Buffon's Natural history, corrected and enlarged by J. Wright. (To which are added Elements of botany).

Front Cover
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 135 - Suddenly there burst forth a general cry of "Here they come!" The noise which they made, though yet distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea passing through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As the birds arrived and passed over me, I felt a current of air that surprised me. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men.
Page 322 - The great blue heron (Ardea herodias) is about four feet in length from the point of the bill to the end of the tail, and nearly six feet across the wings.
Page 234 - The length of the peacock, from the tip of the bill to the end of the tail', is about three feet eight inches.
Page 415 - ... ocean. It is divided into distinct columns of five or six miles in length and three or four in breadth, and they drive the water before them with a kind of rippling...
Page 131 - I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.
Page 27 - ... in a direct line, he takes his course in circles ; while the hunters still make a small course within, relieve each other, meet him at unexpected turns, and keep him thus still employed, still followed, for two or three days together. At last, spent with fatigue and famine, and finding all power of escape impossible, he endeavours to hide himself from those enemies he cannot avoid, and covers his head in the sand, or the first thicket he meets. Sometimes, however, he attempts to face his pursuers...
Page 291 - I have heard one of them, with a loud, long note, sound a kind of charge, to which the rest punctually attended, and they pursued their journey with renewed alacrity. Their flight is very regularly arranged ; they either go in a line abreast, or in two lines, joining in an angle in the middle.
Page 226 - INDEED, the music of every bird in captivity produces no very pleasing sensations ; it is but the mirth of a little animal insensible of its unfortunate situation ; it is the landscape, the grove, the golden break of day, the contest upon the hawthorn, the fluttering from branch to branch, the soaring in the ah-, and the answering of its young, that gives the bird's song its true relish.
Page 134 - Two farmers from the vicinity of Russelsville, distant more than a hundred miles, had driven upwards of three hundred hogs to be fattened on the pigeons which were to be slaughtered. Here and there the people employed in plucking and salting what had already been procured, were seen sitting in the midst of large piles of these birds.
Page 133 - As soon as the Pigeons discover a sufficiency of food to entice them to alight, they fly round in circles, reviewing the country below. During their evolutions, on such occasions, the dense mass which they form exhibits a beautiful appearance, as it changes its direction, now displaying a glistening sheet of azure, when the backs of the birds come simultaneously into view, and anon, suddenly presenting a mass of rich deep purple. They...

Bibliographic information