"Mussel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mussel, n. Some Australasian species of this mollusc are— Mytilus latus, Lamark., Victoria, Tasmania, and New Zealand; M. tasmanicus, Tenison Woods, Tasmania; M. rostratus, Dunker, Tasmania and Victoria; M. hirsutus, Lamark., Tasmania, South Australia, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... as well as aquatic birds, detach the shell-fish from the rocks, and mount with them into the air: shells thus carried are said to be frequently found on the very summit even of the Table Mountain. In one cavern at the point of Mussel Bay," he adds, "I disturbed some thousands of birds, and found as many thousands of living shell-fish scattered on the surface of a heap of shells, that for aught I know, would have filled as many thousand wagons." The story, therefore, of the ancient philosopher ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... far alone, but had frequent opportunities of walking there and gathering ferns, foxgloves, and primroses, which grew on the mossy banks of a little stream that ran into the sea. The bed of this stream or burn was thickly covered with the freshwater mussel, which I knew often contained pearls, but I did not like to kill the creatures to get ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... muck mark the sites of shallow lakelets or fresh-water swamps. The various strata also contain some remains of the countless myriads of animals and plants which live upon the surface of the plain as it is in process of building. River shells such as the mussel, land shells such as those of snails, the bones of fishes and of such land animals as suffer drowning at times of flood or are mired in swampy places, logs of wood, and the stems and leaves of plants are examples of the variety of the remains of land and fresh-water organisms which ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known that he couldn't know; and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to have known that ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... twenty feet, the depth on either side of my canoe as she pointed down the stream thirty-one inches, and the speed of the current two and one-tenth miles to the hour. The first four miles of the infant's course is swift and crooked, over a bed of red sand and gravel, thickly interspersed with mussel and other small shells, and bordered with reeds. Through these, at two points, we beat our way on foot, dragging the canoes through unmade channels. Indeed, nearly all of these first four miles demanded frequent leaps from the boats to direct their swift and crooked course, until we came to a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... one of treading out eels from the brook with his feet and catching them with his hands. And every ship brought in either cod-hooks and lines, mackerel-hooks and lines, herring-nets, seines, shark-hooks, bass-nets, squid-lines, eel-pots, coils of rope and cable, "drails, barbels, pens, gaffs," or mussel-hooks. ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... learning that I had already taken up my quarters on board, insisted on my occupying a chamber in his country-house in the Serra Allegri. Besides this, he introduced me to several families, where I passed many very pleasant hours, and had the opportunity of inspecting some excellent collections of mussel-shells and insects. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... in one of the pinnas, the interior of which is sooty, shot with iridescent purple, and since the pearl, whether produced by oyster, mussel, pinna, or window-shell, is generally more brilliant than the containing shell, that of the black pinna, with the high lights of its environment concentrated, may be a gem of surpassing novelty and beauty. But the habitual product of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... The place where the mussel shells were usually to be found was not far from the tents, but like most children in going to one place Flossie and Freddie took the longest way. They were in no hurry, the sun was shining brightly, and it was such fun to wander ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... (i.e. creatures of the mussel, cockle, and oyster class, which receive their name from the body being protected by a double shell, one valve of which is placed on each side) have their two shells united by one or two powerful muscles, which pass directly across ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... exclaimed Junkie, almost whimpering, as he held up the handle of his knife in one hand, and in the other a mussel with a broken ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... student to witness it himself with a microscope having a 1/4-inch or 1/6-inch objective. Very fine cilia may be seen by gently scraping the roof of a frog's mouth (the cells figured are from this source), or the gill of a recently killed mussel, and mounting at once in water, or, better, in a very weak ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... much pleased and showed them to the wise man. He said: "Of the three great pearls one is a divine wishing-pearl of the third class, and two are black dragon-pearls of medium quality. Of the seven smaller pearls two are serpent-pearls, and five are mussel-pearls. The remaining pearls are in part sea-crane pearls, in part snail and oyster-pearls. They do not approach the great pearls in value, and yet few will be found to ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... animal which belongs to a much lower class of mollusca—namely, to the class called Lamellibranchiata, from the plate-like (or lamellar) structure of the gill. To that class also belongs the scallop (Pecten), the mussel (Magilus), the fresh-water mussel (Anodon), the razor-shell (Solen), the cockle (Cardium), species with a long fleshy tube such as Mya, stone-perforating shells such as Pholas, and the well-known wood-boring "ship-worm" ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... with rocks and swamps, but at the head of the bay appeared richer. A few natives were seen, who ran away when observed, and though one or two spears were thrown no damage was done to any one. Large heaps of oyster, mussel, and cockle shells were found, amongst them, says Cook, "being some of the largest oyster shells I ever saw." An account, said to have been obtained from the blacks, published in a work on Australian ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... about six inches long. They were made of very hard wood, and were much too heavy to wield with one hand. I also found a number of fishing lines, made from grass, with hooks attached of various sizes, made from mussel shells. ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... shell-fish, on the other hand, the principle of armour-plating has its greatest development. It is assuredly a long and obscure way that leads from the ancestral type of animal we have been describing to the headless and shapeless mussel or oyster. Such a degeneration is, however, precisely what we should expect to find in the circumstances. Indeed, the larva, of many of the headless Molluscs have a mouth and eyes, and there is a very common type of larva—the trochosphere—in the Mollusc world which approaches ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... propagation is by budding and grafting. The stocks on which the different varieties are grafted are raised from stones. Mr Pearson states that six kinds of stocks are used in the best nurseries—i.e. the common plum, the Brussels, the Mussel, the Brompton, the Damas Noir or St Julien, and the Myrobalan. The secret of success is to work the stock with a variety which is of common parentage. Nearly all plums will grow upon the common plum stock, though some of them ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... to stand our friend in his own fashion, but he says they care not the value of an empty mussel-shell for the French, and no more for the Dey of Algiers than I do for the Elector of Hanover. He has told them that M. l'Abbe and Mademoiselle are brother and daughter to a great Bey—but it is little they care for that. Holy Virgin, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bari; is well built, and contains various interesting buildings, including a cathedral and castle; is connected with the mainland on the E. by a six-arched bridge, and by an ancient aqueduct on the W.; some textile manufactures are carried on, and oyster and mussel fisheries and fruit-growing are important; as the ancient Tarentum its history goes back to the time when it was the chief city of Magna Graecia; was captured by the Romans in 272 B.C., and after the fall of the Western Empire was successively in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... young readers among that beautiful collection of the hawthorn family and its affinities, which flourish on the north side of Kensington Gardens.] were voted delicious, and the pure water most refreshing, that they drank, for lack of better cups, from a large mussel-shell which Catharine had picked up among the weeds and ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... the greed of getting, and with no possible expectation of advantage. It might be well enough to catch bees in hollyhocks, and imprison them in underground cells with flowers for them to make honey from; but why accumulate fire-flies and even dor-bugs in small brick pens? Why heap together mussel-shells; and what did a boy expect to do with all the marbles he won? You could trade marbles for tops, but they were not money, like pins; and why were pins money? Why did the boys instinctively choose them for their currency, and pay everything with them? There were certain very rigid ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... pocket knife is the best model I have yet found and, in connection with the sheath knife, is all sufficient for camp use. It is not necessary to take table cutlery into the woods. A good fork may be improvised from a beech or birch stick; and the half of a fresh-water mussel shell, with a split stick by way of handle, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... down de riber, and we had to fite de Injuns long time at de place dey calls Mussel Shoals. Some ob de boats got on de ground, and one on em we had to leave wid de hogs on it. De bullets come from the Injuns so hot dat we all had to get out into de water and go to anudder boat and get away from dar. Dem was the wust Injuns I ebber seed. But we got away and we runned all night. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... inches has been found inside a codfish at Newcastle. We expect that if the truth was known the mussel snapped at the cod-fish and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... of it. Travelling is not good for us—we travel so seldom. If the Sun be Hell, it is not for the fire, but for the sempiternal motion of that miserable Body of Light. How much more dignified leisure hath a mussel glued to his unpassable rocky limit, two inch square! He hears the tide roll over him, backwards and forwards twice a-day (as the d——d Salisbury Long Coach goes and returns in eight and forty hours), ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... a big mussel on a rock close by him, 'the magic stone that the Magician does his enchantments with. He dropped it out of his mouth and I shut my shells on it—and now he's sweeping up and down the sea like a mad fish, looking for it—for he knows he can never change into anything else unless he gets it ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... declare, is that the kind of mussel they've been finding pearls in?" demanded Steve Dowdy, as he took one of the long-shaped bivalves in his eager hands, the better to ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie
... move just as if they were alive. All the fish, big and little, glide among the branches just as, up here, birds glide through the air. The palace of the Merman King lies in the very deepest part; its walls are of coral and the long pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells which open and shut with the lapping of the water. This has a lovely effect, for there are gleaming pearls in every shell, any one of which would be the ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... sandhills. Their habitations are very numerous on the creek so they must be pretty strong in number here. Lots of fish still in the holes; appear to be multa multa principally. We got some from the two natives at our first camp on the creek, and lots of mussel shells about their ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... mussel shells in my boat for Mr. Blennerhatchet. Would you like to see 'em? 'Union-idea,' he says they are. He's a queer customer, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... conceptions, that "SPACE had a long-legged stool," on to which a head fell, and grew into a companion for Space. Yet another myth says that the god Tangaloa existed in space, and made heaven and earth, and sent down his daughter, a snipe. Man he made out of the mussel-fish. So confused are the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... a dry flat opened out, reached only by gales and the highest of the spring tides, a wilderness of fine sand, hot and deep, its surface studded with the opaque blue of round pebbles and mussel shells. It looked too arid to support life, but sea-rocket with fleshy emerald stems and lilac flowers was scattered about. Nothing moved in the waste but an impulsive small butterfly, blue as a fragment of sky. The ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... for me to be on land, for in the moonlight, which bathed everything in silver, were to be seen troops of fays hurrying to the festival. Some sailed along the shore in mussel shells, others were on the backs of black swans whose bills looked like coral, and others were skimming along with their own gauzy wings, or lolling luxuriously on the ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... with the seeds of the wild grape, and beautifully carpeted with the lichens from the beech and maple trees. The beds were made of a great variety of mosses, woven together with the utmost delicacy of workmanship. There was a bath-tub made of a mussel-shell, cut into ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... fingers stretched out straight on either side. Had it not been for the light which struck down on the head, the body lay in so natural a position that the man might have been supposed to be asleep. Close by was a small heap of limpet and mussel shells, and within his reach were two bottles—one was empty, but the other was full of water. Another object attracted their attention. It was a piece of slate, on which were scratched several zigzag marks, ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... from a species of mussel. If made of the hard mussel he lives long—it is difficult for him to die. But if he happens to be made of the poisonous mussel, he is fragile, easily upset, and does ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... of the afternoon under water, coming up to breathe now and then at unexpected moments, with a stone in his mouth that he had picked up from the slimy bottom ten or twelve feet below—or a weed—or a dead mussel. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... thrown across it prevented the escape of the waters, which filled the reservoir more or less completely according to the season. It never became empty, and several species of shellfish flourished in it—among others, a kind of large mussel which the inhabitants generally used as food, which with dates, milk, oil, coarse bread, a few vegetables, and from time to time a fowl or a joint of meat, made up their scanty fare. Other things were of the same primitive character. The tools ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of man as a seeker, we are not separating him from the rest of living things. All life seeks, and the more mobile a living thing is the more it seeks. A sessile mussel chained to a rock seeks little but the fundamentals of nutrition and generation and these in a simple way. An animal that builds habitations for its young, courts its mate, plays, teaches and fights, may do nothing more than seek nutrition and generation, but ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Salt and Water; but as for the Mussels, they must every one be carefully look'd into, and discharg'd from that part which is call'd the Beard, and also particular care must be taken to examine whether there are any Crabs in them, for they are very poisonous, and as they lie in the Mouth of the Mussel, may easily be discover'd; they are commonly as large as a Pea, and of the shape of a Sea-Crab, but are properly Sea-Spiders: the Mussels however where you find them, are not unwholesome, and it is only the eating of this little Animal, which has been the occasion of People's swelling after ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... children all carried a mussel shell in their hands to eat with. The food was put on large trays and the children all gathered around and ate, dipping up their food with their mussel shells which they used for spoons. Those who refused to eat or those who were ailing in any way had to come back to the great house for their meals ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... into a buttered baking-dish with chopped onions, parsley, salt, pepper, a tablespoonful of butter and two cupfuls of cider. Add also a little mussel or oyster liquor if at hand. Bake for half an hour in a moderate oven, basting as needed. Drain the sauce, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter cooked with an equal quantity of flour, add more butter and a squeeze of lemon-juice. Pour the sauce ...
— How to Cook Fish • Olive Green
... came to him in the way of a thought was that he was different from his parents—that they couldn't see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... there were curious shell-fish, some creeping like snails with their heavy houses upon their backs, others were oyster and mussel like, anchored and lying with their valvular shells half open; while a couple of yards away lay one monster about two feet long, a bivalve with ponderous shells, whose edges were waved in three folds, and a glance inside whose opening showed a lining of the ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... pearls being found in the counties of Caernarvon and Cumberland, and in the British sea. Mr. Pennant, in his "Tour in Scotland in 1769," takes notice of a considerable pearl fishery out of the fresh- water mussel, in the vicinity of Perth, from whence 10,000l. worth of pearls were sent to London from 1761 to 1764. It was, however, almost exhausted when he visited the country. See also the fourth volume of Mr. Pennant's Br. Zool. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... relates to the past, to recognize their true significance. Steenstrup noticed, in the north of Europe, that these mounds consisted nearly entirely of the shells of edible species, such as the oyster, mussel, and LITTORINA LITTOREA; that they were all those of adult specimens, but not all subject to similar conditions of existence or native to the same waters. The kitchen-middings, or heaps of kitchen refuse — such was the name given to these shell-mounds — could not have been the natural ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... Chara, a fern, and some flowering plant; among animals we examine such things as an Amoeba, a Vorticella, and a fresh-water polype. We dissect a star-fish, an earth-worm, a snail, a squid, and a fresh-water mussel. We examine a lobster and a cray-fish, and a black beetle. We go on to a common skate, a cod-fish, a frog, a tortoise, a pigeon, and a rabbit, and that takes us about all the time we have to give. The purpose of this course is not to make skilled dissectors, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Black Bear took certain treasures that he gave to the four little Bunkers who visited his wikiup. He even sent some fresh-water mussel shells, polished like mother-of-pearl, to the absent Margy and Mun Bun, of whom ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... too, for Captain Jim took charge of Dick frequently, in order to set her free. They went boating on the harbor and up the three pretty rivers that flowed into it; they had clambakes on the bar and mussel-bakes on the rocks; they picked strawberries on the sand-dunes; they went out cod-fishing with Captain Jim; they shot plover in the shore fields and wild ducks in the cove—at least, the men did. In the evenings they rambled in the low-lying, daisied, shore fields under ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is fine the harbour is blue and calm, with little winds and ripples purring over it, and the mainland shores look like long blue lands where fairies dwell. Away out over the bar, where the big ships go, it is always hazy and pearl-tinted, like the inside of the mussel shells. Claude says he is going to sail out there when he grows up. I would like to too, but Claude says I can't because I'm a girl. It is dreadfully inconvenient to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a saddened look around; But he felt new joy his bosom swell, When glittering on the shadowed ground He saw a purple mussel-shell; Thither he ran, and he bent him low, He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow, And he pushed her over the yielding sand Till he came; to the verge of the haunted land. She was as lovely a pleasure-boat As ever fairy had paddled in, For she glowed with purple paint without, And ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Sir, was't not the Wise-woman of Brainford? Fal. I marry was it (Mussel-shell) what would you with her? Simp. My Master (Sir) my master Slender, sent to her seeing her go thorough the streets, to know (Sir) whether one Nim (Sir) that beguil'd him of a chaine, had the chaine, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... The insularity of their citadel has worked in the same direction, by focussing their interests upon the purely human. That inland sea, again: were it not an ideal breeding-place for shell-fish, the Tarentines would long ago have learnt to vary their diet. Thirty centuries of mussel-eating cannot but impair the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... for instance, getting out unobserved one day to my father's little garden, and seeing there a minute duckling covered with soft yellow hair, growing out of the soil by its feet, and beside it a plant that bore as its flowers a crop of little mussel shells of a deep red colour. I know not what prodigy of the vegetable kingdom produced the little duckling; but the plant with the shells must, I think, have been a scarlet runner, and the shells themselves the papilionaceous blossoms. I have a distinct recollection, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... everything with plates of metal. It was from [218] Phoenicia that the costly material in which early Greek art delighted actually came—ivory, amber, much of the precious metals. These the adventurous Phoenician traders brought in return for the mussel which contained the famous purple, in quest of which they penetrated far into all the Greek havens. Recent discoveries present the island of Cyprus, the great source of copper and copper- work in ancient times, as the special mediator between the art of Phoenicia and Greece; and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... he backyard and they's built like half circle. I grows big 'nough to hoe and den to plow. We has to be ready for the field by daylight and the conk was blowed, and massa call out, 'All hands ready for the field.' At 11:30 he blows the conk, what am the mussel shell, you knows, 'gain and we eats dinner, and at 12:30 we has to be back at work. But massa wouldn't 'low no kind of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... and the fatty mess then left for a few hours to be heated by the sun, on which the oil separates and rises to the surface. The floating oil is afterwards skimmed off with long spoons, made by tying large mussel-shells to the end of rods, and purified over ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the bank of the river he noticed a pile of empty shells of the fresh-water Mussel, or Clam. The shells were common enough, but why all together and marked in the same way? Around the pile on the mud were curious tracks and marks. There were so many that it was hard to find a perfect one, but when he did, remembering ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... States Fish Commission. Professor Goode, in his review of the work accomplished by this body, writes, INTER ALIA:—"The important distinction between the extermination of a species and the destruction of a fishery should be noted. In the case of fixed animals like the sponge, the mussel, and the oyster, the colonies or beds may be practically exterminated, exactly as a forest may be cut down. The preservation of the oyster beds is a matter of vital importance to the United States, for oyster fishing unsupported by oyster ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... the deficiency. They fastened a limpet to the end of their lines, and, heaving it into deep water, the fish readily gorges it; when, before he can bring it up again, they pull him out, and thus they get their fish without losing their mussel. ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... like a hired assassin weakening on the verge of a crime. The next instant I saw the lantern hidden on the mussel rocks ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... to her lips some cordial which she had poured into a mussel shell, "It is buanaba, a very delicate restorative made in Turkey, pray try to take it, it will ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... was with this upper part of the eye they saw us; should some sly fish, from below the surface of the water, make a rush at one, the beetle sees the enemy with his under eye and avoids him. What have you caught now, Jack? fish him out whatever it is. Oh! a fresh-water mussel, and a very fine specimen too; there are plenty of these fellows in the canal all the way from here to Newport. "Are they good to eat, papa?" asked Willy. I never tried one, but, from having often dissected ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... Thunderstorm. Carry boats over shoals. New birds. Reach Hopeless. Progress of boats arrested. Reconnoitre the river. Prospect from View Hill. Preparation for pedestrian excursion. Leave Reach Hopeless to explore the upper part of the river. Native village. Squall. Mussel Bend. Meet Natives. Successful fishing. Party distressed. Thirsty Flat. Tortoise Reach. Singular appearance of the ranges. Effect of the great heat. One man knocked up. Approach of natives. Preparation for defence. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes |
