"Porcupines" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their condition grew desperate. Beavers and porcupines were scarce, and the snow was not deep enough for hunting the moose. Night and day the medicine-drums and medicine-songs resounded from the wigwams, mingled with the wail of starving children. The hunters grew weak and emaciated; and, as after a forlorn march ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Indian could follow our trail if we travelled on rock," declared Bruce confidently. "He'll be here inside o' three days, barring the dogs don't run their fool heads into too many porcupines. An' when they come"—he rose and stretched his gaunt frame—"we'll have the biggest time we ever had in our lives. I'm just guessin' these mount'ins are so full o' bear that them ten dogs will all be massacreed within ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... in their trees; fishers and mink and ermine crawled into the deepest corners of the windfalls and died there by inches; owls fluttered out of their tree-tops, staggered for a few moments in the fiery air, and fell down into the heart of the flame. No creature made a sound—except the porcupines; and as they died ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... course, be crossed at all. You might as well try to walk over armies of porcupines in your bare feet. Some minefields were very big. One British field ran from the Orkneys right across to Norway, to stop the German submarines from getting out round the north of Scotland. The American Navy did magnificent work at this field, the greater ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... them while he talked. He never, never forgot the expression of a certain brass porcupine that was somehow a penwiper; it seemed to belong to a world gone mad, where everything was something else, where porcupines were ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... way, Mrs. Lathrop, I don't get much fun out o' church anyway, for I'm on red-hot porcupines the whole time I'm there thinkin' what I could be doin' at home if I was at home, an' wonderin' whether Elijah is in bed or whether he's up an' about. I don't know a more awful feelin' than the feelin' that you're chained helpless in a church while the man in your house ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... Chief Ranger Wade has kindly made available the files in his office, including reports of the Superintendent and reports of the Chief Ranger in earlier years, and Annual or Biennial Animal Census Reports since 1930. Special reports on prairie dogs, porcupines, and deer are in the files. These reports, and random reports that were regarded as reliable, are recorded on card files in both the Chief Ranger's office and Park Archeologist's office. Most of the information reported here on the larger mammals ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson
... "I don't see what you want to know of those old things. I'd much rather hear about porcupines. There isn't anything to say about a ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... scarcely less remarkable in variety and abundance. The larger animals, including domestic cattle and horses, do not thrive on the coast, but are plentiful farther inland. On the Mandingo Plateau, elephants are not uncommon. Buffaloes, leopards, tigers, antelopes, porcupines, the great ant-eater, divers species of monkeys, and numerous other animals are found, besides many varieties ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... Miocene rocks have yielded remains of Rabbits, Porcupines (such as the Hystrix primigenius of Greece), Beavers, Mice, Jerboas, Squirrels, and Marmots. All the principal living groups of this order were therefore differentiated in ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... the touring scholar, seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift, and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and modern times and the fig-pecker bird—that bird you eat bones and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... frequently of S. HOSEI and S. RUBICUNDUS). They are formed of concentric layers of a hard, brittle, olive-green substance, very bitter to the taste. A soft brown variety is found in the porcupine. Both kinds are highly valued by the Chinese as medicine. The monkeys and porcupines are hunted for the sake of these stones. A similar substance, also highly valued as a medicine by the Chinese, is sometimes found as an accretion formed about the end of a dart which has been broken off in the flesh of S. HOSEI and has remained ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... purchases if he could always spare the money; but I think it is another sort of Cleopatra that he covets most... Yes, yes, I have it. What you want is a man of wealth, and influence, and scholarly tastes—not one of your learned porcupines, bristling all over with critical tests, but one whose Greek and Latin are of a comfortable laxity. And that man is Bartolommeo Scala, the secretary of our Republic. He came to Florence as a poor adventurer himself—a miller's son—a 'branny monster,' as he has ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... beasts, and use no other garments. After three days journey is the town of Scasom[6], seated in a plain, through the middle of which there flows a great river; and there are many castles in the surrounding mountains[7]. There are many porcupines in this country, which are hunted by dogs; and these animals, contracting themselves with great fury, cast their sharp quills at the men and dogs, and often wound them. The nation has a peculiar language, and the shepherds ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... touching hollyhocks and hearses, lotus-eaters, ladies, lilies, porcupines and pigs and pies, nothing human was beyond him, and admiring people conned him, adoration in their bosoms and a rapture in their eyes. He had sung of figs and quinces in the tents of Bedouin princes, he'd embalmed the Roman Forum ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... country was a virgin one, no settlements or houses, no roads of any kind, except one or two Indian hunting trails, no cattle, sheep or horses. There were, as already stated, elk, mountain sheep, antelope, deer, bears, panthers, porcupines, coons, any amount of wild turkey, spruce grouse, green pigeons, quail, etc., etc. There were virgin rivers of considerable size, swarming with trout, many of which it was my luck to first explore and cast a fly into. Most of this lovely country, as said before, was part of the Apache ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... former when worrying the poor little animal, and the latter by accidentally meeting a dead one among the herbage; great inflammation will sometimes attend the extraction. Indians often lose valuable hounds from this cause. Besides porcupines, Indiana told her companions, there were some fine butter-nut trees (Juglans cinerea) on the island, and they could collect a bagful of nuts in a very short time. This was good news, for the butter-nut is sweet and pleasant, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... to cheer our souls, Learoyd, Ortheris, and I went into the waste to smoke out a porcupine. All the dogs attended, but even their clamor—and they began to discuss the shortcomings of porcupines before they left cantonments—could not take us out of ourselves. A large, low moon turned the tops of the plume-grass to silver, and the stunted camel-thorn bushes and sour tamarisks into the likenesses ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling |
