"Moult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "I'll moult all my feathers," so he moulted all his pretty feathers. Now there was a little girl walking below, carrying a jug of milk for her brothers and sisters' supper, and when she saw the poor little bird ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Milldam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spyglasses. They come rustling through ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... buff. But his female companion has no bright tints; she is attired in dull black and grey, which is an advantage to her, helping to her concealment at the period of nesting. About July the old teals moult, and, losing for a time their quill feathers, they are unable to fly, though able to walk and swim. Thus deprived of their fine feathers, the male birds are less handsome, and resemble the females till spring comes. Often in September and October teals assemble to migrate, flocks of them flying hundreds ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... du Commandement de lui estoit venue a lui, et qu'elle le feroit le plus grand Seigneur du Monde, et qu'il fut ordonne que tretou ceulx qui lui desobeiroient fussent occis sans mercy, et que St Michel et plusieurs anges lui avoient baille une Couronne moult riche ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Fredegond saw her enemy delivered into her hand. "La femme," say the chronicles of St. Denis (III. 3 and 4) "pensa de la besogne la ou le sens de son seigneur faillait, qui selon la coutume de femme, moult plus est de grand engieng a malfaire que n'est homme." By some diabolical trick of fascination she persuaded a pair of assassins to penetrate into Sigebert's camp, armed with a "scramasax" she had herself ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... quistrent; Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie. Il me lessrent por mes enfanz qu'il virent. —Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile. Et cil respont:—Ce vos sai-ge bien dire Por un denier .ii. granz pains i vismes; La denere vaut .iii. en autre vile: Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empirie. —Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie, Ms des paiens chevaliers de la vile, Del rei ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... her through the moult, till her castings all were pure, And have steep'd and clean'd each gorge ere 'twas fix'd upon the lure; While now to field or forest glade I can my falcon bring Without a pile of feather wrong, on body, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... which, when in good preservation, is much sought after by connoisseurs, is entitled Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, contenant Cent Histoires Nouveaux, qui sont moult plaisans a raconter en toutes bonnes compagnies par maniere de joyeuxete. Paris, Antoine Verard. Sans date d'annee d'impression; en folio gotique. See ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... upon the young buds of their native bush, where they pass a sluggish and uneventful existence in sucking up the juice from the veins on the one hand, and secreting honey-dew upon the other. Four times they moult their skins, these moults being in some respects analogous to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into chrysalis and butterfly. After the fourth moult, the young aphides attain maturity; and then ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... the tomb of the Duchess of Gordon. A quadrille is but still life put into motion. Our faces, like our summers, want sunshine. Old Froissart complained in his day, that the English, after their fashion, "s'amusent moult tristement." A ball-room is merely "Arithmetic and the use of figures taught here." A young lady in a quadrille might answer,—"I am too busy to laugh,—I am making my calculations." And yet ours is not a marrying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Neither power nor wisdom, though infinite both, could constitute a God worthy of the worship of a human soul; and the worship of such a God must sink to the level of that fancied divinity. Small wonder is it then that the lyric should now droop its wings and moult the feathers of its praise. I do not say that God's more glorious attributes are already forgotten, but that the tendency of the Christian lyric is now to laudation of power—and knowledge, a form of the same—as the essential of Godhead. This indicates no recalling of metaphysical ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... The word seems originally to have meant to moult, or shed the feathers; and as a noun, "the place, whether it be abroad or in the house, in which the hawk is put during the time she casts, or doth change her feathers" (R. Holmes's Academy of Armory, etc.). Spenser has both noun and verb; as in F. Q. i. 5. 20: "forth ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... ascend. A tangled mass of twisted living rattan, is therefore, a sign that at some former period a large tree has fallen there, though there may be not the slightest vestige of it left. The rattan seems to have unlimited powers of growth, and a single plant may moult up several trees in succession, and thus reach the enormous length they are said sometimes to attain. They much improve the appearance of a forest as seen from the coast; for they vary the otherwise monotonous tree-tops with ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... make our poultry pay for the trouble and expense of keeping them will depend on the question of winter eggs. It is contrary to the natural habits of chickens to lay in winter, and if left to themselves they will practically stop laying when they begin to moult or shed their feathers in the fall, and will not begin again until the warm days of spring. When eggs are scarce it will be a great treat to be able to have our own supply instead of paying a high ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... in France where the culture of the silk-worm is the principal industry of the inhabitants. In 1849 a strange disease, called pebrine, broke out among the worms; they were unable to moult and died before the cocoons were spun. It spread in the most alarming manner until, from a crop with an average of one hundred and thirty million francs a year, the production of silk went to less than fifty millions. The silk cultivators sent for eggs—seed is the technical name—to Italy and Greece, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... might squeal and squawk At having licked the British bird (Lord) HAWKE. But when that HAWKE his brood had "pulled together," That Eagle found it yet might "moult a feather." Go it, ye friendly-fighting fowls! But know 'Tis only "Roosters" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... it should first devour the egg on which it floats; it can at this period be nourished by no other food. In acting in this way it also frees itself from a voracious being who would require much food. This first repast lasts about eight days, at the end of which it undergoes a moult, takes another form, and begins to float on the honey, gradually devouring it, for at this stage it becomes able to assimilate honey. Slowly its development is completed, with extremely interesting details with which we need not now concern ourselves. The larva of Sitaris is then in conditions ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... enjoyment of the English temperament, and, on one occasion, piquantly quotes the remark of Froissart on our Saxon progenitors: "They took their pleasures sadly, as was their fashion; ils se divertirent moult tristement a la mode ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... John riding the wilderness with his murdering crew! May the Lord protect and aid all women from such birds o' passage and of prey! And I thought I had seen the pin-feathers of some such plumage on this man Boyd. But he may moult to a prettier colour. I hope so—but in my heart I dare not believe it. For he is of that tribe of men who would have their will of every pretty petticoat they notice. Some are less unscrupulous than others, that is the only difference. And he seems still to harbour a few scruples, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. Truly, the imago state of man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained, and of such there ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Guernsey specimen of a uniform fawn colour, and another rather curiously marked with grey, the tail-feathers being striped across grey and black. This is a young bird recently out of the nest, and I have no doubt would, after a moult or two, have come to its proper plumage, probably after the first moult, as seems to me frequently the case with varieties of this sort, though I have known a Blackbird show a good deal af white year after year in the winter, resuming its proper plumage in the summer; and Mr. Jago mentions ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the underside of the lower leaves of the pecan trees. These eggs hatch in less than a week, and the colonies of young caterpillars at first feed upon the undersides of the leaves. They cast their skins four times, each time increasing in size and changing their color somewhat. The last moult, and sometimes the last two, take place on the trunk of the tree, and the clusters of discarded skins frequently remain for several months afterwards. After the last moult they ascend the trees, remain feeding for a short while, ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... where they're strong, You carrion Double-Head! I hear them sound a gong In Heaven above!"—I said. "My God, what feathers won't you moult For this!" says I: and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Et tuit cil de leans veoient La lance blanche et le fer blanc. S'issoit une gote de sang Del fer de la lance au sommet, Et jusqu'a la main au vaslet Coroit cele gote vermoille.... A tant dui autre vaslet vindrent Qui chandeliers an lors mains tindrent De fin or ovrez a neel. Li vaslet estoient moult bel Qui les chandeliers aportoient. An chacun chandelier ardoient Dous chandoiles a tot le mains. Un graal antre ses dous mains Une demoiselle tenoit, Qui avec les vaslets venoit, Bele et gente et bien acesmee. Quant cle fu leans antree Atot le graal qu'ele tint Une si granz clartez i vint Qu'ausi ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... (cover) &c 223; denude, bare, strip; disfurnish^; undress, disrobe &c (dress, enrobe) &c 225; uncoif^; dismantle; put off, take off, cast off; doff; peel, pare, decorticate, excoriate, skin, scalp, flay; expose, lay open; exfoliate, molt, mew; cast the skin. Adj. divested &c v.; bare, naked, nude; undressed, undraped; denuded; exposed; in dishabille; bald, threadbare, ragged, callow, roofless. in a state of nature, in nature's garb, in the buff, in native buff, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... OUT OF THE OCEAN WAVE, etc. There was an ancient belief, that once in ten years the eagle would soar into the empyrean, and plunging thence into the sea, would molt his plumage and renew his youth with a fresh ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser |
