"Bittern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a black neck, plentiful in King's Sound, and a large bird, a species of crane, were also seen. The latter was of a French grey hue, with the exception of the head, which was black and of the shape of a bittern, commonly known among the colonists by the name of native companion. It is difficult to imagine how this name could have originated, as there is no instance of the natives making a pet of anything, except the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... gracefully rose to render the terrific ocean beautiful. The fishermen were calmly casting their nets, whilst the sea-gulls hovered over the unruffled deep. Everything seemed to harmonise into tranquillity; even the mournful call of the bittern was in cadence with the tinkling bells on the necks of the cows, that, pacing slowly one after the other, along an inviting path in the vale below, were repairing to the cottages to be milked. With what ineffable pleasure have I not gazed—and gazed again, losing my breath ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... seen glowing through the trees, and immediately the abbe hooted thrice, imitating perfectly the note of the little Acadian owl. This signal was answered from the neighborhood of the fire, whereupon the abbe gave the strange, resonant cry of the bittern. A few moments more and Pierre found himself by a camp fire which blazed cheerfully in the recess of a sheltered ravine. Around the fire were gathered some twoscore of Micmacs in their war dress, who merely grunted as the abbe and his ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... also mentions Prince Englebert and Jemmy Moore ("alias Cox's Emperor, alias Denbigh"), but wisely adds, these come in about the same time as Victoria, when there is a glut. Early or late varieties usually sell best. A new variety, Bittern, raised (as so many varieties have been) at Sawbridgeworth, by the late Francis Rivers, seems well worth trying: "Fruit rather large, deep purple, very heavy crop, habit bushy, compact, vigorous, excellent early free-bearing variety. ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... through the air. The children shrieked together and fled, stumbling in dry bog, weeping in terror. Carl's backbone was all one prickling bar of ice. But he waved his stick fiercely, and, because he had to care for her, was calm enough to realize that the wail must have been the cry of the bittern. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... By God was ordained The hour when the ocean's grey steeds were up-reined, And green marshes rose, and the bittern's abode Became the Lone Land where the wild hunter strode, And soils with grass harvests grew rich, and the clime For us was prepared in the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... the continent, while Portugal and England lay in shadow. Only that portion of Britain facing France felt the cultural influences of the southern lands. The estuaries of the Mersey and Clyde were marshy solitudes, echoing to the cry of the bittern and the ripple of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... right, it was the butterbump, as the fen people called the great brown bittern, which passed its days in the thickest parts of the bog, and during the darkness rose on high, to circle round and over the unfortunate frogs that were to form its supper, and utter its ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... with the admonition, "Cheer up! Cheer up!" and a little later big black vultures go wheeling through cloudland or hang there, like frozen splashes, searching the Limberlost and the surrounding country for food. The boom of the bittern resounds all day, and above it the rasping scream of the blue heron, as he strikes terror to the hearts of frogdom; while the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... I hear the distant drumming. "Don't be disturbed! 'tis, in the reeds, The bittern's ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... ago black game were found on the moorland called now “The Ostler Plantations,” {34d} but though one still heard of them “in the forties,” they were then either extinct or a rapidly vanishing quantity. At the same time also the “boom” of the bittern might still be heard in the marshy parts of the same ground, but they are also now ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges works its weedy way; Along thy glade, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires the echoes with unvaried cries; Sunk are thy bowers, in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o'ertops the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... one thing more than another about which the colonel prided himself in his bird sanctuary, it was the presence of the bittern. I don't know where the bittern came from, nor does the colonel. Perhaps the head-keeper knew. Bitterns migrate sometimes, but—well, that keeper was no fool, and knew his master's ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... some old favourite to exercise. And now, just as William was beginning to grow weary of his good cousin's prolix recitals, the hounds suddenly gave tongue, and from a sedge-grown pool by the way-side, with solemn wing and harsh boom, rose a bittern. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could they be about but marking the spots where to bore the holes for the blasting powder that should scatter it to the winds, and let death and destruction, and the wild sea howling in upon Scaurnose, that the cormorant and the bittern might possess it, the owl and the raven dwell in it? But it would be seen what their husbands and fathers would say to it when they came home! In the meantime they must themselves do what they could. What were ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... euphonious from Nacht-schwalbe, which in some places abides. 'Crapaud-volant' is ugly, but descriptive, the brown speckling of the bird being indeed toadlike, though wonderful and beautiful. Bewick has put his utmost skill into it; and the cut, with the Bittern and White Owl, may perhaps stand otherwise unrivaled ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... loitered to draw its circle about the city walls, had fallen under a spell. It met me here a featureless, brimming ditch, and wound away in torpid coils to the monotonous horizon. And now this shrunken city, its edges dead and fallen to decay, these naked levels, where not even a bittern's voice had courage to startle the stillness, filled me, in spite of myself, with a vague apprehensiveness. Just as one who is groping in profound darkness feels his eyes dilate in the effort to catch the least glimmer of light, I found my senses all on the strain, attentive to their ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... were none, save when the bittern rose from its nest, amidst the long reeds or sedgy grass, or the moor fowl flew over the surface of the inky water, which here and there collected into pools. The feeble hum of insects filled the air, but all else ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... defined in general as "the art of saying in a commonplace and inoffensive way what everybody knew long ago." There are a great many competent editorial writers, and the bittern carrying on his trade by the side of some swamp is about as influential as ten ordinary editorial writers rolled ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... marshes—which, alack! have been drained to increase Indiana's total area of arable soil. "Lew" Wallace and other Hoosier generals and judges used to hunt ducks on the Kankakee; and Maurice Thompson not only camped there, but wrote a poem about the marshes,—a poem that is a poem,—all about the bittern and the plover and the heron, which always, at the right season, called him away from the desk and the town to try his bow (he was the last of the toxophilites!) on winged things he scorned to destroy with gunpowder. (Oh what a good fellow you were, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the eye of the sportsman—and the Lancashire gentlemen of the sixteenth century were keen lovers of sport—the country had a strong interest. Pendle forest abounded with game. Grouse, plover, and bittern were found upon its moors; woodcock and snipe on its marshes; mallard, teal, and widgeon upon its pools. In its chases ranged herds of deer, protected by the terrible forest-laws, then in full force: and the hardier huntsman might ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Heron Little Green Heron Black-crowned Night Heron Yellow-crowned Night Heron Egret Brown Pelican Bittern King Rail Virginia Rail Yellow Rail Clapper Rail Carolina Rail Little Black Rail ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Mr. Clyde, nor did he shoot anything else. Mr. Clyde did shoot a bird, but it fell into the water at a place where the shore was very marshy, and it was impossible for him to get it. He thought it was a heron, or a bittern, or perhaps a fish-hawk, but whatever it was, both ladies said that it was a great pity to kill it, as it was not good to eat, and must have been very happy in its life in ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... and our parks disfigured by noise and smoke, to suit the convenience of the dingy denizens of Manchester, or the purse-proud merchants of Liverpool?" Similar arguments were urged not more than a century ago against the formation of new turnpike roads. The bittern, it was said, would be driven from his pool, the fox from his earth, the wild fowl would be frightened away from the marshes, and many a fine haunch of venison would be sent to London markets without the proper ceremonies of turning off and running ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne |
