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Swarm   Listen
verb
Swarm  v. t.  To crowd or throng.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Swarm" Quotes from Famous Books



... German sniper within range sent shot upon shot after the flying figure. The enemy's trenches took up the hunt and fairly blazed with rifle and machine gun fire. The bullets hummed in Throckmorton's ears like a swarm of savage hornets. They snarled and bit at the turf about his feet ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... dozens of just such men, and all political capitals swarm with them. They are the sons of good families, and have to be taken care of—Remittance-Men, Astute Persons, Clever Nobodies, Good Fellows! They are more to be pitied than slaving peasants. God help the rich—the poor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... scaling-ladders, and so began the escalade, their friends backing them by shooting of arbalests from behind the remnant of the palisade. A ladder would be set against the wall, and we could see men with shields, or doors, or squares of wood on their heads to fend off stones, swarm up it, and axes flashing on the crest of the wall, and arrows flying, and smoke of guns: but the smoke cleared, and lo! the ladder was gone, and the three libbards grinned on the flag of England. So went the war, company after company ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... arms of the sea, the harbors filled with islands, the protected straits and sounds. All this is favorable to the highest commercial activity and enterprise. Greece itself and its islands are not more indented and inviting. Fish swarm about the shores and in all the streams. There are, I have no doubt, great forests which we did not see from the car windows, the inhabitants of which do not show themselves to the travelers at the railway-stations. In the dining-room of a friend, who goes away ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... they scarcely retained. Many fainted and expired on the mole, which, being completely surrounded by the sea, was the only quarter vouchsafed to the wretched emigrants. The infection bred by such a swarm of dead and dying persons was not at once perceived; but, when the winter broke up, ulcers began to make their appearance, and the malady, which lurked for a long time in the city, broke out into the plague in ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... halls, where fortune takes its ease, Sunk in the treasures of all lands and seas; In happy homes, where warmth and comfort meet The weary traveler with their smiles to greet; In lowly dwellings, where the needy swarm Round starving embers, chilling limbs to warm, Rises the prayer that makes the sad heart light— "Thank God for home, this bitter, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... the Tale, indulgent Friend! Would now direct thy notice. Yet in spite Of pleasure won, and knowledge not withheld, There was an inner falling off—I loved, Loved deeply all that had been loved before More deeply even than ever: but a swarm Of heady schemes jostling each other, gawds, And feast and dance, and public revelry, And sports and games (too grateful in themselves, Yet in themselves less grateful, I believe, Than as they were a badge glossy and fresh Of manliness ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... suffocating heat, the horrible odour, the maddening swarm of vermin that devoured us, the incessant thirst and wretched fare, sufficed not to satisfy our overseers. They sometimes struck us rudely, and very often threw down sea-water upon us, when they saw ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... o'clock the evening party assembled—a whole swarm of young ladies, a few old ones, and the secretary, who distinguished himself by a collection of seals hanging to a long watch-chain, and everlastingly knocking against his body; a white shirt-frill, stiff collar, and a cock's comb, in which ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... of the procession again appearing; and at once the specks of light began to swarm and extend in long, wavering double files. The darkness submerged everything except these luminous points, which seemed to be at a great elevation, and to emerge, as it were, from the black depths of the Unknown. And at the same time ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... on his head and went out. He had an urgent errand on High Street, to buy grass and flower seeds and tools that would certainly be needed in April. It took him an hour or more of shrewd looking about for the best bargains, in a swarm of little barnacle and cellar shops, to spend a few of the kirk's shillings. When he found himself, to his disgust, looking at a nail studded collar for a little dog he called himself a "doited auld fule," and tramped ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... The cellar might swarm with such creatures; the darkness of the fast-coming night might be alive with them! And if yonder dungeon-like door were to swing to and shut with a spring lock, she might perish there in the darkness. She might die the most hideous of ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... their task beneath the sun, when they lead forth their nation's grown brood, or when they press the liquid honey and strain their cells with nectarous sweets, or relieve the loaded incomers, or in banded array drive the idle herd of drones far from their folds; they swarm over their work, and the odorous honey smells sweet of thyme. 'Happy they whose city already rises!' cries Aeneas, looking on the town roofs below. Girt in the cloud he passes amid them, wonderful to tell, and mingling with the throng is ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... doubt, by some diabolical design of 'reforming' the school and desecrating the shrine of Henry's holy shade. The poor man, already overpowered by struggling with refractory colonists from Heligoland to New Zealand, was of malice prepense stirring up this additional swarm of hornets. I can hardly suppose, however, that this ingenious theory had much influence. Mr. Coleridge also says that the masters connived at the systematic bullying of the town boys. I can believe that they did not ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... Denmark, Norway, England, and half Scotland, and what not of Wendish Folk inside the Baltic—the force of the Norsemen seems to have been exhausted in their native lands. Once more only, if I remember right, did 'Lochlin,' really and hopefully send forth her 'mailed swarm' to conquer a foreign land; and with a result unexpected alike by them and by their enemies. Had it been otherwise, we might not have ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley

... the city, incessantly whining 'Signore Padrone!' It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence would raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us. Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I saw the same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The game consists, in the little creature throwing his arms about the trunk of a big tree, and running round ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... through. Astonishingly high she took the blue, Yet weeping molten dross shall meet the ground— A sight for grief profound to gaze across. Flame follows flame, each like a giant worm, To feast and batten on her beauteous form. Through gold and silver doors they sinuous swarm And crop the carven flowers with gust enorme; Till all is emptiness. Then with hellish shout The embruted Gentiles in exultant rout Into her Holy of Holies ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... church dreams calmly above them. Once, I say, a Sleepy Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble of artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a district occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand men of all arms, and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not my old friendships. I had made a home here during my soldiering days, long before the South African War, my wife being a kinswoman of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... drift on the south of the river was called Waschout Hill. Everything was going on well, and the men were at their teas when I got back. The nice Dutchman, with his apostolic face, and the lanky Piet and Gert, were already there, surrounded by a swarm of men, to whom they were selling their wares at exorbitant rates. The three of them strolled about the camp, showing great interest in everything, asking most intelligent questions about the British forces and the general position of affairs, and ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton

... nothing of Banks at New Orleans and Baton Rouge, set at rest the silly dream that a thin strip of sea-coast only is in possession of our foes. The truth is, the Yankees are in great force in the very heart of the Confederacy; they swarm on all our borders; they threaten every important city yet belonging to us; and nearly two hundred thousand of them are within two days' march of the Confederate capital. This is no fiction. It is a fact so positive that no one can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... place with a facility surprising to Europeans. It is only necessary to make a clearing in the jungle, and erect barracks for a few soldiers, and—as water rushes at once into hollows scooped in the damp sea-sand—so do the natives of India swarm into the clearing, and create a city.' To this new city of Amherst Mr. and Mrs. Boardman came in the spring of 1827, and joined Mr. and Mrs. Wade and Mr. Judson. It was bitterly painful to them to learn that the wife of the latter, that noble ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... quite enough of bustle and animation in this quarter of the Fort to engage the attention, but it seems silent and deserted when compared with the crowd of the more exclusively native portions. Here the streets literally swarm with life—men, women, children, and bullocks, filling them almost to suffocation. Ranges of open shops appear on each side, raised a foot or two from the ground, the occupant being seated upon a ledge in front, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... mighty lord, Low on his funeral couch he lies! No pitying heart, no eye, afford A tear to grace his obsequies. Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. The swarm that in thy noon-tide beam were born? —Gone to salute the rising morn. Fair laughs the Morn, and soft the zephyr blows, While proudly riding o'er the azure realm In gallant trim the gilded Vessel goes: Youth on the prow, and ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... the lurk, 'N' little 'earts was thumpin' warm For nippers trainin' with the swarm To swat ole Kaiser Bill, or work A toe-hold on the heathen Turk. Fair ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... Of course there were a good many how's, but not many with a big H, and he didn't know that the little h was just as good for the mere word. Then he looked for doth, and he found several doth's. Of the's he found as great a swarm as if they had been the bees themselves with which the little song was concerned. Busy was scarce; I am not sure whether he found it at all; but he looked at it until he was pretty sure he should know it again when he saw it. After he had gone over in this ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald

... us suppose that Germany should triumph and that German emigration should swarm into the Caribbean countries, or into Brazil or some other country where there is already a large German colony—elated, triumphant Germans, not Germans disgusted by a disastrous war. Would Germany be likely to heed the Monroe Doctrine, or would it be only ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... works of the ancient Romans were preserved by the monks in their convent libraries, that was only till the approach of the last quarter of the sixth century. Then came the dark period of the conquest of Italy by the last swarm of the northern barbarians from their native settlements in Pannonia: Italy continued under the iron yoke of the dominion of these illiterate Lombards till their final overthrow towards the commencement of the last quarter of the eighth century by the great conqueror, warrior, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... liberated we did not like to leave to become the certain prey of slavers again. The Bishop left twenty-five boys, too, and these also I took with me, hoping to get them conveyed to the Cape, where I trust they may become acquainted with our holy religion. We had thus quite a swarm on board, all very glad to get away from a land of slaves. There were many more liberated, but we took only the helpless and those very anxious to be free and with English people. Those who could cultivate the soil we encouraged to do so, and left up the river. Only one boy was ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... it rushed like a monster o'er cottage and farm, Striking their inmates with sudden alarm; And they ran out like bees in a midsummer swarm. There were dames with their kerchiefs tied over their caps, To see if their poultry were free from mishaps; The turkeys they gobbled, the geese screamed aloud, And the hens crept to roost in a terrified crowd; There was raising of ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... thousand-year war of the Mediterranean. Accustomed to the rugged shores of the ocean and its eternal surf, the Breton sailors were marveling at this easy navigation, almost touching the coast whose inhabitants looked like a swarm of bees. Had the boat been directed by another captain, so close a journey would have resulted most disastrously: but Ferragut was laughing, throwing out gloomy hints to the officers who were on the bridge, merely to accentuate his professional ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... be a sound like that made by a swarm of bees, a buzzing and humming, one of those great outbursts of childish joy that wake the echoes in the streets of Paris. From the dark and narrow passageway leading to the schoolroom the children would rush forth as if escaping from an open cage, and run about and frolic ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... the village has become rich enough to be at the expense of this ornament to his native place. The whole indicates a degree of prosperity, and the interiors of the houses, if we except the cockroaches, which swarm everywhere, are very clean. The walls are ornamented with numerous, if not very artistic, photographs and lithographs. Sacred pictures, richly ornamented, are placed in a corner, and before them hang several small oil-lamps, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... the Scriptures according to his pleasure. What he saith, must stand and be spoken as from heaven. Therefore let us love and preciously value the divine word, that thereby we may be able to resist the Devil and his swarm. ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... wall, and Mescal forgot that she had once acknowledged the superiority of the gray. The cottonwoods showered silken floss till the cabins and grass were white; the birds returned to the oasis; the sun kissed warm color into the cherries, and the distant noise of the river seemed like the humming of a swarm of bees. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... the Scotch fir; but in several parts of the world insects determine the existence of cattle. Perhaps Paraguay offers the most curious instance of this; for here neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals when first born. The increase of these flies, numerous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... individuals, there is much to be said in their favour. They do not introduce a lower morality into the quarters where they settle, as the Chinese are said to do; nor are they quarrelsome and law-breaking, like the low-class Italians who swarm into America. Their habits, so far as cleanliness is concerned, are perhaps not desirable, but the standard of the native population of Whitechapel is not sensitively high. For the most part, and this is true especially of the Jews, they are steady, ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... their way through the press that packed the corridors of City Hall. Groups were bulked at the doors admitting to the aldermen's room—men thatched against each other and overlapping like bees in a swarm at the door of ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... a great scurrying, as a tremendous swarm of rats came rushing out of the ashes. On they came, more and more of them. They filled the streets, and even made their way into ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade

... the cold by braziers, whose poisonous heat split one's head. And we forgot it all at each change of scene. I had begun to note the names of places we were going to, but I lost myself in the black swarm of words when I tried to recall them. And the diversity and the crowds of the men around me were such that I managed only with difficulty to attach fleeting names to ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... day. No sooner had I entered the auditorium than I felt my personality entirely disappear amid the swarm of light-hearted youths who were seething tumultuously through every doorway and corridor under the influence of the sunlight pouring through the great windows. I found the sense of being a member of this huge community very pleasing, yet there were few among the throng whom I knew, and ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... celebrity—Dr John Wolcot, better known as 'Peter Pindar.' His bitter satires earned for him a harvest of hatred and abuse, but nobody denied his wit. 'There is a pretty story of the older Pindar that a swarm of bees lighted on his cradle in his infancy and left honey on his lips; but we fear in the case of our hero they were wasps that came, and that they left some of the caustic venom of their stings.' A surgeon's son, he studied medicine himself, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... sounded the alarm, and the fugitives started up and renewed their flight. Marthe could not be left behind now, nor did the others desire it; and until they had crossed the Loire there could be no separation, for the whole country would swarm, in forty-eight hours, with parties of the enemy, hunting down and slaying those who had ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... succeeded, by keeping them shut up in jail till the excitement abated. At last the white citizens found that their own property was not safe from the lawless rabble they had summoned to protect them. They rallied the drunken swarm, drove them back into the country, and set ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... blades of white ash, on the banked background of the trees, on the drooping foliage at the stream's edge,—frail triflers of the wilderness, stooping from the sweet winds of Heaven to the water's wanton kiss,—and on a swarm of canoes, each manned by full complement of men, most of whose faces were eagle-featured and dark, blackeyed and high-cheekboned, though here and there were the fair hair and white skin of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... heather, Guard thy dales, whear plenty dwellin Hand i' hand wi' Peace, together Tales ov sweet contentment tellin. On the scroll ov fame an glory, Names ov Yorksher heroes glisten; History tells noa grander stooary, An it thrills me as aw listen. Young men blest wi' brain an muscle, Swarm i' village, taan an city, Nah as then prepared to tussle, Wi' the brave, the wise, the witty. An thy lasses,—faithful,—peerless,— Matchless i' ther bloom an beauty,— Modest, lovin, brave an fearless, Praad ov Hooam an firm to Duty. Aw've met nooan i' ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... pulsations. Anti-aircraft firing burst out suddenly and for a few minutes there was a blending of whining, whistling, rushing sounds overhead punctuated by faint reports. The firing ceased, but the droning noises continued louder than ever. The German aeroplanes seemed to be above us like a swarm of angry wasps, and above us they seemed to remain, hovering and circling. We awaited the downward rush and the deafening thunder-clap that would destroy us all. One man was groaning loudly. Another shivered. I could ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... A swarm of small white animals ran wildly past them from behind, and after them came a howling, laughing, scrambling mob that filled the street. Someone had loosed a few score rabbits for the delight of ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... firing a gun. The brave and sonorous language with which our commander set forth his plan of assault captured our imaginations, and we all longed for the moment when the word of command should permit us to swarm up the sides and over the ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... brick- red gown, were to rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with her wand, and say, "Bricks, bricks, to your places!" and then you saw in an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees, and—you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!—You want to ask something, Florrie, by the look ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... he longed for, but Bute was soon to learn that power need not and did not mean popularity. "The new Administration begins tempestuously," Walpole wrote on June 20, 1762. "My father was not more abused after twenty years than Lord Bute is after twenty days. Weekly papers swarm, and, like other swarms of insects, sting." Bute affected an indifference to this unpopularity which he did not really feel. It is not flattering to a statesman's pride to be unable to go abroad without being hissed and pelted by the mob, and it is hard for a minister ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... to sell them ploughs and sewing-machines. Its railroads have waked it up to a new life, and the Revolution has set free the thought of its people to an extent which would have been hardly credible a few years ago. Its streets swarm with newsboys and strangers,—the agencies that are to bring its people into the movement ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... to the barque. A strong current sent them to leeward, and they were accordingly ordered again on board. Happily, at this moment the wind veered a point to the east. There is no necessity to tell the men to be sharp. The order to make sail is given. The crew swarm aloft; the soldiers, under proper guidance, are stationed at the halliards, and the tacks and sheets. The cable is slipped, single-reefed topsails, courses, topgallant sails, jibs, and driver set. Few among even the brave seamen who do not hold their breath and ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... kettle on.' 'And we'll all have tea,' sings out my friend. 'How are you, Ma?' for we have reached the verandah, and 'Ma,' eagerly hospitable, is giving us a royal welcome." She was usually found barefooted and bareheaded, with a twin-baby in her arms and a swarm of children about her, or on the roof nailing down the sheet-iron which a tornado had shifted, or holding a palaver from the verandah, or sitting in Court, but always busy. "No one can have much time for rest here," was the verdict of one missionary ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... a swarm of bees outside, Fly hither, my little cattle, In blest peace, in God's protection, Come home safe and sound. Sit down, sit down, bee, St ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... their perfidious ends, whilst at the same time providing a profitable market for the produce of their manufacturers. Another manner in which they torment the Spaniards of Peru is by despatching a swarm of pirates to these seas. During the last war very rich prizes were captured by simple whaling vessels, and you can judge what attacks of this kind will be like when they are directed and sustained by ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... anchor dropped, and amid the deafening rattle of its chain in the hawse-pipe, the crew astern cast off and drew their boats alongside, eager to swarm aboard and hear news of the miracle. From his galley Mr. Rogers shouted up to the captain to lower his ladder. He and his chief boatman mounted first, with a little man named Pengelly, a custom's official, who happened to make one ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... intervals, and the tiny jets of water which were sent up by the bullets told that, concealed near about the ruins of the hacienda, a troop of Spanish soldiers were making what possibly they may have believed to be an attack upon the big war-ship. It was much as if a swarm of gnats had set about endeavouring to worry an elephant, and likely to have as little effect; yet Rear-Admiral Sampson believed it was necessary to teach the enemy that any playing at war, however harmless, was dangerous to themselves, and ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... was to be seen, but only Simon Laidlaw's, with his timber caps and luggies; and the talk was, that meal would be half-a-crown the peck. The grief, however, of the business wasna visible till the Saturday—the wonted day for the poor to seek their meat—when the swarm of beggars that came forth was a sight truly calamitous. Many a decent auld woman that had patiently eiked out the slender thread of a weary life with her wheel, in privacy, her scant and want known only to her Maker, was seen going from door to ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... and their short daggers could do nothing against our terrible quarter staves. Presently a thought struck me. A large earthen jar full of drinking water, in its heavy frame of wood stood upon the edge of the poop. Seeing an opportunity, I crept up to the jar and rolled it down upon the swarm of assailants. Its fall caused a shriller shriek to rise above the ordinary din, for heads, limbs and bodies were sorely bruised by the weight, scratched by the broken potsherds, and wetted by the sudden discharge. [118] The Maghrabis then slunk ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... Day after day, after a sharp and frosty dawn, the sun swings up into a cloudless sky; and the hundred thousand troops that swarm like ants upon, the undulating plains of Hampshire can march, sit, lie, or sleep on hard, sun-baked earth. A wet autumn would have thrown our training back months. The men, as yet, possess nothing ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... the Desert could not seem more remote from life,—the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whispering against the half-sunken pillars,—why should I tell of these things, that I should live to see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves blackened with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? What a city of idiots we must be not to have covered this glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we have just learned to cover the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... some first-rate pickings, along the coast. It isn't, here, as it is with France; where they have learned to be precious cautious, and where one daren't risk running in close to their coast on the chance of picking up a prize, for the waters swarm with their privateers. The Spaniards are a very slow set, and there is not much fear of their fitting out many privateers, for months to come; and the coasters will be a long time before they wake up to the fact that Spain is at war with us, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the water to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. "Why did not Anne carry the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me out of the world—which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to you, I know, and my death would be ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... they should have more than one idea a week; it would be too much for their constitution; and therefore they ask no questions. No wonder, then, they feel uncomfortable when they get into a clear climate, where they can see the sun, and hear ideas buzzing about their ears like a swarm ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, where there is no probability of serpents actually occurring. But there is a probability in Tintoret's conception. We feel that it is not impossible that there should come up a swarm of these small winged reptiles: and their horror is not diminished by their smallness: not that they have any of the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is their veritableness which ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... frame was formerly used in a hive called the "New Idea, or Non-swarming Hive." Its non-swarming qualities consisted in its being a long hive, and if empty frames were always kept in front, so that the bees had to pass through empty space to reach the brood nest, they would not swarm. ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... South America swarm with crocodiles, and these wage perpetual war with the jaguars. It is said, that when the jaguar surprises the alligator asleep on the hot sandbank, he attacks him in a vulnerable part under the tail, and often ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... likely to tumble over at any moment; you can never keep the blankets in position, and you expose your entire body to the stings of the mosquitoes, flies and other insects, and of the ants which crawl into your hammock by hundreds from the trees in which they swarm. It was not uncommon when we camped to hear during the night a crash, followed immediately after by oaths. The tree to which one of the hammocks had been fastened had suddenly broken and let the man down with a bump. Then again, the mischievous ants took the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... came Miles' abrupt reply. "I'm hittin' rough stuff here, a swarm of meteors. See you on Titan. Be down there to welcome ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... reasserted itself; for while his wife painfully assisted him to mount the stairs, he harshly denied her right to sit in judgment upon his vocal gifts, and sternly ordered her to be silent. But even now this wonderful night-adventure was by no means over. The entire swarm moved once more in the direction of the inn. Before the house, however, we found a number of fellows congregated, among them several workmen, against whom, owing to police regulations as to closing hours, the doors were shut. But the regular guests of the house, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... on the weather and controlled purely by considerations of the money-market, was probably fitful, and the price must have been subject to great variations. But, at this particular time, the supply must have been diminished to an alarming extent, and the price proportionately raised, by the swarm of locusts which had lately made havoc of the crops of Africa.[604] Lastly, the purely personal advantage of securing a subsidised class for the political support of the demagogue of the moment—a consideration ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... 'here swarm with military, and indeed the profession of arms seems to have too much sway in the Prussian dominions. The subalterns and young men of the Prussian Army are said to have republican sentiments, and they, in common with all the burghers, desire a constitution. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... please leave the window open.' He did as I asked, and went away.[8] I lay quite still in my compress thinking no evil, when suddenly I heard a great humming and buzzing in my ears, and when I could look up, I saw a swarm of bees streaming in at my window, preceded by their queen. I knew her well, Charles, for as you know I am a bee-keeper. One spring the school-master at Zittelwitz and I got fifty-seven in a field. I now saw that the queen was going to settle ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... against the darkness of the mountain behind them. The swallows that were flying among them cannot have to hunt them, they need only fly with their mouths wide open and they must run against as many as will be good for them. I saw this incredibly multitudinous swarm extending to a great height, and am satisfied that it was no more than what is always present during the summer months, though it is only visible in certain lights. To these minute creatures the space between the mountains on the two sides of the Ticino valley must be as great as that between ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... cap. He began filling it with handfuls of wheat from his pockets. In a swarm the grain-eaters arose around him as a flock of tame pigeons. They perched on his arms and the cap, and in the stress of hunger, forgetting all caution, a brilliant cock cardinal and an equally gaudy jay fought for a perching-place on ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... days the children stayed with the little old woman in her tiny cottage on the edge of the river. Each morning they crossed the bridge and stationed themselves by the Antwerp road to watch the swarm of sad-faced Belgians as they hurried through Boom on their way to the frontier and to safety in Holland. Each day they hoped that before the sun went down they should see their mother among the hurrying multitudes, but each day brought a fresh disappointment, ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... buy. The floor of each shop is raised two or three feet from the ground, and on a gay rug the turbaned Turk who keeps it sits cross-legged and smokes his pipe and makes his bargains, whilst down the narrow street (which in many instances is arched overhead with stone) there struggle, and swarm, and scream, and fight, black slaves, obstinate camels, primitive-looking chariots full of Turkish ladies, people of all colours in all costumes, and from ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... g. starlings) will suddenly change its direction of flight—the light on the wings shifting INSTANTANEOUSLY, as if the impulse to veer came to all at the same identical moment; or how bees will swarm or otherwise act with one accord, or migrating creatures (lemmings, deer, gossamer spiders, winged ants) the same. Whatever explanation of these facts we favor—whether the possession of swifter ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... the enemy, and I do hope that we have really done something. No, you need not be afraid, I have not been there again, but we have been routing out the nucleus, and hope we may starve out the fever for want of victims. You never saw such a swarm as we had to turn out. There were twenty-three people to be ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... horror, but he saw that all his own immediate friends were safe in the wood. A swarm of fugitives poured in after them, and then came colonels and generals making desperate efforts to reform their line of battle. But the Southern brigades gave them no chance. Their leaders continually urged on the pursuit. The broken regiments fell back still ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Christ's coming brought torture, as the sunbeam, which gives life to many, also gives death to ugly creatures that crawl and swarm in the dark. Turn up a stone, and the creeping things hurry out of the penetrating glare so unwelcome. 'What maketh heaven, that maketh hell,' and the same presence is life or death, joy or agony. The dear perception of divine purity and the shuddering ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... roar like that of a waterfall; I look again ... the battery has disappeared ... but the smoke rises and I see a long line of men come out of the far-off woods and burst upon the guns. The men of the battery flee, and the rebels swarm among the captured pieces. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it. We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the little place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens the consequences are striking,—some of them desirable and some far otherwise. The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-kept houses and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... loose-fitting tweed coat and corduroys. A row of bee-hives stood along his side of the party wall, and he had taken the farthest one, which was empty, off its stand, and was rubbing it on the inside with a handful of elder-flower buds, by way of preparation for a new swarm. Even from my bed-room window I remarked, as he turned his head occasionally, that he was singularly handsome. His movements were those of a lazy man in a hurry, though there seemed no reason for hurry in his task. But when ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... themselves masters of Milan, under their king Alboinus, in 568; and extending their dominions, often threatened Rome itself. In the reign of Charles the Fat, the Hunns were expelled Pannonia by the Hongres, another swarm from the same northern hive, akin to the Hunns, who gave to that kingdom the name of Hungary. That the Lombards were so called, not from their long swords, as some have pretended, but from their long beards, see demonstrated from the express testimony ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... "the Champ de Mars offers;" and around the great richly-spread table the crowd of human beings moves like a busy swarm of ants, on foot or in little carriages, for not all feet are equal to such ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... niggers all swarm' up in de yard. Mars Dugal' wuz feelin' so kine dat he had brung up a bairl er cider, en tole de niggers all ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... mute enough now, they gave no heed to their frantic officers, they turned and fled. One moment they stood that charge, the next the slopes of the Henry Hill were dark blue with fugitives. There was no cohesion; mere inability to find each an unencumbered path crowded them thus. They looked a swarm of bees, but there was no Spirit of the Hive. The Confederate batteries strewed their path with shot and shell, the wild and singular cry, first heard upon that field, rang still within their ears. They reached ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... with their early annals, can scarcely fail to be regarded as the work of a special Providence. After the fall of the Roman empire, a scanty and obscure people suddenly burst on the west and east, as the dominant race of the times; one swarm of the Normans making its way to England, while another was establishing its supremacy over the Sclavonians of the Borysthenes, the two being to meet in opposite directions at the end of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... delayed and the Camden team was late. It was followed by such a swarm of Camden people as had never been seen on the Rockland ball ground. This band of rooters was marshaled by a Camden man, who had instructed them to hang together and who was to lead them in the cheering. They packed in upon ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish

... colleagues, even those indebted to them. People affect to know them no longer. With what bitterness do they comment on the creed of money:—With gold one may have what he will; without it, impossible to have anything! They become pariahs, lepers, whom everyone shuns. Flies swarm round cadavers, men round gold. Take away the gold, nobody is there. Oh, it has caused tears to flow, this creed of gain! bitter tears, tears of blood, even from those very eyes which ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... feel quite so frightened now. I can hang on a bit longer, especially now I know assistance is at hand. At first I began to be afraid that I was a prisoner for the night. No; don't go. If I had a rope I should have the proper confidence to swarm up again. And there is a coil of rope in the arbour close by you. Hang it straight down over that middle boulder and fasten your end round one of those ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... taichers seem to swarm, But sad to tell,—th' plain honest fact is, They'd rayther bid yo shun all harm, Nor put ther taichin ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... heavier implements than you begin with, and will understand how yonder slight youth has learned to handle his two heavy clubs in complex curves that seem to you inexplicable, tracing in the air a device as swift and tangled as that woven by a swarm of gossamer flies above a brook, in the sultry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... She had also brought to her Court, and more particularly attached to her person, a very pretty child, only daughter of the Marquis de Villette, and sister, consequently, of the Comte and of the Chevalier de Villette, whom I have previously mentioned. This swarm of nephews, cousins, and nieces garnished the armchairs and sofas of her chamber. They served as comrades and playfellows to the legitimate princes and as pages of honour to my daughter; and when the carriage ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... it pealed out like the regular beat of a big drum. It expressed challenge and defiance, victory and revenge, and, to the ears of the red hearers on the other shores, the thickets seemed fairly to swarm with fighting men. The four added their efforts to those of Long Jim, but their cries formed merely a chorus, above which swelled the thundering note ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... o'clock Mahony and he sat, one on each side of the table, in the little sitting-room. The heat was insupportable and all three doors and the window were propped open, in the feeble hope of creating a draught. The lamp had attracted a swarm of flying things: giant moths beat their wings against the globe, or fell singed and sizzling down the chimney; winged-ants alighted with a click upon the table; blowflies and mosquitoes kept up ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... lying on the ground among the plantain stems, having by a reckless movement fallen out of the house. Thanks be there are no mosquitoes. I don't know how I escaped the rats which swarm here, running about among the huts and the inhabitants in the evening, with a tameness shocking to see. I turned in again until six o'clock, when we started getting things ready to go up river again, carefully providing ourselves ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... sooner or later, conveyed to any man of mark. In the course of her letter, Madame de Quinet found it necessary to refer to Eustacie. She rang her little silver handbell for the hall. There, of course, Master Page had been engulfed in the galimafre, and not only forming one of the swarm around the pedlar, but was actually aping courtly grimaces as he tried a delicate lace ruffle on the hand of a silly little smirking maiden, no older than himself! But this little episode was, like ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... their surrendering their common courtship was characteristic of their common hatred. Somewhere about the beginning of this century a certain Miss Jenny Rusker, of Castle Barfield, was surrounded by quite a swarm of lovers. She was pretty, she was well-to-do, for her time and station, she was accomplished—playing the harp (execrably), working samplers in silk and wool with great diligence and exactitude, and having read a prodigious ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... prompt; a sparrow led the way, a jay followed, and then the whole swarm was back at work. And the abbe could walk up and down, close his book or open it, and murmur: "They'll not leave ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... would be more securely won if he could wear down the barbarians, always impatient of so slow a business as a siege, from behind fortifications. He expected the barbarians, unstable in judgment and impatient of any but the simplest strategy and tactics, to swarm again and again about the City, and he was right: what he ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... on the battlemented walls Swarm with skilled bowmen, archers—from them falls A cloud of winged missiles on their foes, Who swift reply with shouts and twanging bows; And now amidst the raining death appears The scaling ladder, lined with glistening spears, But see! ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... ever heard. It was as if all the ghosts in Hades had suddenly piped up at their shrillest and ghostliest. This was followed by a splutter of musketry, and this again by loud yells. Looking round I saw a swarm of strange figures sweep into the yard, half women as to their dress, for they wore little petticoats that barely reached their knees, but matchless fighting men as to their behaviour. On they came, with the pace of hounds, the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... say that the streams now swarm with trout and grayling as they did when honest Isaac Walton sung their praises in quaint poetical prose, although they still twine and foam along their rocky beds all overhung with willows and tufted shrubs; but, where the waters ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... and when they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley, there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled negroes. In these squalid alleys, where the lamps burned at longer distances, the more primitive forms of life appeared to swarm like distorted images under the transparent civilization of the town. The sound of banjo strumming came faintly from the dimness beyond, while at their feet the Problem of the South sprawled innocently amid tomato cans and rotting ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... his soul is reincarnated in the body of a newly born male child. For a hundred years or more that child has been always Tibetan, not Mongolian; probably the Chinese Government knows why. And the lamas who swarm the sacred encampment, debased representatives of a debased religion, probably could tell, if they would, why, in the past, the child has never lived to be a man. Furthermore, the Russian Consul-General at Urga probably knows the secret of the long life of the present incumbent, who is ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... Lots of chickens get lost, too, an' you find them wanderin' about in the woods, belongin' to nobody, an' there's plenty of nests that hens lay astray that the farmers never could find. If you watch the bees closely, there's nearly always some swarm that's got away an' made a nest in a dead tree. The trouble is that most people are too busy to lie still all day an' watch, an' those that ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... fashionable folk; but when the second race was called, these, too, were packed, and they looked, with the gay dresses of the throng that filled every foot of space, like great banks of flowers, while the noise that floated ont sounded like the hum of a vast swarm of bees. ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... swarm of agents, burst into the Questor's study, and laid hands on everything. The first papers which he perceived on the middle of the table, and which he seized, were the famous decrees which had been prepared in the event of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... iniquities (innocent from their very antiquity, having been bequeathed from sire to son) which men perpetrate six working-days in the week, and after, lacker up their faces with a look of sleek humility for the Sunday pew—consider all this locust swarm of knaveries annihilated by the purifying spirit of Christianity, and then look upon London breathing and living, for one day only, by the sweet, sustaining truth of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... cardinal; he was the son of Alexander's sister Giovanna. The Vatican was filled with Spaniards, kinsmen, or friends of the now all-powerful house, who had eagerly hurried thither in quest of fortune and honors. "Ten papacies would not be sufficient to satisfy this swarm of relatives," wrote Gianandrea Boccaccio in November, 1492, to the Duke of Ferrara. Of the close friends of Alexander, Juan Lopez was made his chancellor; Pedro Caranza and Juan Marades his privy chamberlains; Rodrigo Borgia, a nephew of the Pope, was made captain of ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... the surging of the crowd—Goliath, in his rage, rushed headlong upon the nearest. Such a struggle was too unequal to last long; but despair redoubled the Colossus's strength, and the combat was for a moment terrible. The unfortunate man did not fall at once. For some seconds, almost buried amid a swarm of furious assailants, one saw now his mighty arm rise and fall like a sledge hammer, beating upon skulls and faces, and now his enormous head, livid and bloody, drawn back by some of the combatants hanging to his tangled hair. Here and there sudden openings and violent oscillations ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... a petty king ere Arthur came ruled in this isle, and ever waging war each upon other, wasted all the land; and still from time to time the heathen host swarm'd over seas, and harried what was left. And so there grew great tracts of wilderness, wherein the beast was ever more and more, but man was less and less, till Arthur came. For first Aurelius lived and fought and died, and ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... not matter that the crew was of high average. They would not be playing such a game unless they were a reckless lot. At any moment they might take it into their heads to swarm over Cunningham and obliterate him. Then what? If the episode of the morning had not convinced Jane, what would? The man Flint had dropped his mask; the others were content to wear theirs yet awhile. Torture for her sake, the fear of what might actually be in store for her, and she expected him ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... clearly of all recalled her as a school-girl. Those were the days of the German bands of six and seven and even eight pieces, wandering as the hand-organs do now. And always with them came a swarm of little girls who danced when the band played, and of little boys who listened and watched. He had often followed her as she followed a band, all day on a Saturday. And he had never wearied of watching her long, slim legs twinkling tirelessly to the music. She invented ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... hat that waved along Marengo's ridge? Are these the spurs of Austerlitz—the boots of Lodi's bridge? Leads he the conscript swarm again from France's hornet hive? What seeks the fell usurper here, in ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... dock. And there I saw a weird ominous scene. Up the empty harbor, under a dark and cloudy sky, came four barges, black with negro laborers, and ahead and around and behind them came police boats throwing their searchlights upon an angry swarm of union picket dories, from which as they drew nearer I heard furious voices shouting, "Scab!" One of the barges docked where I stood and the negroes quickly slunk inside. I drew back from them as they passed, for ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... not to acknowledge, or he who injuriously sets it afoot? If a man were to be laughed at for saying that asses in Brabant have wings, would he not himself make the laughing-matter? He cries out that the whole of Luther is in my books, that on all sides they swarm with heretical errors. But when those who read my writings find nothing of the kind, even if ignorant of dialectics, they readily infer the true conclusion. He has authority from the Emperor. Let him therefore conduct himself in the spirit of the Emperor, who would rather that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... and what-not, shall have what description is necessary as the story proceeds; but, so far as paying rent was concerned, we might equally well have pitched our tents on any one of a hundred others that clustered about us as thickly as a swarm of bees. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... Jhaere, and all the motley swarm of women and children caught themselves mounts—some already loaded with the gipsy baggage, some with saddles, some without, some with grass halters for bridles. In another minute Fred and I were riding surrounded by a smelly swarm of them, he ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... Greek minor poets, the swarm of them that are represented in the Greek Anthology, rarely make affectionate mention of the birds, except perhaps Sappho, whom Ben Jonson makes speak ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... crowd of boys swarmed up over everything that would raise them more prominently into view, pushing aside any one in their way, and both looking and acting like a hive of bees getting ready to swarm, until they stood high above ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis

... swarm of hungry Roaches was satisfied, and, according to Neale's report, the dinner went off very well indeed, save that his mother feared she would have to grease and roll Patrick Sarsfield before the fire to keep him from ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... complained that he had had the honour of being rancorously abused by every unmanly scoundrel, every sycophantic lacquey, and every political and religious renegade in the kingdom. His fury was that of an angry bull tormented by a swarm of gnats. His worst passions were aroused; his most violent prejudices confirmed. His literary zeal, never extremely alert, was ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... as one of the great lights of his age was the part he was called upon to perform as a powerful intercessor with barbaric kings. When Attila with his swarm of Mongol conquerors appeared in Italy,—the "scourge of God," as he was called; the instrument of Providence in punishing the degenerate rulers and people of the falling Empire,—Leo was sent by the affrighted emperor ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... to go back home. But the parrot, Polynesia, was already flying towards us. The Doctor clapped his hands like a child getting a new toy; while the swarm of sparrows in the roadway fluttered, gossiping, up on to the fences, highly scandalized to see a gray and scarlet parrot skimming down an ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... I saw little. She was a rather hard but no doubt heavily-laden woman, who had to "do" for a swarm of children, besides two young men lodgers who lived in the kitchen and slept in the room behind mine. Her husband was a quiet man (a carter at the dairy) whom I never saw at all except on the staircase at ten o'clock at night, when, after winding the tall clock on the landing, he went ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... Eve a bogie sits on every stile.[577] On that night in Ireland all the fairy hills are thrown wide open and the fairies swarm forth; any man who is bold enough may then peep into the open green hills and see the treasures hidden in them. Worse than that, the cave of Cruachan in Connaught, known as "the Hell-gate of Ireland," is unbarred on ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... wanted a few cases to refer to like Teneriffe, where there are no northern forms and scarcely any alpine. I expected the volcanoes of Hawaii would be a good case, and asked Dr. Seemann about them. It seems a man has lately published a list of Hawaiian plants, and the mountains swarm with European alpine genera and some species! (385/1. "This turns out to be inaccurate, or greatly exaggerated. There are no true alpines, and the European genera are comparatively few. See my 'Island ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... most important citizens in every mining community are the assayers, of whom there are generally a swarm to be found about every new strike; some of them the veriest charlatans that ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... hum of the motors of the airships rose louder on the quiet air, broken only by the faint and distant mutter of the battle that was still being fought miles away. It sounded now like the buzzing of a swarm of bees, magnified a thousand times. And then the field was full of men, rushing from the inn. He wondered how they could have been concealed there. But such wonder was idle, and he did not think of it. Instead he watched keenly. First one monstrous aerial battleship came to rest on the earth. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston

... into the tail of the enemy's disordered array. The Arabs, however, stood their ground, and, firing their rifles wildly in all directions, killed and wounded a good many horses and men, so that the squadrons were content to bring up their right still more, and finally to ride out of the hornet swarm, into which they had plunged, towards Surgham Hill. The pursuit was then suspended, and the Egyptian cavalry joined the rest of the army ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... 'refinement in the human mind,' which is everlastingly dinned in our ears; in spite of the 'small-clothes,' and of all the other affected stuff, we have this conclusion, this indubitable proof, of the falling off in real delicacy; namely, that common prostitutes, formerly unknown, now swarm in our towns, and are seldom wanting even in our villages; and where there was one illegitimate child (including those coming before the time) only fifty years ago, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... not see it so; and she even sent for Nicholas Snowe to bring his three daughters with him, and have ale and cake in the parlour, and advise about what the bees were doing, and when a swarm might be looked for. Being vexed about this and having to stop at home nearly half the evening, I lost good manners so much as to ask him (even in our own house!) what he meant by not mending the swing-hurdle where the Lynn stream flows from our land into his, and which he is bound ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... cat eyes held steadily upon him while the scarlet figure retreated. A louder call, shrill and vibrant, came from the thin lips, and a swarm of bodies in dull red were scrambling into the room to mass about their scarlet leader. Above and behind them the face under its brilliant turban and golden ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... was very similar to that made by him to the Commodore of the Yacht Club, and may also be found in all the newspapers. And now, when these ceremonies were over, the major bethought him of his horse and pig, the former of which he found surrounded by a swarm of unruly boys, whom the strange figure he cut, with the holsters and saddlebags mounted, afforded much amusement. The latter was quietly lying down in his cage, but came forward to render homage as soon as he heard the major's voice. I should mention that the major always aimed to be up to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... Though it could no longer be called dark: the little flush of dawn had spread and overpowered the glow of the aurora australis, which had greatly decreased since I last saw it; evidently it was near its end. Now the four-footed band began to swarm out, darting like rockets from the tents. Here were all colours-grey, black, red, brown, white, and a mixture of all of them. What surprised me was that they were all so small; but otherwise they looked splendid. Plump and round, well kept and groomed, bursting with life. They instantly collected ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... from a distance and quite unused to the sight, thought they were birds that were skimming so over the water." As for their size, the sailors expected much greater marvels in those parts of the world, where every map and traveller's tale made the sea swarm with monsters as ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... Arizona was already spurring, and Sinclair waved once to the white face of Jig, then shot after his companion, while the trees and shrubbery to their left emitted a sudden swarm of ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... pressed his bulk into the recess the man hunt manifested itself. Bursting headlong out of the front of Wallinger's Hotel came a policeman—doubtlessly the one already seen by Trencher—and just behind the policeman a roughly dressed bearded man, and with these two, at their heels, a jostling impetuous swarm of other men, to be joined instantly by yet more men, who had run round the corner of the hotel from Thirty-ninth Street, instead of passing through its lobby. For the veriest fraction of time they all slowed down, casting about them with their eyes for a ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... immense revenues, and much spiritual influence among the lower classes; and as soon as they discovered the disposition of the new President, they took one Don Antonio Haro y Tamirez, set him up as a counter-President, and installed him at Puebla, the second city of the Republic, where priests swarm, and priestly influence is unbounded. At the same time, they tried a pronunciamiento in the capital; but the President got the better of them after a slight struggle, and marched all his regular soldiers on Puebla. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor



Words linked to "Swarm" :   teem, horde, pour, group, hum, grouping, seethe, spill over, stream, infestation, buzz



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