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Amphibious   Listen
adjective
Amphibious  adj.  
1.
Having the ability to live both on land and in water, as frogs, crocodiles, beavers, and some plants.
2.
Pertaining to, adapted for, or connected with, both land and water. "The amphibious character of the Greeks was already determined: they were to be lords of land and sea."
3.
Of a mixed nature; partaking of two natures. "Not in free and common socage, but in this amphibious subordinate class of villein socage."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Amphibious" Quotes from Famous Books



... the portage railroad over the mountains, and by April 16, 1834, a through line was in operation from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The termini of the road were Hollidaysburg, 1,398 feet below the mountain summit, and Johnstown, 1,771 feet below the summit. The boats were taken from the water like amphibious monsters and hauled up the ten inclined planes by stationary engines. The total cost of the canal and portage railroad was about ten million dollars, and the entire system was sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... departmental reports to national policymakers. Detailed coordinated information was needed not only on such major powers as Germany and Japan, but also on places of little previous interest. In the Pacific Theater, for example, the Navy and Marines had to launch amphibious operations against many islands about which information was unconfirmed or nonexistent. Intelligence authorities resolved that the United States should ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... peril. Unless, indeed, he renounces from the outset all thought of the stage and chooses to produce that cumbrous nondescript, a "closet drama." Of such we do not speak, but glance and pass on. What laws, indeed, can apply to a form which has no proper element, but, like the amphibious animal described by the sailor, "cannot live on land and dies in ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... not yet separated from the dry land. During the few moments when the work of keeping my balance and preventing my baggage from being lost did not engross all my attention, I speculated on the possibility of inventing a boat-carriage, to be drawn by some amphibious quadruped. Fortunately our two lean, wiry little horses did not object to being used as aquatic animals. They took the water bravely, and plunged through the mud in gallant style. The telega in which we were seated—a four-wheeled skeleton cart—did not submit to the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... succeeded; but it was a success obtained at the cost of setting at naught all her aunts' preconceived ideas regarding the correct deportment of marriageable girls. The knockabout was forthcoming shortly after she had demonstrated her amphibious qualities by diving from the rocks and performing water feats which dazed her anxious guardians. Indeed, she fairly lived in her bathing-dress until the novelty wore off. Thomas, the coachman, who had been a fisherman in his day, announced with a grin, after accompanying her on the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek mythology. An extant tribe in North-West America still claims descent from a frog. The wedding of Bheki and the king is a survival, in Sanskrit, of a tale of this kind. Lastly, Bheki disappears, when her associations with her old amphibious life are revived in the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... couple of immense dogs, male and female, half Newfoundland, half mastiff, which were celebrated for their sagacity, courage, and high-training. They were, in the most comprehensive sense, amphibious, and their home being near the sea, they spent many ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... with all their long practice; I do not know whether this depends on nervous sensitiveness or on the power of adjustment in the focus; but this capacity for distant vision might, it is probable, be slightly augmented by successive modifications of either kind. Amphibious animals, which are enabled to see both in the water and in the air, require and possess, as M. Plateau has shown,[533] eyes constructed on the following plan: "the cornea is always flat, or at least much flattened in front of the crystalline and over a space equal to the diameter of that lens, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... the latter, the entrance of his burrow would betray him, and men with their traps, and dogs, or other enemies, would easily get at him. Even if he had also a water entrance, by which he might escape upon the invasion of his burrow, he would drown for want of air. Although an amphibious animal, like the beaver and otter, he cannot live altogether under water, and must rise at intervals to take breath. The running stream in winter does not perhaps furnish him with his favourite food—the roots and stems of water-plants. These the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... may attach to immediate availability, with a naval force, in addition to its own air strength, of a proper complement of land forces (with appropriate air strength) which are organized, equipped, and trained for amphibious operations. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College

... the remains of aquatic and amphibious animals appear to confirm the conclusion drawn from vegetable fossils, that a climate of temperature as elevated as that now found in the tropics, once extended into high northern latitudes. It has been seen that the fossil remains and impressions of shells have been found at great heights ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... volunteered for the perilous enterprise. A sudden sickness prevented him, and his place was taken by a venturesome New London sergeant named Abijah Shipman, or, as rechristened by his companions, "Long Bige." He was an amphibious chap, half sailor, half soldier, long, thin, and bony, and not wanting in Yankee humor. He had courage enough to undertake any enterprise, if he could only be primed with rum and tobacco, articles which he deemed the leading ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... North America; these amphibious animals are about two feet nine inches in length, with very short fore feet and divided toes, while the hinder are membranous, and adapted for swimming; the body is covered with a soft, glossy, and valuable ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... Amphibious Nymph, from Nile's prolific bed 200 Emerging TRAPA lifts her pearly head; Fair glows her virgin cheek and modest breast, A panoply of scales deforms ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... rampire's artificial pride. Onward methinks, and diligently slow, The firm connected bulwark seems to grow, Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar, Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore. While the pent Ocean, rising o'er the pile, Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile; The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale, The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, The crowded mart, the cultivated plain, A new creation rescued from his reign. The Traveller. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... is no danger of the people of Munich being mistaken for an amphibious race. The tiny bowls and pitchers that furnish an ordinary German washstand, and the absence of slop-pail and foot-bath, are sufficient proof that only partial ablutions are expected to be performed in the bed-chamber; while the lack of a bath-room in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... The Romans were almost amphibious. They bathed themselves as often as seven times per diem; and young people of style passed a portion of the day, and often a part of the night, in the warm baths. Hence the importance which these establishments assumed in ancient times. There were eight hundred and ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... a soldier of honour shall be dragged, not before his own court-martial, who can best judge of and punish his demerits, but before a base mechanical burgo-master, who shall menace him with the rasp-house, the cord, and what not, as if he were one of their own mean, amphibious, twenty-breeched boors. So not being able to dwell longer among those ungrateful plebeians, who, although unable to defend themselves by their proper strength, will nevertheless allow the noble foreign cavalier ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... him what a dreadful place she considered the city for young men; and how she feared to bring her boy here. "The men here have no morals at all," said she, and added earnestly, "I've come to the conclusion that Eastern men are naturally amphibious!" ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... a friendliest hospitality, he was to hang ecstatic, through another sublime afternoon, on the wave of a magical wand. Here, as happened, were charming wise, original people even down to delightful amphibious American children, enamelled by the sun of the Bay as for figures of miniature Tritons and Nereids on a Renaissance plaque; and above all, on the part of the general prospect, a demonstration of the grand style of composition and effect that one was never to wish to see bettered. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... swimmers, but will not enter the water unless to avoid a foe. There is, however, one species of aquatic hare, found only in the Southern United States. It is amphibious, like the musk-rat, is a most expert swimmer, and makes its nest, or "form," on the edge of the morass, where it sleeps all day, sallying forth morning and evening for a swim in search of the delicate water-plants upon which it feeds. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... creatures of this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, considering their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is only to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If we imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could take refuge in the sea, we should ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, 5 Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes 10 Broken and unrepaired, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... of Italian, I gathered the necessary fruit of my birth in an amphibious country, and of the precious education I ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... engravings contain descriptions and emblems of the departure of the soul from this world, and of its passage into the next. There are various symbols of this mysterious transition: one is a snake with a boy riding upon its back, its amphibious nature plainly typifying the twofold existence allotted to man. The soul is also often shown muffled in a veil and travelling garb, seated upon a horse, and followed by a slave carrying a large sack of provisions, an emblem of the long and dreary journey ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... This animal is called amphibious, because it spends part of its time in the water; but, although it has been called the American representative of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, it is not so much a water animal as either of these. It seeks its food in the river, or the marshes that border it, and can ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... alligators, ganoid fishes, sea-cows, and tall gray herons, the ichthyosaurus, holoptychius, dinotherium, and brontozoum of ancient days. Here and there the river is bordered with low alluvial deposits covered with feathery-topped arrow-grass and amphibious vegetation; but generally the banks are about ten feet high and magnificently wooded; they are abrupt, and ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... word genabik, rendered serpent, appears likewise to have been used in a generic sense for amphibious animals of large and venomous character. When applied to existing species of serpents, it requires an adjective prefix or ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... lay steel-grey and still within its guardian headlands, a hundred slim, white pleasure craft riding its silent tide. Far out a Sound steamer crawled like some amphibious glowworm, its triple tier of deck-lights almost blended into one. Farther still the lights of the mainland glimmered low upon the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. 320 His wit all see-saw, between that and this, } Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, } And he himself one vile Antithesis. } Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head or the corrupted heart, 325 Fop at the toilet, flatt'rer at the board, Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... death that overtook the gentle and loving whales, Mr. Barnum has again invested untold heaps of money in a tremendous water-monster. The great tank has again a tenant, and the great public have huge amphibious matter for their wonderment. The new curiosity comes to us staggering under the unwieldy name of Hippo-potamus. He is a comely gentleman, fair and beauteous to look upon; and the strange loveliness ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... animals. Vegetable oils also were burned in the early lamps. The Japanese, for example, extracted oil from nuts. When the demands of civilization increased, extensive efforts were made to obtain the required fats and oils. Amphibious animals of the North and the huge mammals of the sea were slaughtered for their fat, and vegetable sources were cultivated. Later, sperm and colza were the most common oils used by the advanced races. ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... ready to start for rail-head with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two amphibious petty officers darning ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... Asterions. Colotes. Icles. Alcharates. Cychriodes. Jarraries. Arges. Cafezates. Ilicines. Spiders. Cauhares. Pharaoh's mice. Starry lizards. Snakes. Kesudures. Attelabes. Cuhersks, two- Sea-hares. Ascalabotes. tongued adders. Chalcidic newts. Haemorrhoids. Amphibious ser- Footed serpents. Basilisks. pents. Manticores. Fitches. Cenchres. Molures. Sucking water- Cockatrices. Mouse-serpents. snakes. Dipsades. Shrew-mice. Miliares. Salamanders. Stinkfish. Megalaunes. Slowworms. Stuphes. Spitting-asps. Stellions. Sabrins. Porphyri. Scorpenes. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... green pastures, or lay dark under the shadow of the big trees. But some of the fishes too had begun to leave the sea, and they had learned how to breathe with lungs as well as with gills. We call such creatures amphibious, which means that they are able to live with equal ease on the land and in the water. The first frog who crosses your path can tell you all about the pleasures of the double ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... Amikouas, or People of the Beaver, an Algonquin tribe of Lake Huron, claimed descent from the carcass of the great original beaver, or father of the beavers. They believed that the rapids and cataracts on the French River and the Upper Ottawa were caused by dams made by their amphibious ancestor. (See the tradition in Perrot, Mmoire sur les Murs, Coustumes et Relligion des Sauvages de l'Amrique Septentrionale, p. 20.) Charlevoix tells the same story. Each Indian was supposed to inherit something of the nature of the animal ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... and arbitrary. Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract [5] meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... evening at Richmond Soames returned from Henley by a morning train. Not constitutionally interested in amphibious sports, his visit had been one of business rather than pleasure, a client of some ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... species of the fair sex (I believe the only one) who appear to much advantage upon the briny wave; but the nature of our commander's lady not happening to be amphibious, she gave such unequivocal proofs of being out of her proper element, that my wishes for shore increased upon me ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... did duty as a museum of certain objects, such as are never seen but in this kind of amphibious household; nameless objects with the stamp at once of luxury and penury. Among other curiosities Hippolyte noticed a splendidly finished telescope, hanging over the small discolored glass that decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this strange collection of furniture, ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac

... we went to another, where I furnished myself with cloves, cinnamon, and other spices. As we sailed from this island we saw a tortoise twenty cubits in length and breadth. We observed also an amphibious animal like a cow, which gave milk; its skin is so hard that they usually make bucklers of it. I saw another, which had the shape and ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... dreariness was potent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay were all hard facts. Occasionally, here and there, could be seen a few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you chose to indulge your fancy, although the flat monotony of Duck Island was not inspiring, the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters and made the certainty of the returning tide a gloomy ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... rampant lion, others a soaring eagle; emblematical, no doubt, of the valiant and high-flying qualities of the inhabitants: so after mature deliberation a sleek beaver was emblazoned on the city standard as indicative of the amphibious origin and patient persevering habits of the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... hour by hour. They set at defiance the anathemas fulminated by your Holiness, the spiritual censures placarded in the churches, and the citation to appear before the ecclesiastical courts, although assured that their cause shall be pleaded by the ablest advocates in Rome. The cats, amphibious with alarm, are taking to the Tiber. Vainly the city reeks with toasted cheese, and the Commissary-General reports himself short ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... father; one that I will second with all my heart," exclaimed Percy, eagerly. "For that amphibious animal looks marvellously like a fish out of water amongst us all: and here we admit no strangers. Edward, there is a vacant seat reserved for you by my mother's side, who looks much as if she would choose you for her knight this evening; and, therefore, though your place in future is amongst ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... Ross, laughing, "do you think that all people have been brought up to an amphibious life like yourself? I suppose in your country, what with the rain and the mist, you seldom know whether you ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... our grandmothers nursed and for which they are cursed by many a farmer. The fat, tender, succulent dooryard stripling turned out to be a monster that would devour the earth. I have seen acres of meadow land destroyed by it. The way to drown an amphibious animal is to never allow it to come to the surface to breathe, and this is the way to kill live-forever. It lives by its stalk and leaf, more than by its root, and, if cropped or bruised as soon as it comes to the surface, it will in time perish. It laughs the plow, the hoe, the cultivator to scorn, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... curling mane, as it snorts and champs and plunges shoreward, wrapped in spray and foam. To this vigorous sport the Hawaiians are exceedingly partial. They are almost to the manner born, for from their earliest childhood they live an amphibious life, and never seem happier than when they are diving, swimming, bathing, or playing tricks in the bright emerald waters that wash the smiling shores of their favoured isle, or in those of the pleasant river that flows by the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... on the right lie the islands of the lagoon. Chioggia itself is hardly more than a village, —a Venice in miniature, like Murano, with canals and boats and bridges. But here the character of life is more amphibious than in brine-bound Venice; and though there is no horse to be seen in the central streets of Chioggia, peasants' teams penetrate her borders by means of a ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... the warships moved up to the Narrows. On the 18th, a great effort was made to reduce the forts about the Narrows; but it failed, with the loss of three battleships and more than 2,000 men. This demonstrated the fact that the Dardanelles could never be opened by sea power alone, and, accordingly, amphibious operations became necessary. An expeditionary force was assembled in Egypt, and Mudros was selected as the advanced base. On April 25, landings were effected on the extreme point of the Gallipoli Peninsula. In spite of heroic attempts, we did little more than effect a precarious lodgment. ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... Southeastward over fields and ditches, favoured by a round horizon moon on his left. So for a couple of hours he went ahead over rolling fallow land to the meadow-flats and a pale shining of freshets; then hit on a lane skirting the water, and reached an amphibious village; five miles from Storling, he was informed, and a clear traverse of lanes, not to be mistaken, 'if he kept a sharp eye open.' The sharpness of his eyes was divided between the sword-belt of the starry ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... size of life, gives a good idea of it. It lived out of the water for two or three hours and did not die until put into spirits; it ran about on the table as well as it swam in the water, so that it was evidently amphibious. It swam about from a dead shell of the Velella, to a nautilus, and from that again to some barnacles; each shell that it reached it climbed up, and folding up its fins ran all over it, so that it appeared like ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... the 24th brought storm, snow, and sleet. Ewing and Cadwallader could do nothing on account of the ice in the river. But Washington was determined on the attempt. He called upon Glover's men to man the boats; and these amphibious soldiers, who had transported the army on the retreat from Long Island, were ready again to strain every nerve for the plans of their chief. It was a long, tedious night as they pushed across the Delaware, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... White—the mother of the first child born to the New England Pilgrims on this continent. And it was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her passengers—a kind of amphibious prophecy that the new-born nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. [Great applause.] There, also, was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds. And there, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... height, up into which the elevator can be thrust. It will be understood, then, that this big movable trunk, the head of which, when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof, is made to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to the river; for the elevator is an amphibious institution, and flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a musquito's proboscis, ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... convey us to the island of St. Marguerite. It was impossible to help being diverted by the uncouth appearance of our new conductors, which was two or three degrees wilder than that of poor Murat's amphibious subjects: one fellow in ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... estate as anything. It's kind of amphibious; half real estate certainly,—more'n half when ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water,—insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers, "like ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... look good to me. I ain't what you might call aquatic by nature—I ain't even amphibious." Alice laughed and the sound was music to the Texan's ears. "That's right, laugh," he hastened to say, and the girl noticed that the cheerfulness was not forced, "I've never heard you laugh much owin' to the fact that our acquaintance has been ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... formed a separate garden, where there could be seen elephants, buffaloes, camels, dromedaries, stags, and kangaroos grazing; handsome and substantial cages held tigers, bears, leopards, lions, hyenas, etc; and swans and rare aquatic birds and amphibious animals sported in basins surrounded by iron gratings. In this menagerie I specially remarked a very extraordinary animal, which his Majesty had ordered brought to France, but which had died the day before it was to have started. This ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... throng of fishermen, in red baize shirts, oilcloth trousers, and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg; true seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth. The wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun themselves; nor would it have been wonderful to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shellfish, such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber over which the tide ebbs and flows. When their fleet of ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sea. Probably the reader is aware that the water of the southern seas is, in many parts, so much warmer than that of our northern climes, that people may remain in it for hours without being chilled. Hence natives of the coral islands are almost amphibious, and our young hero, having spent much of his life among these islands, could swim for the greater part of ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... old wives' fables are a kind of property in Scotland that belongs to the estates and goes with the soil. Our streams and lochs are like the rivers and pools in Germany, that have all their Wasser Nixe, or water witches, and I have a fancy for these kind of amphibious bogles ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... screening and exculpation has been extemporized in Cape journals of late. There, in an ingeniously pretended dissertation, it is invented how ill founded the aspersions are against Mr. Premier Schreiner, and that the acts, upon which he was so wrongly suspected as an amphibious helmsman, are really attributable to another person—by the way, to one at a safe distance, viz., to Mr. F.W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary; whilst this gentleman again, when lecturing at Johannesburg in July last, naively ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... of China is a twin. It is two cities—one inland, narrow-streeted, paved with rubble stones; the other at sea, floating on bamboo reeds. The amphibious inmates of the marine town never go ashore, but are a species of otter or seal. Besides, they are first-class thieves, as well as cowardly, cruel pirates and wreckers. They will steal the sheathing from a copper-bottomed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... Words: aquatic, aquarium, aqueduct, alluvial, alluvion, affusion, aquapuncture, alluvium, diluvium, anhydrous, enhydrous, amphibious, amphibian, aquiferous, aquiform, aquiparous, buoy, coffer, cofferdam, debacle, cataclysm, dehydrate, dehydration, irrigation, diluvian, douche, glairin, baregin, hydragogue, hydrant, hydrate, hydration, hydrated, hydraulicon, hydrodynamics, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... it. "No webs, and yet it's been an amphibious little creature most of its life. My dear girl, our friend Thoburn is a rascal, but he is also a student of mankind and a philosopher. Gee," he said, "think of a woman fighting her way alone through the world with a bit of a ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of which Western rivermen were very proud, carried with it a suggestion of amphibious strength that made it both apt and figuratively accurate. On all the American rivers, east and west, a lusty crew, collected from the waning Indian trade and the disbanded pioneer armies, found work to its taste in poling the long keel boats, "corralling" the bulky barges—that is, towing them by ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... with Minty Foster, but had never ventured beyond her depth. There was a flight of steps leading down to the water at the left of Edna's cottage to a little natural harbor behind the rock masses. No sandy beach was there. One dropped into sea green depths where only the amphibious could feel at home; but Edna was amphibious, and even Miss Lacey's shade hat, firmly tied beneath the chin, was sometimes seen to ride upon the wave as its owner indulged in a stately swim from one point of rock to another. Her mouth and nose on these ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... that be the Ship, I be the coachman, and we goes no further," observed the amphibious-looking coachman, in a pea-jacket and top-boots, to Mr. Jorrocks, who still kept his seat on the box, as if he expected, that because they booked people "through to Paris," at the coach office in London, that the vehicle crossed ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... conversation. Fasimba was garbed in the same type of hideous and fear-inspiring outfit as Ch'aka, differing only in unimportant details. Instead of a conch, his head was encased in the skull of one of the amphibious rosmaroj, brightened up with some extra tusks and horns. The differences between the two men were all minor, and mostly a matter of decoration or variation of weapon design. They were ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... soften manners and humanize their laws. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this being, Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... of serious mind, who was touching on old age, and but recently mother of her first child, Madame Roland was born in that intermediary condition in which families scarcely emancipated from manual labour are, it may be said, amphibious between the labourer and the tradesman, and retain in their manners the virtues and simplicity of the people, whilst they already participate in the lights of society. The period in which aristocracies fall is that in which nations ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... 'em again," he replied, carefully examining a small dark-red newt which he held in the palm of one hand. "I say, Kathleen, look at this little creature. I was messing about under the ledges along Hurryon Brook, and found this amphibious gentleman occupying the ground-floor apartment of a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... a party of bathers,—ladies and little children, with towels and blue suits, and all the paraphernalia of pails and wooden shovels. Then will come perhaps a couple of girls, to sketch. They will encamp anywhere upon the shore, call into their service some small amphibious creature to tip a skiff up on its side to make an effective scene, and proceed with the wonders of their art. Soon the bathers return. They have been only a little way down the narrows, and come back to dinner at one. The fishermen come ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... solar glow 'T were bliss ecstatic To be amphibious—but O, To be aquatic! We're worms, men say, o' the dust, and they That faith are firm of. O, then, be just: show me some dust ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... where he masticated his breakfast, at his leisure. Three alligators inhabit this pond, and being regarded as "fetishes," or charmed and sacred creatures, are never injured by the natives. On their part, the amphibious monsters seem to cherish amicable feelings towards the human race, and allow children to bathe and sport in the pond, without injury or molestation. The reptile that I saw was seven or eight feet long, with formidable ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... now suffice to say, that the amphibious steam-boat carried us to Sukkur in rather less than three weeks—our voyage in some respects resembling the midnight journey ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... with pere Eloy, was called away by an occurrence which caused him chagrin. The sentinel to whom was assigned the duty of keeping watch over Palafox was not sufficiently vigilant to foil his cunning. The amphibious athlete managing deftly to loosen the cords which bound his wrists, slipped like an eel from the boat into the river, and, diving deep, swam awhile under water, then on the surface, and finally reached the eastern ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... that no ray of light can enter and they can never see. Such eyes, without the function of sight, are found in several species of moles and mice which live underground, in serpents and lizards, in amphibious animals (proteus, caecilia) and in fishes; also in numerous invertebrate animals which pass their lives in the dark, as do many beetles, crabs, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water thing called a gentleman-tradesman; and as a just plague upon my folly, I was catched in the very snare which, as I might say, I laid for myself. I said for myself, for I was not trepanned, I confess, but ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... discomposure. "Yes; but I have tried to remain amphibious: it's all right as long as one's lungs can work in another air. The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... curiously enough, spoke constantly of the hippopotamus—ajie, as they called it—and even imitated to perfection the sounds made by that amphibious animal. This was indeed strange, because the hippopotamus did not exist in South America, nor has it ever been known to exist there. The women of the Bororos were in perfect terror of the ajie, which was supposed to appear sometimes ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... larger and finer flavoured than any I had seen before, and was, in the opinion of most on board, the highest luxury the sea afforded us. The shell-fish are, muscles, cockles, scallops, cray-fish, and many other sorts, all such as are to be found in every other part of the coast. The only amphibious animals are seals: These are to be found in great numbers about this bay on the small rocks and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... lightly from, or to a boat of Mr. Cambridge's, had slipt into the Thames; whence, however, he was intrepidly and immediately rescued, with no other mischief than a wet jacket, by one of that fearless, water-proof race, denominated, by Mr. Gibbon, the amphibious family of the Cambridges." (" Memoir of Dr. Burney," vol. ii. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... amphibious sea-animals on the coast, except seals, with which the bay of Awatska swarmed; as they were at this time in pursuit of the salmon that were collecting in shoals, and ready to ascend the rivers. Some of them are said to pursue the fish into the fresh water, and to be found in most of the lakes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... on the river. They were equally at home with scythe or oar. Amid such terraqueous conditions it was natural enough that the children should develop a passion for the sea. Like ducks many of them took to the water and became sailors. Abijah was a sailor. The amphibious habits of boyhood gave to his manhood a restless, roving character. Like the element which he loved he was in constant motion. He was a man of gifts both of mind and body. There was besides a strain of romance and adventure in his blood. By nature and his seafaring life he ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the penchant for working mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to royalty, since our good King builds ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various

... the width; but the skillful swimmer can advance only at a slow rate through the water, and, before he could reach the other shore, a half dozen Pawnees would be on the bank in the rear, waiting for him to reappear. He was a master of the natatorial art, but he was not amphibious, and soon would have to come to the surface or die. The watchers would be quick to detect him, and their position was so much the superior of the fugitive that his capture ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... potations" very soon after the commencement of his capering career. In the "serene and silent art" she was, however, truly fortunate; the clergyman of the place, a most amiable and intelligent man, and, to the credit of his amphibious parishioners, loved and esteemed with the utmost fervor and unanimity, added to his other accomplishments no mean skill as a draughtsman; an art, that he had full leisure to practise; one of his parochial duties, that of visiting the sick, being a mere shadow; ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... land, and the hippopotamus had not quite completed its lazy yawn, when the entire winged host rose with a rushing noise so thunderous, yet so soft and peculiar, that words cannot convey the idea of the sight and sound. At the same time, many grunts and snorts and heavy plunges told that sundry amphibious creatures had been disturbed, and were seeking ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... the wolf-child of the Ardennes, mentioned by Koenig, in his treatise on the subject; the Irish boy said to feed on grass and hay, found living among the wild sheep; the girl found living wild in Holland in 1717; the two goat-like boys of the Pyrenees (in 1719); the amphibious wild girl of Chalons sur Marne (in 1731); the wild boy of Bamberg, who lowed like an ox; and, the most renowned of all, Kaspar Hauser. This celebrated "wild boy" has recently been made the subject of a monograph by the Duchess of Cleveland (208), of which the first words are ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... apprehension that the Honourable Johns and Honourable Georges would come in a sort of amphibious costume, half-morning, half-evening, satin neck-handkerchiefs, frock-coats, primrose gloves, and polished boots; and that, being so dressed, they would decline riding at the quintain, or taking part in any ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... Worshipful on shoulder-blade: Chief of domestic knights and errant, Either for chartel or for warrant: Great in the bench, great in the saddle, That could as well bind o'er as swaddle: Mighty he was at both of these, And styl'd of war, as well as peace, (So some rats, of amphibious nature, Are either for the land or water). But here our authors make a doubt, Whether he were more wise or stout. Some hold the one, and some the other: But howsoe'er they make a pother, The diff'rence was ...
— English Satires • Various

... his balance and rolled over into the water; from which he was promptly rescued by a human ladder, dexterously let down to him in sections, without a moment's hesitation, by his allies, who, like all Venetian boys of the populace, were amphibious animals, full ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... Saloo, who better understood its habits. He knew they were amphibious, and that, where the dugong was found, land could not be a long way off. He said this, once more arousing his companions by his words to ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... masts and spars, choke up the way; hardy rough-weather boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little harbour or are drawn out on the sunny stones to dry; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and if they slipped in, they would float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes; the church is bright with trophies of the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... animal are in the hottest parts of Ceylon. In the neighbourhood of lakes, swamps, and extensive plains, the buffalo exists in large herds; wallowing in the soft mire, and passing two-thirds of his time in the water itself, he may be almost termed amphibious. ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... steps from the vessel there was a seal-hole, a kind of circular crevice cut out by the teeth of that amphibious animal, hollowed out from underneath, and through which the seal comes up to breathe on to the surface of the ice. To keep this aperture from closing up he has to be very careful because the formation ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... know not what to make of the pianets; but the footsteps of beasts reaching to the edge of the water may probably refer to amphibious animals, while the flocks of pianets may have been water-fowl of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... its way with increased rapidity, and ere Popanilla had recovered himself sufficiently to make even an ejaculation, he found himself at the side of a quay. Some amphibious creatures, whom he supposed to be mermen, immediately came to his assistance, rather stared at his serpent-skin coat, and then helped him up the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... enjoyed by their descendants. Many thousands more, however, fell down upon the coasts of the country, and, on moss-covered moors or bare promontories, ill suited to repay the labours of the agriculturist, commenced a sort of amphibious life as crofters and fishermen. And, located on an ungenial soil, and prosecuting with but indifferent skill a precarious trade, their little capital dribbled out of their hands, and they became the poorest of men. Meanwhile, in some parts ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... a conference was being held; and I had the satisfaction of seeing some men pull up a lot of dead rushes, dexterously tie them into bundles, and truss these together by means of spears. They had no canoes, for the very children were amphibious, living, so it seemed, as much in the water as out of it. When the raft was completed, I was invited to embark. My original friend, who had twisted a tow-rope, took this between his teeth, and led the way. Others swam behind and beside me to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... huge red tide-mill, now silent and weather-worn, standing mournfully at the head of the dry harbour of Pagham, whose waters once turned its wheels. On the west, on the shores of the Bosham estuary, or Chichester Harbour, are the sleepy amphibious villages of Appledram, famous once for its salt and its smugglers, Birdham, and Earnley. Let no one be tempted to take a direct line across the fields from Selsey to Earnley, for dykes and canals must effectually stop him. Indeed, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... water, whose blood is cold as fishes, and their flesh so like in taste that the scrupulous are allowed them on fish-days. There are animals so near of kin both to birds and beasts that they are in the middle between both: amphibious animals link the terrestrial and aquatic together; seals live at land and sea, and porpoises have the warm blood and entrails of a hog; not to mention what is confidently reported of mermaids, or sea-men. There are some brutes that seem to have as much knowledge and reason as ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... swim there," he said; "I don't claim to be amphibious, exactly. As you say, it's calm enough on the open water, but I don't think anything except a seal or a walrus or something of that kind could land on that rock. Not for me, thank you. I'll ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... way, but they don't feed the belly of man. As matters stand the only people that have fit things to eat now in all Europe are the American troops in France, and their food comes out of tins chiefly. Ach! Heaven! In these islands man is amphibious and carnivorous. It rains every day and meat, meat, meat is the only human idea of food. God bless us, one acre of the Sandhills is worth a vast estate of tin mines and golf links to ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... realizing that it would be ruined by water, the crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the road—leaving the last scattered houses of the little town—turned south and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... difference that exists between a beaver and an Indian, is, that the latter has been endowed by the Great Spirit with power and capabilities to catch the former. Some of the stories which old mountaineers occasionally inflict upon an inquisitive traveller are somewhat startling; nevertheless, what this amphibious animal really performs is truly astounding, and oftentimes the truth ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... obtaining a charter is not difficult to understand. That amphibious colony, consisting of mainland, islands, and a large body of water, was inhabited by "poor despised peasants," as Governor Brenton described them, "living remote in the woods" and subject to the "envious and ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... hillside trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint, The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan. Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown; The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown; The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his blackmail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... agricultural neighbourhood which was so far cultivable as it rose above the level of desolate and foggy swamps. But the drainage of the fens and the making of good roads over what had once been an area of amphibious uncertainty, neither wholly land nor wholly water, had the effect of largely diverting business to Boston. Trade that came to Donington when it stood over its own tract of fen, like the elderly and respectable capital of some small island, now went to the thriving and historic port ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... It is probable that the Dinosaurs are not really a natural group or order of reptiles, although they have been generally so considered. The Carnivorous and Amphibious Dinosaurs in spite of their diverse appearance and habits, are rather nearly related, while the Beaked Dinosaurs form a group apart, and may be descendants of a different group of primitive reptiles. These relations are most clearly seen in the construction of the pelvis ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... ordered the burglar. "You might be amphibious and shoot with your left. You can count two, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... and laid final siege on April 27 to Mesolonghi, just a year after Byron had died of fever within its walls. The Greeks were magnificent in their defence of these frail mud-bastions, and they more than held their own in the amphibious warfare of the lagoons. The struggle was chequered by the continual coming and going of the Greek and Ottoman fleets. They were indeed the decisive factor; for without the supporting squadron Rashid would have found himself in the same straits as his predecessors ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... caught fish. The Indian laughed at him, and told him that beavers ate flesh of no kind, but lived on the bark of trees, roots, and other growing things. "I asked him," said Smith, "if the beaver was an amphibious animal, or if it could live under water? He said that the beaver was a kind of subterraneous water animal, that lives in or near the water, but they were no more amphibious than the ducks and geese were—which was constantly proven to be the case, as all the beavers ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... Oo-koo-hoo and Amik set out to hunt beavers—those wonderful amphibious animals of the Northland that display more intelligence, perseverance, prudence, and morality than many ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... and the carpenters would have called to their aid a dozen different sorts of tools, and have expended, at least, a hundred weight of nails; and, after all, it would have employed them as many days as it did these people hours. But seamen, like most other amphibious animals, are always the most helpless on land. After they had completed these two piles, they made several other heaps of yams and bread-fruit on each side of the area; to which were added a turtle, and a large quantity of excellent fish. All this, with a piece of cloth, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... source of superiority was, after all, in the men themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... work, and quotes Goethe as making an original discovery when he writes, in the year 1796:—"Thus much then we have gained, that we may assert without hesitation that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes, amphibious animals, birds, mammals, and man at the head of the last, were all formed upon one original type, which only varies more or less in parts which were none the less permanent, and still daily changes and modifies its form by propagation."[35] ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... which hitherto had not been given expression, had not even been thought worthy of art—the cynical revolts, for instance, of which only the greatest sufferer is capable, also many a small and quite microscopical feature of the soul, as it were the scales of its amphibious nature—yes indeed, he is the master of everything very small. But this he refuses to be! His tastes are much more in love with vast walls and with daring frescoes!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} He does not see that his spirit has another desire ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... Amerikano. Amiability amindeco. Amiable afabla, aminda. Amicably pace. Amid meze. Amidst meze. Amity amikeco. Ammonia amoniako. Among inter. Amongst inter. Amorous amema. Amount sumo. Amphibious amfibia. Amphitheatre amfiteatro. Amphora amforo. Ample suficxa. Amplify grandigi. Amplitude amplekso. Amputate detrancxi. Amulet talismano. Amuse amuzi. Anagram anagramo. Analogy analogio. Analysis analizo. Analyze ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... not absolutely amphibious that is so thoroughly at home in the water as the elephant. In a wild state it will swim the largest rivers, and it delights in morasses, where it rolls in the deep mud like a pig or buffalo, and thus coats its hide with a covering of slime, which protects it from the attacks of flies and the worry ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... overhead. An endless creaking was going on all about me, the woodwork and the fittings groaning and squeaking and complaining in a thousand keys. The hunters were still arguing and roaring like some semi-human amphibious breed. The air was filled with oaths and indecent expressions. I could see their faces, flushed and angry, the brutality distorted and emphasized by the sickly yellow of the sea-lamps which rocked back and forth ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... entirely; the water, again, cloudy and yellow, like pea-soup, seems but a solution of such islands, rolling turbid and thick with alluvium, which it both gathers and deposits as it sweeps along with a swollen, smooth rapidity, that almost deceives the eye. Amphibious creatures, alligators, serpents, and wild fowl, haunt these yet but half-formed regions, where land and water are of the consistency of hasty-pudding—the one seeming too unstable to walk on, the other almost too thick to float in. But then, the sky, if no human chisel ever yet cut breath, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... revolve in our minds the great similarity of structure, which obtains in all the warm-blooded animals, as well quadrupeds, birds, and amphibious animals, as in mankind; from the mouse and bat to the elephant and whale; one is led to conclude, that they have alike been produced from a similar living filament. In some this filament in its ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... the muddy banks, as the water fell, we saw myriads of small amphibious fishes skipping about: they are probably of the same kind as those seen by Captain Cook at Thirsty Sound and by Captain Flinders at Keppel Bay,* on the east coast. Captain Cook describes the species he saw to be a small fish, about the size of a minnow, furnished ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... railroad days with men wading in swamps with survey kits, and frequently lying down to die. Then if a bit of the future, too, could for a moment be unveiled, and one might watch the first ship glide majestically and silently into the canal and away into the jungle like some amphibious monster. ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... were in search is amphibious, and suckles its young like the whale. It is frequently found in pairs with its young, browsing on the marine plants, and sometimes on shore in the cocoanut groves. It is properly called the "manatee," or seacow; measures fifteen feet in length, has two fin-like arms, is covered with hair, ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... late excursion I almost became an amphibious being—spending the most of my days in the water, and by night pitching my tent on the barren sands. Whilst I remained at Spring Garden, the alligators were yet in full life; the white-headed eagles setting; the smaller resident ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... the Schinck (scincus), an amphibious animal of the lizard species, and sometimes of the land lizard, or crocodile, is said, when reduced to powder and drunk with sweet wine, to act miraculously in exciting the venereal action; it is also prepared for the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... enormous reptile was seen "quoiled up on a rock at Cape Ann." He would have fired at him but for the earnest dissuasion of his Indian guide, who declared that ill luck would come of the attempt. The sea-serpent sometimes shows amphibious tendencies and occasionally leaves the sea for fresh water. Two of him were seen in Devil's Lake, Wisconsin, in 1892, by four men. They confess, however, that they were fishing at the time. The snakes had fins and were a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... the palace of Kauravya to the region where the Ganges entereth the plains. The chaste Ulupi, taking her leave there, returned to her own abode. And, O Bharata, she granted unto Arjuna a boon making him invincible in water, saying, 'Every amphibious creature shall, without doubt, be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... pleasure-house, using it as a port from which to sally out to plunder Spanish ships. After a cruise, these pirates sometimes went ashore for a month or two of cattle hunting. Often enough, the French cattle hunters took their places on the ships. The sailors and huntsmen soon became amphibious, varying the life of the woods with that of a sailor, and sometimes relaxing after a cruise with a year's work in the tobacco fields. In 1638, when the Spanish made their raid, there were considerable numbers (certainly several hundreds) ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... his are not the eyes by which it is to be found again. If the dignity of Knight of the Shire is to be conferred, he cannot be pronounced a fit person to receive it. For whether, my Brother Freeholders, you look at the humbleness of his situation amongst Country Gentlemen; or at his amphibious habits, in the two elements of Law and Authorship, and the odd vagaries he has played in both; or whether he be tried by the daring opinions which, by his own acknowledgment, he has maintained in Parliament, and at public ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... branch. It was a serpent at least sixty feet in length, and two feet or more in breadth at its huge middle. It was queerly but not brilliantly spotted, and its head was very nearly that of the anaconda of to-day. Already the sea-serpent had become amphibious. It had already acquired the knowledge it has transmitted to the anaconda, that it might leave the stream, and, from some vantage point upon the shore, find more surely a victim than in the waters of the sea or river. ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... post Britannia turns her vast amphibious host, That seas and storms, obedient to her hand, Heave and discharge on every distant land; Fleets, floating batteries shake Manhattan's shore, And Hellgate rocks reverberate the roar. Swift o'er the shuddering isles that line the bay The red ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... nor landing-stages at Marichchikkaddi. Even His Excellency the Governor must lay aside his dignity in going from his boat to the shore. The horde of people working about the pearling fleet, amphibious by nature, have little need for those accommodations and necessities which the commercial world call ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... not aware that the inhabitants of the islands of Lake Tchad, like many other negro tribes, plunge with impunity into sheets of water infested with crocodiles and caymans, and without troubling their heads about them. The amphibious denizens of this lake enjoy the well-deserved reputation of ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons.... SHELLEY, Julian ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... friend," remarked Styles gravely to the middie, as we tucked the insensible Spring Chicken into his berth—"If you want to gamble, you'll do it—so I don't advise you. But these amphibious beasts are dangerous; so in future play with gentlemen and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... village, I was ushered by my guide into the grounds and gardens of Mynheer Broekker, another mighty cheese-manufacturer, worth eighty thousand guilders a year. I had repeatedly been struck with the similarity of all that I had seen in this amphibious little village to the buildings and landscapes on Chinese platters and tea-pots; but here I found the similarity complete; for I was told that these gardens were modeled upon Van Bramm's description of those of Yuen min Yuen, in China. Here were serpentine walks, with trellised borders; ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... the itinerary for our "cross-country" journey, by way of the Lakes, to Ekoniah Scrub. How many of all the Florida tourists know where that is? I wonder. Or even what it is—the strange amphibious land which goes on from year to year "developing"—the solid ground into marshy "parrairas," the prairies into lakes, bright, sparkling sapphires which Nature is threading, one by one, year by year, upon her emerald chaplet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... this amphibious, ill-born mob began, That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. The customs, sirnames, languages, and manners, Of all these nations, are their own explainers; Whose relics are so lasting and so strong, They've left a Shiboleth upon our tongue; By which, with easy search, ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe

... die so quickly as you think," said Becker; "it commences by living three years under water in the form of a maggot. It afterwards becomes amphibious, when it has a horny covering, on which the rudiments of wings may be observed. Then, four or five months after this first metamorphosis, generally in the month of August, it issues from its skin, almost as rapidly as we throw off a jacket; ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... After forcing a passage through three vile "gates," the sheet-lightning announced a second tornado. We sighed for more vivid flashes, but after twenty minutes they dimmed and died away, still showing the "bush"-silhouette on either side. The tide rushed out in strength under the amphibious forest—all who know the West Coast will appreciate the position. It was impossible to advance or to remain in this devil's den, the gig bumped at every minute, and the early flood would probably crush her against the trees. So we dropped ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Popham, but there is nothing to show whether or not he was the author of the instructions. He was an officer of high scientific attainments, but although he had won considerable distinction during the war, his service had been entirely of an amphibious character in connection with military operations ashore, and he had never seen a fleet action at sea. He reached flag rank in 1814, and was one of the men who received a K.C.B. on the reconstitution of the order in 1815. Of the naval lords serving with Lord Melville at the time none can ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... They are the connecting link between the races of the Old and New Worlds, in physical appearance and mental traits more allied to the former, but in language betraying their near kinship to the latter. An amphibious race, born fishermen, in their buoyant skin kayaks they brave fearlessly the tempests, make long voyages, and merit the sobriquet bestowed upon them by Von Baer, "the Phenicians of the north." Contrary to what one might suppose, they are, amid their snows, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... Young People will think I am telling them too much about swimming. But in the Boy's Town the boys really led a kind of amphibious life, and as long as the long summer lasted they were almost as much in the water as on the land. The Basin, however, unlike the river, had a winter as well as a summer climate, and one of the very first things that my boy could ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... the flower of the Lotos on the waters.) A man at the helm of a ship, adds Jamblicus, is descriptive of the sun which governs all. And Porphyry tells us that the sun is also represented by a man in a ship resting upon an amphibious crocodile (emblem of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... for all time to come? To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. but the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... After seventeen days of amphibious soldiering in front of Nieuport we were relieved by the 125th brigade, and went back for a welcome rest to huts near Coxyde. Rumours drifted around about accompanying the 41st division to Italy, but they did not materialise. Bitterly cold weather suddenly arrived, however, ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... scattered for short excursions in their canoes along the neighboring coves of the lake, for the various purposes of fishing, shooting ducks, or inspecting the shores for indications of beaver, otter, and other classes of the smaller fur-animals of amphibious habits. All returning, however, at sunset, they proceeded to cook and eat their suppers, much in the same manner as on the preceding evening; after which, in compliance with the suggestions made by several of the company during ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... it was almost literally true. She felt that she was like a spirit moving among these people marooned on this island of the West End of London, all spell-bound by the money of this great roaring city, all enslaved, all amphibious, living between two elements, the actual and the imagined, but in neither, because of the spell that bound them, fully and passionately.... Living in the play she saw Sir Henry merged in Prospero, and ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... the night-long moon collected dew She brings; the dismal screech-owl's flesh and wings; The entrails of the wolf ambiguous, wont His savage face in human guise to wear: Nor wanted there, the scaly skin which clothes Th' amphibious snake Cyniphian, long and small: The beak and head a crow nine ages bore, She adds. Now was the foreign dame prepar'd, By help of these, and nameless thousands more, The promis'd boon to give, the whole she stirs Deep from the bottom, with a bough long rent, From ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... together, which is not so wonderful, as both are found on the coast of the Polar Sea, and both yielded ivory to the stocks of the Siberian merchants. In the same way all the statements which the French Jesuit, AVRIL, during his stay in Moscow in 1686, collected regarding the amphibious animal, Behemoth, occurring on the coast of the Tartarian Sea, (Polar Sea) refer not to the mammoth, as some writers, HOWORTH[215] for example, have supposed, but to the walrus. The name mammoth, which is probably of Tartar origin, Witsen appears to wish to derive ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. We adjust our instrument for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easily as we pick out a single figure in the terrestrial landscape. We are practically skilful ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of ugliness and deformity. Of course Madame de Villegry did not bathe, being, as she said, too nervous. She was sitting under a large parasol and enjoying her own superiority over those wretched, amphibious creatures who waddled on the sands before her, comparing Madame X to a seal and Mademoiselle Z to the skeleton ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... of that amphibious fry, Bold to prescribe, and busy to apply; His shop the gazing vulgar's eyes employs, With foreign trinkets and domestic toys. Here mummies lay, most reverently stale, And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail; Not far from some huge shark's devouring ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... in each boat, for neglect of this precaution has caused accidents frightful to think of, on the Goodwins; and the remaining four boatmen, daring fellows of the sea-dog and amphibious type, walked across the sands, dripping with the brine. As a matter of fact, two of them were not only Deal boatmen, but were sailors who had been round and round the world, and one was an old and first-rate ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... mournfully recall their charred and ruined habitations by the Brenta and the Piave. The sea alone does not constitute their safety. If that were all, the pirate ships of the Vandal Genseric might repeat upon their poor dwellings all the terror of Attila. But it is in their amphibious life, in that strange blending of land and sea which is exhibited by the lagunes, that their safety lies. Only experienced pilots can guide a vessel of any considerable draught through the mazy channels of deep water which intersect these lagoons; and should they seem to be in imminent peril from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the rivers. Already the salmon fishery affords not only a supply for home consumption, but is an article of commerce, being sent to the Sandwich Islands. They are also supplied to the Russian settlements according to contract. The coast swarms with amphibious animals of the seal kind, known by the vulgar names of Sea Lion, Sea Elephant and Sea Cow—but above all with the common seal. The traffic to be derived from these in skins, oil, &c. could not but ...
— A Letter from Major Robert Carmichael-Smyth to His Friend, the Author of 'The Clockmaker' • Robert Carmichael-Smyth

... serious injury except the carrying away of the sails. Of course this discovery roused new hopes in the homes of the missing men. It did not "stand to reason" that four big strong, temperate young fellows, brought up to the hardy, amphibious island-life, had all fallen overboard, any more than it "stood to sense" that the boat had upset and then righted of itself. Besides, "none of the boy's corpuses had ever floated up." So the Tucketers took courage and felt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... me. My mind is greatly agitated, and as my head also is aching, I ask thee, therefore, O worshipful one, who art thou that stayest here?' Hearing these words the Yaksha said, 'I am, good betide thee, a Yaksha, and not an amphibious bird. It is by me that all these brothers of thine, endued with mighty ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Who can say? Perhaps the inferiority of French meat in certain regions arises from this habit of stabling cattle and sheep. The drive from Clairmarais to St. Omer took us through a quite different and much more attractive country. We were now in the marais, an amphibious stretch of country, cut up into gardens and only accessible by tiny canals. It is a small Holland. This vast stretch of market garden, intersected by waterways just admitting the passage of a boat, is very productive. Three pounds per hectare ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards



Words linked to "Amphibious" :   amphibious aircraft, amphibious landing, semiaquatic, amphibiotic, amphibia, amphibious operation, amphibious vehicle, terrestrial



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