"Ornithologist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little Sparrow, the Socialis; yet who that has observed him sitting by the wayside, and repeating, with devout attitude, that fine sliding chant, does not recognize the neglect? Who has heard the Snow-Bird sing? Not the ornithologist, it seems; yet he has a lisping warble very savory to the ear, I have heard him indulge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... French lady's maid had given her in exchange for silence over a little incident that scarcely calls for mention. The first return of her mistress to Apsley, then, was a sign of the nearing season—the lonely swallow that is seen scudding through the first break in the year by some enthusiastic ornithologist and recorded in the next morning's edition of the Times. She kept a diary, in fact, did Mrs. Butterick, and in about the middle of April of every year, might be noticed the comment, "Madame arrived—first time this year—" and then, more than probably the addition, "House-party on the ——" ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... have paid attention to the singing of birds, know well that their voice, energy, and expression differ as widely as in man; and agreeably to this remark, Mr. Wilson (the celebrated ornithologist) says he was so familiar with the notes of an individual wood thrush, that he could recognise him from all his fellows the moment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... to say such a "oiseau" as our speaker has never before been seen or heard of by any naturalist or ornithologist. Her figure and cloak were both inimitable. She gave such a tragi-comic account of her sufferings last year, during the time of the retreat, and in 1814 when the Russians were there, that while she laughed with one eye and cried with the other, we were almost ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... "conservation." Even the child will wish to know—and there is grave need that he should know—why many people, and societies of people, are trying to save what it has so long been the common custom to waste. Boys and girls living in the Eastern States will be interested to know who is Ornithologist to the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, and what his duties are; those in the West will like to know why a publication called "California Fish and Game" should have for its motto, "Conservation of Wild Life through Education"; those between the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... lasted till the time of his marriage at the age of twenty-eight; his business career which followed, lasting ten or more years, and consisting mainly in getting rid of the fortune his father had left him; and his career as an ornithologist which, though attended with great hardships and privations, brought him much happiness and, long before the end, substantial ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... flying overhead, and Muscovy ducks sweeping past with whizzing wings, and flocks of the great wood-ibis sailing in the air on noiseless pinions, and hundreds of other birds that it would require an ornithologist to name; and myriads of insects,—especially ants and spiders, great and small,—that no entomologist could chronicle in a lifetime; all these were heard and seen at once; while of the animals that were ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... finds here not only all the formations of rock found on the earth, but all the geological periods and ages. The botanist finds here about all the plants, shrubs and flowers; the zoologist finds most all the animals and the ornithologist finds most all the birds, while the ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... any business, my dear. My occupation and amusement is collecting specimens for my collection. I am an entomologist and ornithologist, if you know what those big ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript, and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and rest, and came back ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... for it would imply that the most aerial of birds (the swift and the frigate-birds, for example) are the highest in the scale of bird-organization, and the more so on account of their feet being very ill adapted for walking. But no ornithologist has ever so classed them, and the claim to the highest rank among birds is only disputed between three groups, all very far removed from these. They are—1st. The Falcons, on account of their general perfection, their rapid flight, their piercing vision, their perfect feet armed with retractile ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... most injurious kind of union; and he found, after repeated trials, that there was a greater reduction in weight in the young from a father paired with his daughter, than from a mother with her son. I may add that Mr. Eyton, of Eyton, the well-known ornithologist, who is a large breeder of Grey Dorkings, informs me that they certainly diminish in size, and become less prolific, unless a cross with another strain is occasionally obtained. So it is with Malays, according to Mr. Hewitt, as far as ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... is on foot for opening a spacious Zoological and Botanical Garden in the north part of the island of New York, immediately on the Hudson. A plan of an association for the purpose has been drawn up by Mr. Audubon, a son of the eminent ornithologist—the same who lately made an overland journey to California. His courage and perseverance in that expedition have given the public a sufficient pledge of the energy and constancy of his character, and his scientific knowledge, educated as he has been from his early childhood to be a naturalist, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... languished for three years, in 1754. Dr. Birch has drawn a very just and interesting character of this eminent man, which may be found in Nichol's Anecdotes of Bowyer, 562. 7. Mr. Edwards, the late ornithologist, has described him in a simple, but appropriate, manner. "He seemed," says he, "to have attained to universal knowledge; for, in the many opportunities I have had of being in his company, almost every part of science has happened to be the subject of discourse, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... liquor- saddlers and breeches-makers and how to get excellent claret cheap- -and matters like "good trains" and the habits of small game. His lore on these last subjects was astonishing—he managed to interweave the station-master with the ornithologist. When he couldn't talk about greater things he could talk cheerfully about smaller, and since I couldn't accompany him into reminiscences of the fashionable world he could lower the conversation without a visible effort ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... goes one better, both in the "atmosphere" of his mountain pictures and in his studies of birds at home upon their nests. To judge, indeed, by the unruffled domesticity of these latter, one would suppose Mr. GORDON to have been regarded less as the prying ornithologist than as the trusted family photographer. I except the golden eagle, last of European autocrats, whose greeting appears always as a super-imperial scowl. Chiefly these happy results seem to have been due to a triumph of patient camouflage, concerning which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... arise from the effects of climate and food, of domestication, captivity, transportation, voluntary and compulsory migration—all the causes in fact of alteration and degeneration—unite to throw difficulties in the way of the ornithologist."[133] ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... wherever both the forces are developed, that the female is characterised by quicker irritability, and the male by deeper sensibility. How large a stride has been now made by Nature in the progress of individuation, what ornithologist does not know? From a multitude of instances we select the most impressive, the power of sound, with the first rudiments of modulation! That all languages designate the melody of birds as singing (though according to Blumenbach man only sings, ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... mention it. John Burroughs tells of a shrike singing in his vicinity in winter, "a crude broken warble,"—"saluting the sun as a robin might have done." Winter, indeed, seems to be his chosen time for singing, and an ornithologist in St. Albans says that in that season he sings by the hour in the streets ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... we get on, though. A visit from Basil Hall, with Mr. Audubon the ornithologist, who has followed that pursuit by many a long wandering in the American forests. He is an American by naturalisation, a Frenchman by birth;[448] but less of a Frenchman than I have ever seen—no dash, or glimmer, or shine ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... is guilty. It is chiefly during seed-time and harvest that the depredations of the Crow are committed; during the remainder of the year we witness only his services; and so highly are these services appreciated by those who have written of birds, that I cannot name an ornithologist who does ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... contains between two and three thousand species of birds, and sometimes five or six specimens of a species. They are very pretty to look at, and some of the cases are, indeed, splendid; but I will undertake to say, that no man but a professed ornithologist has ever gathered much information from the collection. Certainly, no one of the tens of thousands of the general public who have walked through that gallery ever knew more about the essential peculiarities of birds when he left the gallery than when he entered it. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... there is nothing in their general appearance which would have led him to imagine that they had come from under the equator. (17/1. The progress of research has shown that some of these birds, which were then thought to be confined to the islands, occur on the American continent. The eminent ornithologist, Mr. Sclater, informs me that this is the case with the Strix punctatissima and Pyrocephalus nanus; and probably with the Otus galapagoensis and Zenaida galapagoensis: so that the number of endemic ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... so beautiful as to double our regret for the deplorable mutilation which has deprived us of all but the opening of the morning prayer.[1] The feathers fallen from the wings of these "Four Birds of Noah's Ark" would be worth more to the literary ornithologist than whole flocks of such "tame villatic fowl" as people the ordinary coops ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... between showers, I tried the north, with a guide—a visiting Massachusetts ornithologist—to show me a partridge nest with the bird sitting. We followed the ups and downs of the road for a mile, passing a ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... the matter of sufficient interest to bring these birds under the notice of the Society, the more so as it will enable me to make known through our Proceedings a new and very beautiful species of Parrakeet pertaining to the genus Polyteles, of which only two have been hitherto known. Every ornithologist must be acquainted with the elegant P. melanurus and P. barrabandi, and I feel assured that the acquisition of an additional species of this lovely form will be hailed with pleasure. The specific appellation I would propose for this ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... Australian Roller. Joao de Barros, in his Asia, mentions the parrots of the Banda Islands,[5] and we find accordingly that one of the Psittaci is recorded from Banda in modern times, namely, Eos rubra, a red, or rather a crimson lory. The ornithologist Mueller saw many of these birds in Great Banda, on the Kanary trees. Additional pigeons are the seed-eating Chalcophaps chrysochlora and the fruit-eating Ptilonopus wallacei, and finally there is one gallinaceous bird which is probably resident, ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field" never were so many new names called for. Unfortunately, names were not given by the best educated in the community, but often by those least qualified to invent satisfactory names: not by a linguist, a botanist, an ornithologist, an ichthyologist, but by the ordinary settler. Even in countries of old civilisation names are frequently conferred or new words invented, at times with good and at times with unsatisfactory results, by the average man, whom it is the modern fashion to call "the man in the street." Much of Australasian ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... until they at last come to believe that though all the enthusiasms and excitements which give a zest to the lives of other men fade and perish with time, it is not so with their particular pursuit. The more rational kind of pleasure experienced by the ornithologist in studying habits and disposition no doubt results in a great measure from the fact that the actions of the feathered people have a savour of intelligence in them. Whatever his theory or conviction about the origin of instincts may happen to be, or even if he has no convictions on the subject, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson |
