inky silhouettes of three fir-trees in the shadow near ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... a month later in the year when Janetta Colwyn, walking in the plantation near the Red House, came face to face with a man who was leaning against the trunk of a fir-tree, and had been waiting for her to approach. She looked astonished; but he was calm, though he smiled with pleasure, and held ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... room of the cottage was typical of the seashore—a long apartment, with field-stone fireplace and fumed fir trim. The stairway led up from the room and gave it an air of even greater spaciousness. Altogether it was most attractive. Mrs. Lewis, a slim, fine-featured woman, rose from her rocker as the ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... should have so altered in meaning during the course of centuries that its earlier significance has almost become lost. The word is associated in every one's mind with the density of tropical foliage or the dark grandeur of northern fir woods. Forest as a topographical suffix denotes a wild uncultivated tract of hilly or common land, more often than not quite bare of trees. The great expanse of Radnor Forest is well known to the writer and not even a thorn bush comes ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... vessel must sometimes be brought into port to rent. If she will not submit to be fastened to the dock, stripped of her rigging, and scrutinized by unwashed artificers, she may spring a leak when riding most proudly on the subject wave. Norway fir nor English oak can resist forever the insidious assaults of the seemingly conquered ocean. The man who clears the barnacles from the keel is more essential than he who hoists the pennant on the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... metallic matter in solution. He found that in the period of a few weeks, or sometimes even days, the organic bodies thus immersed were mineralised to a certain extent. Thus, for example, thin vertical slices of deal, taken from the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris), were immersed in a moderately strong solution of sulphate of iron. When they had been thoroughly soaked in the liquid for several days they were dried and exposed to a red-heat until the vegetable matter was burnt up and nothing remained but an oxide of iron, which was ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Boeotia mourns The loss of Dirce: Argos Amymone: Corinth laments Pirene. Nor yet safe Were rivers bounded by far distant shores, Tanais' midmost waves fume to the sky; And ancient Peneus smokes: Ismenos swift; Caicus, Teuthrantean; and the flood Of Phocis, Erymanthus: Xanthus too, Doom'd to be fir'd again: Lycormas brown; Maeander's sportive oft recircling waves; Mygdonian Melas; and the Spartan flood, Eurotas; with Euphrates burn: and burn, Orontes; and the rapid Thermodoon; Ganges; and Phasis; and the Ister swift. Alpheus boils; the banks of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... was gaily decorated for the Prom, the walls hidden with greenery, the rafters twined with the college colors and almost lost behind hundreds of small Japanese lanterns. The fraternity booths were made of fir boughs, and the orchestra platform in the middle of the floor looked like a small forest ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... still bays and foaming headlands; the towering cliffs of the Grand Menan; the innumerable islands that cluster about Penobscot Bay; and the romantic highlands of Mount Desert, down whose gorges the sea-fog rolls like an invading host, while the spires of fir-trees pierce the surging vapors like lances in the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... gyngener and Safroun and grynd hem in a morter and temper hem up wyth Almandys and do hem to the fir' and wan it boylyth wel do ther'to zolkys of Egg' sodyn and fat chese corvyn in gobettis and wan it is dressid in dischis strawe up on Powder of Galyngale and ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... is a cup-shaped structure, composed exteriorly of twigs, grass, and moss, and lined with stalks of maiden-hair fern and fine roots. It is usually placed high up in a fir tree. Colonel Rattray believes that the birds bring up two broods in the year. They lay first in May, and, as soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, a second nest is made. Thus in July both young birds at large and nests with eggs are likely to be seen. The ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... philanthropic object had been arranged on the Feast of Epiphany in the provincial town of N——. They had selected a broad part of the river between the market and the bishop's palace, fenced it round with a rope, with fir-trees and with flags, and provided everything necessary for skating, sledging, and tobogganing. The festivity was organized on the grandest scale possible. The notices that were distributed were of huge size and promised ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... seemed to consider herself as a girl like them. Then, living for the most part in town, she could talk about London matters to Dolly, and this was a great treat, while yet she had country tastes enough to suit Gillian, and was not in the least afraid of a long walk to the fir plantations to pick up Weymouth pine cones, and the still more ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... its rattling shingle, the sea-beach bears hazel-nuts and fir-tops—things which once belonged to the blue hills that rise far inland on the horizon. Dropped into the brooks of bosky glens, they have been swept into the river, to arrive, after many windings and long wanderings, at the ocean; to be afterwards washed ashore with shells and wreck and sea-weed. ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... to hear, New Falls of Water murmuring in his Ear: On rifted Rocks, the Dragon's late Abodes, The green Reed trembles, and the Bulrush nods. Waste sandy Vallies, once perplexd with Thorn, [8] The spiry Fir and shapely Box adorn: To leafless Shrubs the flow'ring Palms succeed, And od'rous Myrtle to the noisome Weed. The Lambs with Wolves shall graze the verdant Mead [9] And Boys in flow'ry Bands the Tyger lead; The Steer and Lion at one Crib shall meet, And harmless Serpents ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... brief courtship lay behind them, dozing in the golden stillness of late September: before them a footpath climbed through a forest of pine and fir to the Eiffel Alp Hotel; and on all sides multitudinous mountains flung heroic contours outward and upward, to a galaxy of peaks, that glittered diamond-bright upon a turquoise sky. A mule, ready-saddled, champed his bit at a respectful distance from the trio: for Lenox, an indefatigable ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by many waters. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the plane trees were not as his branches; nor was any tree like unto him in beauty: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... for some hours without waking. Then he began to dream that he was once more fighting a duel, that the antagonist standing facing him was Herr Klueber, and on a fir-tree was sitting a parrot, and this parrot was Pantaleone, and he kept tapping with ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the beauty of the nature which surrounds him. A breeze springs up, the weather will change; clouds and waves will succeed sunshine and calm; the fishermen must get them home again. No; it is but the gentle breath of spring, after all; it scarcely stirs the stout fir-trees, and the waves are hardly heard to break upon the shore. The men may go forth in safety. The fisherman then relates how, while he was wondering at the view, flowers began to rain from the sky, and sweet music ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... years ago," my friend begins, "that this nest was made. There came one morning early in April two robins to the big fir-tree in front of my window. One of them had, as sure as you live, a club-foot, and he hobbled about upon it in a very lively manner, and I know that it was this one—Mr. Robin, I call him—that fixed upon the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and till the middle of the next forenoon, concealing the landscape almost entirely; but we had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly. Near Bangor, the fence-posts, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... least of the species of animals now existing have been in existence 30,000 years, and have not undergone the slightest change in that period." But we can go still further back, and demonstrate the permanence of vegetable structure. Hugh Miller says: "The oak, the birch, the hazel, the Scotch fir, all lived, I repeat, in what is now Britain, ere the last great depression of the land. The gigantic northern elephant and rhinoceros, extinct for untold ages, forced their way through the tangled branches; ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... predominantly of pinyon pine, Pinus edulis Engelm., and Utah juniper, Juniperus osteosperma (Torr.) Little. More sheltered areas along the North Rim and in most of the canyons support scattered small stands of Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii (Merb.) Franco. These are the "spruce trees" of Spruce Tree Canyon. An occasional ponderosa pine, Pinus ponderosa Laws., represents a vestige of more montane species of plants and animals in the Park. The ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... money, the two partners had built new houses for themselves. Outside Highmarket, on its western boundary, rose a long, low hill called Highmarket Shawl; the slope which overhung the town was thickly covered with fir and pine, amidst which great masses of limestone crag jutted out here and there. At the foot of this hill, certain plots of building land had been sold, and Mallalieu had bought one and Cotherstone another, ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher |
