"Browsing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sky for a roof, but sheltering himself in winter in a cave. His food was wild fruits and mountain herbs. He never used a fire, and, clothed in a goats' hair garment, was perhaps the first of those Boscoi, or "browsing hermits," who lived literally like the wild animals in the flesh, while they tried to live ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... the thorns as he nipped his nag's sides with his knees, turned its head, and went off at a canter for the place where the giraffes, seven or eight in number, were browsing upon the lower branches of the trees, their long necks seeming to writhe in and out amongst the branches in a way that quite justified Dick's idea of their being serpents, for their bodies were invisible ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... twenty inches long, and ass-like; and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip, travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in North America. It is very reasonable to suppose that this creature supports itself chiefly by browsing of trees, and by wading after water-plants; towards which way of livelihood the length of leg and great lip must contribute much. I have read somewhere that it delights in eating the nymphaea, or ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... teasel is not often attacked by browsing cattle. Occasionally even the upper leaf surfaces are dotted over with prickles enough to tear a tender tongue. This is a curious feature, for prickles usually grow out of veins. In the receptacle formed where the bases of the upper leaves grow together, rain and ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... dirty, dishonest, lazy and occasionally drunk. But for their actual function they were quite useless. They drank my whiskey, they devoured and distributed my provisions, they stole my portable property, and once, when I had incautiously left the door unfastened, I caught them browsing round the museum; but they brought no grist to ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... His old faith, about which he had once talked so much, in the ancient rustic, manly, home-bred sense of the English people, he dismissed as if it had been some idle dream that had come to him through the ivory gate. His fine comparison of the nation to a majestic herd, browsing in peace amid the importunate chirrupings of a thousand crickets, became so little appropriate, that he was now beside himself with apprehension that the crickets were about to rend the oxen in pieces. Even then, the herd stood tranquilly in their pastures, only occasionally turning ...
— Burke • John Morley
... most tender and affectionate companionship), she frequently encountered this aged woman, with her knitting in her hand; and she would speak to the eager and intelligent child of the blessed quiet of the land, where the cattle were browsing without fear of an enemy; and then she would talk of the awful times of the brave Sir William Wallace, when he fought for Scotland, "against a cruel tyrant; like unto them whom Abraham overcame when he recovered Lot, with ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... over my dinner, partly because the browsing and sluicing at the inn was really astonishingly good for a roadhouse and partly because I wanted to give Harold plenty of time for meditation. I suppose it must have been a couple of hours or more when I finally turned in at the front door. Somebody was playing the piano in the drawing ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... (excess in eating) gluttony, gormandism, bolting, gulping, superalimentation; browsing. Associated words: aristology, gastronomy, gastronome, gastronomer, epicure, epicurism, diet, dietetics, dietary, commensal, dietarian, gastronomic, gourmet, gormand, cormorant, glutton, omnivorous, appetite, hunger, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Dutch at Bergen. Though other settlements were attempted, it was forty years before any of them became permanent. Cape May, a territory sixteen miles square, which Captain Heyes bought of the Indians, all the time remained an uncultivated wilderness, yielding the products of its salt meadows to the browsing deer. ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... pillow slept as tranquilly as if there were no such things as sheep in the world, while they for their part wandered hither and thither at their own sweet will, as if there were no such thing as a shepherdess, invading every field, and browsing upon every kind of forbidden dainty, until the peasants, alarmed by the havoc they were making, raised a clamour, which at last reached the ears of the King and Queen, who ran out, and seeing the cause of the commotion, ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... most distant points; the doctor seemed to be a real bird-charmer. The hunters continued their march up the moist banks of the brook, followed by the familiar band, and turning from the valley they perceived a troop of eight or ten reindeer browsing on a few lichens half buried beneath the snow; they were graceful, quiet animals, with their branching antlers, which the female carried as well as the male; their wool-like fur was already losing its winter whiteness in favor of the summer brown ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... without sufficient reasons of its own for this strange and, to some extent, unmannerly behaviour. By its queer trick of squirting, it manages to kill at least two birds with one stone. For, in the first place, the sudden elastic jump of the fruit frightens away browsing animals, such as goats and cattle. Those meditative ruminants are little accustomed to finding shrubs or plants take the aggressive against them; and when they see a fruit that quite literally flies in their faces of its own accord, they hesitate to attack the uncanny vine which bristles ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... no cows in those islands. The natives tried to run away when they saw some cows browsing the grass, just as when they heard a small dog bark in the house of the missionaries. There are neither cats nor deer, nor horses, nor, in general, any four-legged beast. There are but few birds, except those which live on the sea. They have, however, fowls which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... he snuffed the breeze at morn, The fleet-foot peer of sassaby and kudu; The hunting leopard feared his bristling horn, The foul hyaena voted him a hoodoo; Browsing on tender grass and camel-thorn He roamed the plains, as all right-minded gnu do; But now he eats the bun of discontent That once was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... introduced was amazing. Stretches of sand and sagebrush gave way to fertile fields bearing crops of wheat, corn, fruits, vegetables, and grass. Huge ranches grazed by browsing sheep were broken up into small plots. The cowboy and ranchman vanished. In their place rose the prosperous community—a community unlike the township of Iowa or the industrial center of the East. Its intensive tillage left little room for hired labor. Its small holdings drew families together ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... another month's homely rations, as per agreement. And then Skyland would know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous, barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, or they might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... wanderer let me hear, While yon luxurious race indulge their cheer, Devour the grazing ox, and browsing goat, And turn my generous vintage down their throat. For where's an arm, like thine, Ulysses! strong, To curb wild riot, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... its neck the graceful animal sank down to the ground, and lay perfectly dead. The other two trotted off to a short distance, alarmed by the report; but, seeing no human foe and not knowing what had happened to their companion, they stopped and continued browsing on the ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... distinction, and, if not all, certainly the happiest days of my life were passed within those sacred precincts. I have viewed her housetops from every crowning eminence, her acres of unmatched grain, her Arcadian pastures and browsing herds, her sun-kissed hills and silvery, serpentine streams. I have known the broad, ample playgrounds of her stately old Academy, and shared in the wholesome, health-giving sports their breadth permitted. I have known certain of her astute ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... animals which bore the mysterious name of Yawger, and which was the pack-horse of Andy and me, could not be found. Jones and Dodds went on, as they would probably soon have to separate from us anyhow, while we took Yawger's track, and at last found him browsing happily in a bare spot about a mile from our stopping place. It was two o'clock by the time we started on, floundering through the drifts in the trail of Jones and Dodds. Some drifts were so high it was all we could do to wallow ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... some well-thumbed poets, and a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic interest-were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping, browsing, reading a ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... itself. We say to ourselves that, without being life, a machine is something more than matter, for man has added a little of his mind to it. Now the iron beast, consuming its ration of coal, is really browsing the ancient foliage of arborescent ferns in which ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... nation is a great herd that only thinks of browsing, and with good sheepdogs the shepherds can lead it as they please.... Money and the hope of plunder are all-powerful with the people.... Mirabeau cheerfully asserts that with 100 louis one can make quite a ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... level, arid earth, and there was more than one tent where the shadowing folds of the banner marked the abode of some noble Djied. Disorder reigned supreme, in all the desert freedom; horses and mules, goats and camels, tethered, strayed among the conical houses of hair, browsing off the littered straw or the tossed-down hay; and caldrons seethed and hissed over wood fires, whose lurid light was flung on the eagle features and the white haiks of the wanderers who watched the boiling of their mess, or fed ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... The war is a war of moral principles. The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking down upon a browsing lamb, contends that "eating lamb is good." In the second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the sward, bleats dissentingly: "Eating ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... mouth of Little Beaver Creek and above the Mingo Town, they saw many wild geese and several kinds of duck and "killed five wild turkeys." Three days later they "saw innumerable quantities of turkeys, and many deer watering and browsing on the shore side, ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... walked, Vaudrey earnestly watching Marianne, while she gazed about her and pointed out to him the gray, winter-worn rocks, the smooth ivy, and on the horizon some hinds browsing, in the far distance, as in a desert, the bare grass as yellow as ripe wheat, around a pond, in a gloomy landscape, russet horizons against a pale sky, presenting a forlorn, mysterious and ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... this journey Trove got his habit of sleeping, out-of-doors in fair weather. After it, save in midwinter, walls seemed to weary and roofs to smother him. The drove began to low at daybreak, and soon they were all cropping the grass or browsing in the briers. Then the milking, and breakfast over a camp fire, and soon after sunrise they were all tramping in the ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... over a great plain, where herds of sheep could be seen in all directions browsing under the watchful care of their shepherds, and they had come to the base of the foot-hills leading to a mountainous country beyond, when the profound meditation in which Sam-Chaong was usually absorbed was suddenly interrupted by ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... beautiful. I wandered long by streams and wood-ends, every corner that I turned revealing new prospects of delight. I came at last to the edge of the forest, the mouths of little open glades running up into it, with fern and thorn-thickets. There were deer here browsing about the dingles, which let me come close to them and touch them, raising their heads from the grass, and regarding me with gentle and fearless eyes. Birds sang softly among the boughs, and even fluttered to my shoulder, as if pleased to be noticed. So this was what was called on earth ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gentleman by the name of Kenneth Forbes, an undergraduate of Merton College (now studying the gas meter in your cellar), was in Blackwell's book shop, in Oxford, browsing about. Lying on a row of books in a corner of the shop he happened to see a letter, without an envelope. He picked it up and glanced at it. It had evidently been dropped there by ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... had here full play. Deer were continually to be seen coming down to the water's edge to drink, or browsing along the shore; there were innumerable flocks of wild turkeys, and streaming flights of ducks and geese; so that as the voyagers floated along, they were enabled to load their canoe with game. At night they encamped ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... O'Shea laid himself flat upon his back, with a blanket over his feet. The boy slipped away, and was not seen until the waving grass on the tops of the highest dunes became a fringe of silver. Until then Caius paced the valley, coming occasionally in contact with the browsing pony; but neither his walk nor meditation was interrupted ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... him of these things before, but now she poured out a flood of confidences about the big dairy farm on which she had worked as a girl; how she took care of nine cows, and how the cows, though small, were very strong,—drew a plough all day and yet gave as much milk at night as if they had been browsing in a pasture! The country people never had to spend money for doctors, but cured all diseases with roots and herbs, and when the old folks had the rheumatism they took "one of dem liddle jenny-pigs" to bed with them, and the guinea-pig drew out all ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... decay'd hedges. For stakes in this work, oak is to be preferr'd, tho' some will use elder, but it is not good; or the blackthorn, crab-tree, in moorish ground withy, ash, maple, hasel, not lasting, (which some make hedges of; but it being apt to the browsing of cattle, when the young shoots appeared, it does better in copp'ces) the rest not lasting, should yet be driven well in at every yard of interval both before, and after they are bound, till they have taken the hard ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... attired in a blue mantle, is gaily striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. The goats are browsing near them. Painted in the artist's most ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... browsing in the heavy wet grass at the old ford. Neither Kate nor Hawk were in sight. Laramie walked down to the water's edge where Hawk had pulled her out. Familiar with the meander of the bank below the ford, he saw what had happened. The bank, under-cut, had been ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... which the giraffe belongs, is the deer tribe. It is, in fact, as pointed out by Professor Owen, a modified deer; but the structure by which so large a ruminant is enabled to subsist in the tropical regions of Africa, by browsing on the tops of trees, disqualifies it for wielding antlers of sufficient strength and size to serve as weapons of offense. The annual shedding of the formidable antlers of the full-grown buck has reference to the preservation of the younger and feebler individuals of his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... shining over the waters of the lake, the cattle quietly browsing, and the well-watered horses enjoying a thoroughly good feed, the troubles of the journey over the dreary plain were pretty well forgotten, and as fires were lit and meals prepared, there were bright faces around ready to give the Doctor ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... was browsing upon the young and tender shoots of some low bushes, waving his great ears and switching his short tail. The antelope, scarce twenty paces from him, continued their feeding, when suddenly, from close beside the latter, there came a most terrifying roar, ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... should make a long circuit and drive the giraffe, while I would endeavour to intercept it. This plan failed; but shortly after the attempt, I observed a herd of about a hundred of these splendid creatures, browsing on the mimosas about half a mile distant. For upwards of three hours I employed every artifice to obtain a shot, but to no purpose, as upon my approach to within a quarter of a mile, they invariably chose open ground, leaving a sentry posted behind ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... incomparable dexterity and brutality. He is, in the choice of means as of ends, a superior artist, inexhaustible in glamour, seductions, corruption, and intimidation, fascinating, and yet more terrible than any wild beast suddenly released among a herd of browsing cattle. The expression is not too strong and was uttered by an eye-witness, almost at this very date, a friend and a competent diplomat: "You know that, while I am very fond of the dear general, I call him to myself the little tiger, so as to properly characterize his figure, tenacity, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The cows continued their slow advance, browsing as they went, but in a little while their dark fronts were turned towards the dogs as after a momentary indecision they recognized an enemy. With a startled rush the herd drove through the meadow and ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... most exciting anywhere, for what lies beyond is at once revealed as a whole and contains the very essence of the unknown; but most decidedly is this true in Africa. That mesa looked flat, and almost anything might be grazing or browsing there. So we proceeded gingerly, with due regard to the rolling of the loose rocks or the tinkling ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... neat and tidy; the grass in the paddocks bright and fresh; the fences appeared regular and orderly; the asperities and irregularities of the ground were not seen, even the stumps were almost hidden; and the cattle and sheep that dotted the clearings might have been browsing on English meadows, so fair and smooth was the picture. As we looked on our home thus, the growth of our labour, we realized our independence of the outer world. And I dare say that, for a moment, "our hearts were lifted up within us," to use ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the camp, the three galloped over a ridge or swell in the prairie, when to their surprise they came upon the missing animals browsing just beyond. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... a faun [Footnote: MS. fawn.] beside its sleeping Mother, Browsing the grass;—what will thy Mother say, Dear Proserpine, what will bright Ceres feel, If her return be ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... He went for his cane [Footnote: Lincoln's cane. This was the cane he carried, instead of going armed. But he was forever leaving it anywhere about, so that, nine times out of ten, he went forth without it on his errant "browsing" around; and it was a wonder that this time he knew where to find it.] and, placing the ferule end to the wall, to act as a level, he bade the young man draw near and stand under. When the rod was carefully adjusted to the top of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... widened truth A glimpse of that high duty claimed of all. How wildly flares the West about the sun, Now fallen low! And as one, nameless, sails, Lost deep in witching reverie, along A silent river; passing villages Busy with toil; flowered banks and shadowy coves, And cattle browsing peaceful in the meads; Who only wakes to consciousness, when full A burst of sunshine from the sinking orb Smiting the flood first strikes his dazzled sight;— So to the present hour am I recalled By yon red sun-light flaming up the spire, And vane that sparkles in the warm blue heaven ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... who had been browsing around the cabin. He had lifted one of the cushions from a settee and disclosed beneath a locker which contained a number of flags of ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... have originated in a curious statement made by Vitruvius, that in certain localities in the island of Crete the flocks and herds were found without spleen from their browsing on this plant, whereas in those districts in which it did not grow the reverse was the ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... with stone, and square-towered churches, occur at rare intervals in cultivated hollows, where there are fields and fruit trees. Water is nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As we rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where oxen and goats are browsing. The turf is starred with lilac gentian and crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the highest village, Berceto, with keen Alpine air. After that, broad rolling downs of yellowing grass and russet beech-scrub lead onward to the pass La Cisa. The sense of breadth in composition is continually ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... engaged in loading their vessels with grain, the product of the neighboring plains. Up the steep we had just descended a letiga was slowly winding; and on a green declivity overlooking the sea, a flock of goats were browsing, and their shepherd reclined near in listless idleness. Open and treeless as was this scene, there was such a peaceful character about it, such an air of primitive simplicity, that it made a strong impression on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... animals and men of spirit, a sentiment that has furnished the subject for more than one canvas in the hands of the true and sympathetic artist, as seen on the awakening and alert attitude of the worn-out and old decrepit war-horse, browsing in an inclosed pasture, as he hears from afar the familiar bugle-notes of his early youth, or some cavalry regiment with prancing steeds and jingling accoutrements, with bright colors and shining arms, going past ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... were already on their way to the hill-sanctuaries and peasants were starting work on the temple lands outside the town. Sacred monkeys gambolled about the trees and still more sacred cows had begun to exercise their daily privilege of browsing for food wherever their fancy leads them, even amongst the vegetables exposed for sale in the public market-places. The Brahmans themselves were still engaged in performing their elaborate morning devotions and ablutions, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of the romantic interview of Evander with AEneas on the spot which was to be afterwards Rome—then a quiet pastoral scene, green with grass, and covered with bushes—that they saw herds of cattle wandering over the Forum, and browsing on the rich pasture around the shores of its blue lake. Strange, the law of circularity, after the lapse of two thousand years, brought round the same state of things in that storied spot. During the middle ages the Roman Forum ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... few days since, With cattle browsing in the shade: And here are lines of bright arcade In order raised! A palace as for fairy Prince, A rare pavilion, such as man Saw never since mankind ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beginning to grow dark when the party reached their cabin. Just before reaching it they crossed the pasturage ground of the burro, who was seen quietly browsing, as if he had not taken any part and felt no interest in the ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... lent her a hand; the horses snorted appreciatively, and stepping forward, thrust their soft muzzles eagerly into the stream, then fell to browsing upon the tender leaves ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... axe or spud now visit these solitudes. The cows have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is to be had. In spring the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeeling for raspberries and blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... often "browsing," as they call it, at the Mercantile Library. At first I would sit down and give the names of volumes desired. That took too long. At last I was allowed to go where I liked and take what I wanted. I sent a pair of handsome slippers at Christmas to the man who had ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Court had come as an unexpected reprieve and the ruin of my friends' prospects was at least postponed. Then, I had learned that Thorndyke was back from Bristol and wished me to look in on him; and, finally, Miss Bellingham had agreed to spend this very afternoon with me, browsing round the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... screened, but so very little, from each other by sprays of white lilac. Looking round her table, Cecilia felt rather like one watching a dew-belled cobweb, most delicate of all things in the world, menaced by the tongue of a browsing cow. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... smell of hot cabbage remained behind, as it will do, and Toad, between his sobs, sniffed and reflected, and gradually began to think new and inspiring thoughts: of chivalry, and poetry, and deeds still to be done; of broad meadows, and cattle browsing in them, raked by sun and wind; of kitchen-gardens, and straight herb-borders, and warm snap-dragon beset by bees; and of the comforting clink of dishes set down on the table at Toad Hall, and the scrape of chair-legs on the floor as every one pulled himself close up to ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... but though the blood mounted instantly to her cheeks at such times, she never looked up—dreading his gaze as she would that of a basilisk. One sultry afternoon she went into the park, and threw herself down on the long grass, under a clump of cedars, near which the deer and bison were quietly browsing, while the large white merinoes huddled in the shade and blinked at the sun. Opening a pictorial history of England, which she had selected from the library, she spread it on the grass, and leaning her face in her palms, rested her elbows on the ground, and began to read. Now and then she paused ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... some little pasturage, however, and the bells of the browsing cows were heard tinkling in a pleasing manner, and giving somewhat of a social ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... produced by the physical conditions of life, the intercrossing of species, and by habits causing increased use or disuse of parts. Indeed he thought very many remarkable adaptations, such as that of the neck of the giraffe for browsing on trees, were the effect of habit. But he attributed, perhaps, more to a law of progressive development impressed on all forms of life, which thus would all in time gradually cease to be lowly, their place being taken by new forms continually ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... I help him to his horse? No. For any other combination of offences I would; but his were too unpardonable. He might mount it himself, if he liked—in a while: already he was beginning to stir and look about him—and there it was for him, quietly browsing on the road-side. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... dalliance being that we are but a few farsakhs from Herat. The country develops into undulating, grassy upland prairie, the greensward being thickly spangled with yellow flowers. A two flours' ride brings us to a camp of probably not less than one hundred tents. Large herds of camels are peacefully browsing over the prairie, numbers of them being females rejoicing in the possession of woolly youngsters, whose uncouth but tender proportions are swathed in old quilts and nummuds to protect them from the fierce ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... brindle cow came browsing up to the front gate. She took a long survey of the house to see if we had all gone to bed. Having satisfied herself on that point, she inserted her horns between the bars of the front gate and gave it a gentle shake. She looked at the house again to see ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... lovely vista, with here and there bright spots and deep shadows—the effect of the sun's rays struggling to penetrate the leafy roof of nature's aisle. Deep in the solitude of the woods see now the dappled herd, and watch the handsome buck as he roams here and there in the midst of his harem, or, browsing amongst the bushes, exhibits his graceful antlers to the lurking foe, who by patient woodcraft has succeeded in approaching his unsuspecting victim; observe how proudly he holds himself, as some other buck of less pretensions dares to approach the ladies of the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... her and he would close his eyes. But after half an hour, or an hour, or sometimes two hours, he would begin to see that he had been thinking of nothing. The sounds of the valley, the roar of the wind, the little bells of the two goats browsing on the hill, the noise of the wind in the little slender trees under which he lay, were sucked up by his thoughts soft and porous like a sponge. He was angry with his thoughts: they tried to obey him, and to fix the vanished image to which he was striving ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... illumining the historic ground of the Oaks. Like shining lances, they gleamed from the interstices in the leafy roof to the dew-bejeweled sward. From this stronghold of glistening arms, however, the surrounding country stretched tranquil and serene. Upon a neighboring bank sheep were browsing; in the distance cow-bells tinkled, and the drowsy cowherds followed the cattle, faithful as the shepherds who tended their flocks ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... either in the words of the original, or give the compiler's version; for, as he says, he liked to have his own way and to follow his own taste. They are grouped without method; but in this very lack of order—which shows that "browsing" instinct which Charles Lamb declared to be essential to a right feeling for literature—the charm of the book lies. This habit of straying, and his lack of style, prove Aelianus more of a vagabond in the domain of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... rustic reed of the shepherd amongst copses of the beechwood and wild oak. Sometimes they marked the form of the silk-haired and graceful capella, with its wreathing horn and bright grey eye—which, still beneath Ausonian skies, recalls the eclogues of Maro, browsing half-way up the hills; and the grapes, already purple with the smiles of the deepening summer, glowed out from the arched festoons, which hung pendent from tree to tree. Above them, light clouds floated in ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... intonation of her voice, chiming in with the melodious images that then filled the goldsmith's busy brain, impressed him so pleasantly that he turned, and saw that the damsel was holding a cow by a tether, while it was browsing the rank grass that grew upon ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... one of the stretches of rolling prairie-land, great herds of buffalo are scattered in groups, browsing with all the air of security peculiar to domestic cattle. Happily their memories are short. They seem prone to enjoy the present, forgetful of the past and regardless of the future—happily, I say, for those humpy ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... to rob you of all the property nature gives you—your dearest comforts, your helpless nestlings. Even the hoary hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it preserved from the rudely-browsing cattle, or the withering eastern blast? Such was the scene, and such the hour, when, in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of nature's workmanship that ever crowned a poetic landscape, or met a poet's eye, those visionary bards excepted, who hold commerce ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... This meant that, when the snow had grown too deep to permit the little herd to roam at will, he had chosen a sheltered area where the birch, poplar, and cherry, his favorite forage, were abundant, and there had trodden out a maze of deep paths which led to all the choicest browsing, and centred about a cluster of ancient firs so thick as to afford covert from the fiercest storms. The news was what the wise old woodsman had been waiting for. With three of his men, a pair of horses, a logging-sled, axes, and an unlimited ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... to a tree nearby. They had crossed in front of the wall of rock which was moss covered to such an extent that its face was considerably hidden, and then climbed higher in an attempt to secure the best herbage, and were still browsing. ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... fruit, and although the returns are, theoretically, not so good, it pays the owner about the same, as he is less exposed to robbery, being able more closely to watch his own interests. The trees bear fruit in the fifth year, but, meanwhile, care must be taken to defend them from the browsing of cattle. If they survive that period they will live for a century. At seven years' growth the cocoanut palm-tree seldom fails to yield an unvarying average crop of a score of large nuts, giving a nett profit of about one ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... were the broad green meadows where the monks pastured the herds of cows which gave them milk. From the windows of his cell the young monk loved to watch the cows and their calves browsing the juicy grass and wading in the brooks which ran under the rows of willows. He especially loved Bel, the sleekest, most beautiful of them all, a proud mother cow who had a new ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... of the late autumn morning tiny smokes from the cook-fires sailed straight aloft, melting speedily into the blue. For nearly half a mile along the stream horses and pack-mules were scattered upon the "bench," browsing eagerly on the dew-laden bunch grass. Farther out beyond them on every side, with their campaign hats pulled down over their grim eyebrows and their heads deep in the collars of their cavalry overcoats, the men of the guard still ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... absolutely all the ordinary dangers and responsibilities of parentage. We call this seemingly unnatural creature the Cowbird, probably because it is often seen feeding in pastures {57} among cattle, where it captures many insects disturbed into activity by the movements of the browsing animals. ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... dreams: endless, and golden, as the flowery prairies, that stretch away from the Rio Sacramento, in whose waters Danae's shower was woven;—prairies like rounded eternities: jonquil leaves beaten out; and my dreams herd like buffaloes, browsing on to the horizon, and browsing on round the world; and among them, I dash with my lance, to spear ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... is not more innocent Of what the gazer's eyes makes so intent), She will but smile, perhaps, that I find my fair Sufficing scope in such strait theme as her. "Bird of the sun! the stars' wild honey-bee! Is your gold browsing done so thoroughly? Or sinks a singed wing to narrow nest in me?" (Thus she might say: for not this lowly vein Out-deprecates her deprecating strain.) Oh, you mistake, dear lady, quite; nor know Ether was strict as you, its ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... the Factbook, beginning with the 2000 edition, are available for downloading - but not browsing - on the CIA Web site. Hardcopy editions for earlier ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... pass before reaching the sand banks on the river's brink. Sometimes he pounced on them as they fed through the thick, low cover of the bottoms, where an assailant could either lie in ambush by one of the numerous cattle trails, or else creep unobserved towards some browsing beast. When within a few feet a quick rush carried him fairly on the terrified quarry; and though but a clumsy animal compared to the great cats, the grisly is far quicker than one would imagine from viewing his ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... went abroad over the land on some Olympian errand. Here and there, indeed, a few children huzzah and wave their hands to the express; but for the most part it is an interruption too brief and isolated to attract much notice; the sheep do not cease from browsing; a girl sits balanced on the projecting tiller of a canal boat, so precariously that it seems as if a fly or the splash of a leaping fish would be enough to overthrow the dainty equilibrium, and yet all these ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... where the grass began, and the form of a bush was faint on the heavy white blanket in which the world was wrapped. A rabbit crept through the furze and frightened them, and they heard the horses browsing. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... afternoon in summer Mr. Keyes and his boys were in the field some distance from the house, picking up logs and burning them with the stumps and brush, to enlarge the farm. Around the house were fields of corn and flax and waving grain. The cows and sheep were browsing in the edge of the woods. Mrs. Keyes was spinning flax in front of the cabin door, seated on a low, home-made stool upon the hard and smoothly swept ground. Within, the neatly kept log cabin had a rough floor strewn with white sand. On ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... like you; I will be sworn you are a good fellow; and I mean to help you off. So just come along with me. I make my living by browsing round, hunting and fishing a little, and doing an odd job now and then. You see, I have got a good boat down the creek, and I shall just put you aboard and take you anywhere you have ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... but Robert was compelled to confine his surmise to the region of the comparative. Nevertheless, he knew that he was gaining upon the moose and that was enough. But as it was evident by his frequent browsing that the animal was going slowly, he controlled his eagerness sufficiently to exercise great wariness on his own part. It might be that while he was hunting he could also become the hunted. It was not at all impossible that the warriors of Tandakora would fall upon his own ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... available for browsing on the CIA Web site. In the future, the staff hopes to post electronic versions of The World Factbook as far back as 1986. Hardcopy editions for earlier years are available ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... don't mind! It would be quite bad enough if it really happened. We won't anticipate evil, but have a lazy morning together in the garden, browsing in deck-chairs, and eating fruit at frequent intervals. It is so lovely to sit under one's own trees, in one's own garden, with one's very own mummie by one's side. Girls who have lived in England all their lives can never appreciate having home and parents at the same time, in the same way in ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... donkey is a wretched creature, and Mr. Browne has a very poor specimen of an under-fed, overworked race. But there is a cow browsing in the field, and the tenant hastens to explain that she is not his own, but the absolute property of his sister-in-law. I must confess that I cool somewhat after this—inwardly that is—towards the Irreconcilable in battered corduroys who amuses me with a string of stories more or less veracious. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... from her. I knew how she must be reading my silence, but I was still unable to speak. She went to the horse, browsing near by; she stroked his muzzle. Lingeringly she twined her fingers in his mane, as if about to spring to his back! That reminded me of a thousand and one changes in her—little changes, each a trifle in itself, yet, taken all together, making a ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... stopped, going down the descent, to rest the mules, I looked up above my head into the crags, and saw a flock of goats browsing. One goat, in particular, I remember, had gained the top of a kind of table rock, which stood apart from the rest, and which was carpeted with lichens and green moss. There he stood, looking as unconscious and contemplative as possible, the wicked fellow, with his long beard! He knew he looked ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and as thick as a man's wrist. Mr. Bartram approached, and endeavoured to irritate them, but they appeared perfectly harmless. Numerous herds of cattle and deer, and many troops of horses were seen peacefully browsing on the grass of the savannah, or strolling through the groves on the surrounding heights. Large flocks of wild turkeys were also observed ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... that I do not like hornets. When I see them, they remind me of the story of a donkey told me by a man in these parts. He in his youth saw an unlucky ass that, quietly browsing, unconscious of indiscretion, disturbed a hornets' nest. Suddenly the animal showed symptoms of unusual excitement, which became rapidly more violent, until, after some amazing antics, first on his front-legs and then on his hind-legs, he rolled over on his back, and kicked violently at ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... here we came to a halt for the purpose of setting up the mark which was to give Jan, my Hottentot driver, the signal to outspan, for Piet was strongly of opinion that the herd of elephant would be found somewhere in the forest ahead, either browsing upon the small and tender shoots of the trees or sheltering from the sun beneath their leafy shade. This done, we looked to our weapons, satisfying ourselves that they were in order for immediate use, and then again proceeded along the trail, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of the Resurrection in those clear African basilicas swimming in light, with all their brilliant ornamentation of mosaics and marbles of a thousand colours! And what artless and confident language those symbolic figures spoke which peopled their walls—the lambs browsing among clusters of asphodels, the doves, the green trees of Paradise. As in the Gospel parables, the birds of the field and farmyard, the fruits of the earth, figured the Christian truths and virtues. Their purified forms accompanied man in his ascension towards God. Around the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... told her; but she only half believes either in masterpiece or in proceeds. She can see no good in my making statues; they seem to her a snare of the enemy. She would fain see me all my life tethered to the law, like a browsing goat to a stake. In that way I 'm in sight. 'It 's a more regular occupation!' that 's all I can get out of her. A more regular damnation! Is it a fact that artists, in general, are such wicked men? I never had the pleasure of knowing one, so I could n't confute her with an example. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... of burden in Bolivia is the llama, which looks something like a cross between a camel and a sheep. Like the camel it can go for days without food or drink. It can be turned out and will make its living browsing on coarse grass, moss and shrubs that grow on the mountains. It is an intelligent animal and if loaded a little too heavily will lie down and refuse to budge until ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... tired out from strain of work and excitement. As he neared the house he noticed a wagon in the yard and a horse browsing ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... one was plunging and battling in the act of realizing her doom: a fierce, furious, red cow, glaring and bellowing at the soft, yielding inexorable abysm under her, the bustards settling afar off, and her own species browsing securely just ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... is so uneven, at times so startling and fantastic, that few critics would care to recommend it to others. Only a few will read his works, and they must be left to their own browsing, to find what pleases them, like deer which, in the midst of plenty, take a bite here and there and wander on, tasting twenty varieties of food in an hour's feeding. One who reads much will probably bewail Donne's lack of any consistent ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... says that a Polperro jackass is surprised at nothing, and this one, which had been browsing on the edge of the ditch, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hundred yards distant was a small watermill, built over the rivulet, the wheel going slowly, slowly round; large quantities of pigs, the generality of them brindled, were either browsing on the banks, or lying close to the sides, half immersed in the water; one immense white hog, the monarch seemingly of the herd, was standing in the middle of the current. Such was the scene which I saw from the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... were amazed by the number as well as magnitude of the flocks of llamas which they saw browsing on the stunted herbage that grows in the elevated regions of the Andes. Sometimes they were gathered in inclosures, but more usually were roaming at large under the conduct of their Indian shepherds; and the Conquerors now ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... time a small frame building at the west end of Flinders Street, with a hill behind it, on which goats were browsing; the railway viaduct runs now over the exact spot. Many parties of hopeful diggers from England and California had slept there on the floor the night before they started for Ballarat, Mount Alexander, or Bendigo. We called it a house of refuge, and Bez now looked ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... reading has led me into the old English poetry. A friend gave me a card to the Society Library, the largest in the city; and I have found much good browsing in those fields. I have found "Amadis de Gaul" among the rest, and the complete works of Carew, Suckling, Drayton, Drummond, etc. It has led me to wish some more intimate knowledge of English history, to which I must turn. How imperceptibly and surely spread out these meadows ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... The browsing camels' bells are tinkling:[dq] His mother looked from her lattice high—[102] 690 She saw the dews of eve besprinkling The pasture green beneath her eye, She saw the planets faintly twinkling: "'Tis twilight—sure ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... were browsing docilely upon the slope, eating stuff which only a goat would attempt to eat. Helen May was not afraid of Billy since Pat had taken charge. Pat had a way of keeping Billy cowed and as harmless as the nannies themselves. Just now Pat was standing at a little distance with his tongue slavering down ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower |
