"Mottled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the current among the bobbing, slender spindles of the mangroves—youthful plants on a voyage of discovery for new lands—there appeared a brown mottled leaf on the surface. A second glance revealed a dead Ulysses—an adventurous creature which had succumbed to temporary weakness during a more than usually ambitious maritime excursion. Here was a flawless specimen, for the wings of butterflies, in common with the fronds ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... dredged up by the chain of our trawl. Most were lovely sea anemone belonging to the family Actinidia, including among other species, the Phyctalis protexta, native to this part of the ocean: a small cylindrical trunk adorned with vertical lines, mottled with red spots, and crowned by a wondrous blossoming of tentacles. As for mollusks, they consisted of exhibits I had already observed: turret snails, olive shells of the "tent olive" species with neatly intersecting lines ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... betrayed emotion. Pringle's shameless mendacity shocked him. But it was Creagan's sorry plight that he must affect never to have seen this insolent Pringle before. The sheriff's face mottled with wrath. Pringle reflected swiftly: The sheriff's rage hinted strongly that he was in Creagan's confidence and hence was no stranger to last night's mishap at the hotel; their silence proclaimed their ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... long-boat had been launched, their possessions had been bundled in, and they were afloat once more. Pulling round a promontory of the berg, they found themselves under the stern of a fine corvette, the sides of which were lined with friendly faces, while from the peak there drooped a huge white banner mottled over with the golden lilies of France. In a very few minutes their boat had been hauled up and they found themselves on board the St. Christophe man-of-war, conveying Marquis de Denonville, the new Governor-General of Canada, to ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Inhale long draughts of this delicious breeze Our fleeter steeds have distanced our attendants; They lag behind us with a slower pace; We will await them under the green pendants Of the great willows in this shady place. Ho, Barbarossa! how thy mottled haunches Sweat with this canter over hill and glade! Stand still, and let these overhanging branches Fan thy hot sides ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... course rubble shoved in, you would know that that was not the final condition, that the rubble had to be cased over, or taken out and replaced by the lucent slab that reflected the light, and showed, by its reflecting, its own mottled beauty. Thus the very inconsistencies, the thwarted desires, the broken resolutions, the aspiration that never can clothe themselves in the flesh of reality, which belong to the Christian life, declare that this is but the first stage of the structure, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... prairies south of Chicago, where, fifteen years ago, one might find twenty deer in a day's tramp, not one is now to be seen. Two species of Hare occur here, and several Tree Squirrels, the Red, Black, Gray, Mottled, and the Flying; besides these, there are two or three which live under ground. The Beaver is nearly or quite extinct, but the Otter remains, and the Musk-Rat abounds on all the river-banks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... rift in the tunnel's continuation, nigh a mile beyond the cleft through which we had fled, lifted a crown of horns—of tentacles—erect, alert, of mottled gold and crimson; lifted higher—and from a monstrous scarlet head beneath them blazed two enormous, obloid eyes, their depths wells of purplish phosphorescence; higher still—noseless, earless, chinless; a livid, worm mouth from which a slender scarlet tongue leaped like playing ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... enough to catch his attention. Being utterly unlike anything he had ever seen before, it aroused his interest, and he slanted slowly upward. A moment later a second fly touched the water, a light gray, mottled thing, with a yellow body, and pink and green hairs fringing its neck. This, too, was strange to him. He rolled a foot higher, not with any immediate idea of trying them, but under his usual vague impulse to investigate everything pertaining to his pool. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Africa and Gaul CAESAR his Roman triumph brings: Dark queens and ruddy-bearded kings, And scowling Britons led in thrall, And elephants with silver rings; But oh, more excellent than all, This pensive beast, this mottled beast, From the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... even an expert would pronounce mere varieties of the same plant if he were not familiar with them—Od. Williamsi, Od. grande, and Od. Schlieperianum. The middle one everybody knows, by sight at least, a big, stark, spread-eagle flower, gamboge yellow mottled with red-brown, vastly effective in the mass, but individually vulgar. On one side was Od. Williamsi, essentially the same in flower and bulb and growth, but smaller; opposite stood Od. Schlieperianum, only to be distinguished as smaller still. But both ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... up by the monster shark, 5 Niuhi with fiery eyes, That flamed in the deep blue sea. Alas! and alas! When flowers the wili-wili tree, That is the time when the shark-god bites. 10 Alas! I am seized by the huge shark! O blue sea, O dark sea, Foam-mottled sea of Kane! What pleasure I took in my dancing! Alas! now consumed ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... long thought to improve the tone of my pictures. The liquid, which will become rapidly very dark coloured, must be set aside in an open vessel in a warm place for some weeks, e.g. till, when a positive is placed in it, left for a short time, and then washed with water, it shows clean and not mottled in the light. The solution may be kept always exposed, and much improves by this: if much used, it should be replenished with a simple solution of hypo. three ounces or two ounces to the pint; if little used, it may ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... of the breeding season the bobolink undergoes a complete change; his form changes, his color changes, his flight changes. From mottled brown or brindle he becomes black and white, earning, in some localities, the shocking name of "skunk bird;" his small, compact form becomes broad and conspicuous, and his ordinary flight is laid aside for a mincing, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... greed; a bitter irony would be distilled from the contrast of his own modest station in life and the huge value of the lucid crystals and carbons under his hands. His hands—ah, the realist would angrily see some brutal pathos or unconscious naughtiness in the crook of the old mottled fingers. How that widening parting in the gray head would be gloated upon. It would be very easy to do, and it would be (if we are any judge) ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... knew he knew it. And if he was miserable, which I hope he was, I'm pretty sure he wasn't one-half so miserable as I was—and as I am. "Damn that woman!" I caught myself saying, out loud, after staring at my mottled old map in ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... night—the old fight of humanity from savage to Christian; and the lad fought it until, with the birth of his wavering soul, the premonitions of the first dawn came on. The patches of moonlight shifted, paling. The beech columns mottled slowly with gray and brown. A ruddy streak was cleaving the east like a slow sword of fire. The chill air began to pulse and the mists to stir. Moisture had gathered on the boy's sleeve. His horse was stamping uneasily, ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... eyes like spring violets, of tender, loving words, of mellow moonlight on the fields where the corn-shocks stood in spectral rows, and the brook they crossed looked like a rippling stream of silver; where the maples along the lane, still clad in yellow foliage, cast mottled shadows in their pathway, and the fallen leaves rustled beneath their feet. They did not talk much—their hearts were too full of love's young dream—although he told her of his visit to a deserted house a year before, and how he heard ghostly ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... in a broad bank of horizontal, mottled grey cloud, through which his beams darted in golden splendour at brief intervals for nearly half-an-hour after we had lost sight of the great luminary himself; and just about the time that the spars and canvas of the distant barque began to grow indistinct in the fast-gathering dusk ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... there were "good-nights," the shutting of doors, and the little steamer lay silent, dark, and motionless in the shadow of the high Haifa bank. And beyond this one point of civilisation and of comfort there lay the limitless, savage, unchangeable desert, straw-coloured and dream-like in the moonlight, mottled over with the black shadows of ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... that woman attacked by a malady which leaves her features exactly as they were, but which changes the color of her face—from the throat upward to just beneath the nose—from the warm white to a mottled, greyish hue. Imagine the line that would seem to be traced between the two complexions—the mottled grey below the warm white still glowing above. Imagine this, and you have "Pharaoh's Bed" and the temple of Philae as they ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... delights. He stammered so when he tried to talk quickly, he who weighed every word on ordinary occasions; the expression of his eyes, which was generally wavering, grew irritated and deceitful, and his pale, distinguished-looking face became mottled with patches ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... once the typical mottled texture of the skin appeared, the flesh rapidly deteriorated and fell away in chunks. The victim remained unfevered and agonizingly conscious until the degeneration ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Mrs. Woodchuck answered. "He's mottled—that means about the same as spotted," she explained. "I've heard him called the 'tiger among birds.' But whether it's because of the spots, or because he's so fierce, ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... it, and rubbed the ache out of the back of his neck. All about him the fresh morning was falling; yonder shone a green-mottled face of granite, and there a red iron blow-out streaked with veins of glittering silicate, and in this corner, still misted with the last delicate shades of night, glimmered rhyolite, lavender-pink. ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... rufous grey, the hairs being mottled black, grey, and brown, with the under fur brownish yellow; lower parts yellowish-grey; the tail reddish-brown, ending in a darkish tuft; more or less rufous on the muzzle ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Black-spotted, and mottled, and whiskered, and grim, White-bellied, and yellow, he lay on the limb, All so still that you saw but just one tawny paw Lightly reach through the leaves and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... shown had a mottled glass in which greens predominated. The sizes and shapes of these pieces of glass would better be determined after the woodwork ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... blow, Like a great flood are spread. Sometimes the sacred spot Hears human sounds profane, when As from Ophir or from Memphre Stretches the caravan. From far the eyes, its trail Along the burning shale Bending its wavering tail, Like a mottled serpent scan. These deserts are of God! His are the bounds alone, Here, where no feet have trod, To Him its centre known! And from this smoking sea Veiled in obscurity, The foam one seems to ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... sat under the bowlder alone, a small brown creature in picturesque-looking rags, a mere waif and stray of a child, with her feet trailing in the pool; every now and then small mottled crabs scrambled crookedly along, or dug graves for themselves in the dry waved sand. The girl watched them idly, as she flapped long ribbons of brown seaweed, or dribbled the water through her hollowed hands, while a tired ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... hair, Spreading is the parting straight, Mottled the complexion fair, Halting is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... changed to misty blue; the chatter of the birds in the Main Street maples became quieter, and, through lessening little choruses of twittering, fell gradually to silence. And now the blue dusk crept on the town, and the corner drug-store window-lights threw mottled colors on the pavement. From the hall, outside the closed office-door, came the sound of quick, light footsteps; it was Crailey going out; but Tom only sighed to himself, and did not hail him. So these light footsteps of Crailey Gray ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... all my experience, in the whole of my career, I had never had such a model. The skin was a marvellous whiteness: there seemed no brown, red, or yellow shades upon it; nor any of that mottled soap appearance that ruins so many models. She was white, with the warm, true dazzling ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... the cattle, supported four high, square-topped turrets, through which the stout reins led from the mouths of the horses to the hands of the driver, who was a negro of apparently twenty years of age. His face, which Nature had colored with a glistening black, was now mottled with the cold, and his large shining eyes filled with tears; a tribute to its power, that the keen frosts of those regions always extracted from one of his African origin. Still, there was a smiling expression of good humor in his happy countenance, that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... behind us. We touched at the mouth of the Saigon, but found no promise of trade, and weighed anchor again with the intention of visiting Singapore. Among other curious things, we saw a number of pink porpoises and some that were mottled pink and white and brown. Porpoises not infrequently are spotted by disease; but those that we saw appeared to be in excellent health, and although we remarked on their odd appearance, we believed their strange colors to be entirely natural. A fleet of galleys, too, which we saw in the offing, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... (his own). When the way was free again he would sling the kit-bag and the valise over his shoulder and step back into the road. His turban, once white, was brown with dust and sweat. His khaki uniform was rent under the arm-pits, several buttons were gone; his stockings were rusty black, mottled with patches of brown skin; and the ragged canvas-shoes spurted little spirals of dust as he walked. The British-Indian government had indulgently permitted him to proceed about his duties as guide and carrier ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... People in numbers almost as great as the standing army of the United States were packed so closely together that all individuality was lost, and the pulsating aggregate looked like the exposed and mottled back of some submerged sea monster. Between the parts of the programme the combined hum of ten thousand voices floated upon the air like the deep boom of the surf on the seashore. When the raised seats were well filled in the vast gallery the graduation was lost to the eye, and the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... masses in Portsoy Bay with enstatite, hypersthene and labradorite, the graphic granite with microcline, muscovite and tourmaline at East Head, the chiastolite-schist west of the marble quarry, the mottled serpentine with strings of chrysotile. Resting unconformably on these metamorphic rocks, Old Red sandstone strata are met with in a few places. Thus, they cross the Spey and appear in the Tynet Burn ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... oval shape, about ten inches long and four or five thick. It was of a mottled-grey colour, and had a thick rind. We found it somewhat like an Irish potato, and exceedingly good. The yam was roundish, and had a rough brown skin. It was very sweet and well flavoured. The potato, we were surprised to find, was quite sweet and exceedingly palatable, as ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... pass over the weakly females, and are attracted by those endowed with most vitality. Nevertheless, the Bombycidae, though obscurely-coloured, are often beautiful to our eyes from their elegant and mottled shades. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... of colour appeared in the rancher's mottled cheeks as, with an effort, he got to ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... conclusion of this remark, they cast a glance ahead of them, and perceived white rugged rocks looking, either like goblins, or resembling savage beasts, lying either crossways, or in horizontal or upright positions; on the surface of which grew moss and lichen with mottled hues, or parasitic plants, which screened off the light; while, slightly visible, wound, among the rocks, a narrow pathway like ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... regarded Dellarme, who hesitated in the revulsion of the horror of killing and in admiration of the picture of human force before him. But the old sergeant, smarting under the insult of the blow, his sandstone features mottled with red patches, had no compunctions of this order. He was ready ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... they took their fill of the delight of young fatherhood and motherhood. After its morning bath Bartley was called in, and allowed to revere the baby's mottled and dimpled back as it lay face downward on the nurse's lap, feebly wiggling its arms and legs, and responding with ineffectual little sighs and gurgles to her acceptable rubbings with warm flannel. When it was fully dressed, and its long clothes ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Daguenet, whose ears were blood-red and twitching with enjoyment. Then a sudden idea made him glance behind, and he marveled at what he saw in the Muffats' box. Behind the countess, who was white and serious as usual, the count was sitting straight upright, with mouth agape and face mottled with red, while close by him, in the shadow, the restless eyes of the Marquis de Chouard had become catlike phosphorescent, full of golden sparkles. The house was suffocating; people's very hair grew heavy on their perspiring heads. For three hours back the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the scuta and terga are yellow along the middle, plainly marked by zones of growth, and finely ribbed longitudinally: the internal surfaces and sides of the horns of the two valves, are coloured fine blue or purple; in the terga, however, the internal surface is mottled with yellow. In some specimens, especially in one from Tavoy, each zone of growth was only very narrowly edged with blue. When a thin layer is removed from one of the valves, the dark blue or rather purple appears by transmitted light a beautiful pale blue; and it is a very ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... thoughts were wandering here and there, bridging the gap between the past and the misty future. After awhile the savory odor of the young speckled rooster, that had fought all the other chickens but was now stewing in a mottled blue-and-white granite pan, smote her nostrils and won her thoughts from dreaming. She sat up and pushed back her hair like ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the medicine-glass up to human nature. It also holds the mirror up in a limited way. It does not show a man what he looks like when he is both well and good. It does show a man what he looks like, however, when he breaks out into spots or goes yellow, pale, or mottled as a result of making a beast of himself. It reflects only sick men; but it reflects them with a purpose. It would be a crime to permit it, if the world were a hospital for incurables. To write satire is an act of faith, not a luxurious exercise. The despairing Swift was a fighter, as ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... opposite the point where their friends went adrift. They slid their light craft through the ragged wall of ice hummocks guarding the shore pack, and dimly saw, in the grey beyond them, a stretch of angry waters mottled ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the plain by the side of our tent, to try the speed of their horses. These were of every shape, size, and color. Some came from California, some from the States, some from among the mountains, and some from the wild bands of the prairie. They were of every hue—white, black, red, and gray, or mottled and clouded with a strange variety of colors. They all had a wild and startled look, very different from the staid and sober aspect of a well-bred city steed. Those most noted for swiftness and spirit were ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... through these fly-belts. Savage and pertinacious to a degree are these pests, and their bite is like the piercing of a red-hot needle. Simple and innocent they appear, not unlike a house fly, but larger and with the tips of their wings crossed and folded at the end like a swallow's. They are mottled grey in colour, and their proboscis sticks out straight in front. Hit them and they fall off, only to rise again and attack once more; for their bodies are so tough and resistant, that great force is required ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... A mottled thrush on the top of the linden-tree surveyed the scene curiously. She had never beheld such a pitiably embarrassed young couple in all her life. It was so different ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... desert. The sun had not yet risen, but a tinge of pink flushed up as far as the cloudless zenith, and the long strip of sea lay like a rosy ribbon across the horizon. From the coast inland stretched dreary sand-plains, dotted over with thick clumps at mimosa scrub and mottled patches of thorny bush. No tree broke the monotony of that vast desert. The dull, dusty hue of the thickets, and the yellow glare of the sand, were the only colours, save at one point, where, from a distance, it seemed that a land-slip of snow-white stones had shot itself across a low ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... later, when Joyce exclaimed over her blotched and mottled appearance, that Mrs. Ware decided she must be coming down with some kind of rash. It was only to prevent her mother sending for a doctor, that Mary finally confessed with ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of a quail recalls to most New England people a vision of breezy upland pastures and a mottled brown bird calling melodiously from the topmost slanting rail of an old sheep-fence. Farmers say he foretells the weather, calling, More-wet—much-more-wet! Boys say he only proclaims his name, Bob ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... a seat upon a mossy, rotting log. Blake, erect, but leaning lightly against the scaling, mottled body of a giant sycamore, at first gave no heed to his companion. He gazed straight ahead down the river, emaciated by the drought till the bowlders of its bottom protruded through the surface like ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... valuable repertory of archaeological information. They counted their vessels, metal and wooden; they counted their finger rings, their clasps, their thumb rings, their diadems, and their gorgets of gold. They examined their many-coloured garments of crimson and blue, of black and green, yellow and mottled, white and streaked. All were equal. They then inspected their flocks and herds, swine from the forests, sheep from the pasture lands, and cows—here the first difference arose. It was one to excite Meav's haughty temper. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the agonizingly slow plastic creep of metal under great pressure, the gorilla-faced giant was yielding. His dark skin became mottled. His breath came gaspingly. His ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... view, resembles some vast donjon keep, taller, from base to summit, by about a hundred feet, than the dome of St. Paul's. The upper slopes of the island are brown and moory, and present little on which the eye may rest, save a few trap terraces, with rudely columnar fronts; its middle space is mottled with patches of green, and studded with dingy cottages, each of which this morning, just a little before the breakfast hour, had its own blue cloudlet of smoke diffused around it; while along the beach, patches of level sand, alternated ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... fate rested. He watched the squire's pen go from paper to ink, ink to paper, and listened to its scratch, scratch, and to the buzz of a big fly against the dirty window-pane. Ashamed to look at any one, he looked at the lawyer's big ink-well—a great, circular affair of mottled brown wood. It had several openings, each one with its own little cork attached with a short string to the side of the stand. He had never seen ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... leguminous plant, which shoots up into a simple stem, often to the height of twelve feet; its neck and root are covered with a spongy tissue; its leaves are pinnate, a foot or more in length, with small leaflets; it bears mottled yellow flowers, in axillary racemes; and long rough, articulate pods, containing small, bright, olive-green seeds. I first saw this plant at Limestone, near Moreton Bay, and afterwards at the water-holes ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... a corset-cover of yellow flannel, the Baroness a wrapper mottled with stains from cosmetics and the Biscayan lady a red waist through whose opening was regularly presented, for the admiration of those who happened along the corridor, a huge white udder streaked with coarse ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... waters under the earth have no more fascinating sight than the gray, silent form of a pike, moving and motionless in the shallow water, a shadow more tangible than himself thrown by a jack-light on the mottled yellow rocks and sands of the bottom. A passing breath of wind, even the slightest motion of the punt, breaks every shadow and indentation into myriad fleeting ripples and waves of light, transforming the slender, silent fish into a sheaf of wriggling glimmers. With the stilling of the surface, the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... of dwarfish height and uncertain age, with a huge hump upon his back, features of great refinement, a long thin beard, and a forehead unnaturally large, over eyes which, although of a pale blue, mingled with a certain mottled milky gleam, had a pathetic, dog-like expression. Decently dressed in black, he stood with his hands in the pockets of his trowsers, gazing immovably in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... The gray bulk swept down on him in a great swirl that almost flung him off his feet; as he reeled, catching at the corner of the wreck for support, he saw the rough, mottled skin shoot past hardly a foot away. Mart swiftly jerked up his kris and lunged forward ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... the Terai at the foot of the mountains, but is only an occasional visitor to Sikkim proper. But the leopard and the clouded leopard are permanent residents and fairly common. This last is of a most beautiful mottled colouring. Another leopard is the snow-leopard, which inhabits high altitudes only. The marbled-cat is a miniature edition of the clouded leopard, and the leopard-cat of the common leopard. The large Indian civet-cat is not uncommon, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... mind, a sun-mottled kitchen with a black iron range, and along the walls festoons of looped-up green peppers. White bread now in abundance for small mouths not so hungry. At evening, Simon Meyerburg, with rims of dirt under his nails, entering that kitchen ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... dusting in more pepper if needed, then the liquor which had been kept at a brisk boil was poured over, and left to cool. No bother about skimming off fat—we liked our loaf rich as well as high-flavored. It came out a fine mottled solid that could be sliced thin, and eaten delicately between the halves of a buttered biscuit. Sandwiches were known—but only in books. Which was well—they would have dried out so badly, for this was before the era of wax paper. Since everything was packed in the baskets whole, there was much ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... south shore. Huge oaks that might have stood there from the beginning of the world, wide-branching elms, and dark pines overshadowed the highway, opening now and then into vistas of green fields where stood a cottage or two, with a herd of mottled cows grazing down by the brook. On the higher ridges the trees formed a close phalanx, and with their dark tops cut the horizon into a long, irregular line of forest, as if offering battle to the woodman's axe that was threatening ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I'll just take something kind of dainty. Tell Clarice to cook me up a nice little steak with plenty of fat on it, and some fried potatoes, and a cup of coffee and a few waffles to come. The Judge he wouldn't get up yet. He looked kind of mottled and anguished, but I guess he'll pull around all right. I had the chink take him up about a gallon of strong tea. Say, listen here, the Judge ain't so awful much of ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the grass, Of spice-wood and of sassafras; On pillars of mottled tortoise-shell Hung the burnished canopy, And o'er it gorgeous curtains fell Of the tulip's crimson drapery. The monarch sat on his judgment-seat, On his brow the crown imperial shone, The prisoner Fay was at his feet, And his Peers were ranged ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... o'clock, and the Park lay like a veined and mottled blood-stone in the red sunset. The city wilted to the littleness of a rare mosaic pin, its glittering point parting the blue scarf of the bay, and the white bosom of the ocean swelling afar, all draped with purple clouds like golden hair, in which the entangled gems were the sails ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to a breeze, we were likely to be favoured with weather fine enough to permit of our pursuing our voyage under the most favourable conditions. This symptom of approaching change merely consisted in the gathering in the heavens of a thin veil of mottled, fine-weather cloud, just dense enough to obscure most of the lesser stars and render the night rather dark, while a few of the brighter stars peeped through the openings between the clouds at tolerably frequent intervals, permitting us to steer our course without having recourse ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... hind-quarter of lamb roasted to the nicest turn of brownness. A great dish of Champion-of-England pease, that supreme product of the kitchen-garden, was one of the time-honored adjuncts, while new potatoes, the first of which had been dug that day, had half thrown off their mottled jackets in readiness for the feast. Nature had been Maggie's handmaid in spreading that table, and art, with its culinary mysteries and combinations, was conspicuously absent. If Eve had had a kitchen range and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... long, having an oblong blunt head, on which there were two longitudinal furrows, and as many upright ridges. It had small eyes, two semi-lunar apertures, from whence it occasionally spouted the water, and it was mottled all over with white spots. It had two large fins behind the head, but none on the back. In his opinion this extraordinary creature ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... undecided way. The wind was southerly: it is what the deer call a dog-wind, having come to know quite well the meaning of "a southerly wind and a cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doe was her only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat was just beginning to be mottled with the beautiful spots which make this young creature as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, had been that night on a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond, and had not yet returned: he went ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the cattails so tall, And the sunshine and shadder fell over it all; And it mottled the worter with amber and gold Tel the glad lilies rocked in the ripples that rolled; And the snake-feeder's four gauzy wings fluttered by Like the ghost of a daisy dropped out of the sky, Or a wownded apple-blossom in the breeze's controle As it cut acrost ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... rushing streams—all sorts of sweet watery noises. The veiled melody of the molten music sang me into a dreamless sleep, and when I woke the sun was already up, and the wrinkled country widely visible. Covered with shadows it lay striped and mottled like the skin of some wild animal. As the sun rose the shadows diminished, and it seemed as if the rocks were re-absorbing the darkness that had oozed out of ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... young Castaigne, whom I knew, prevented me from exploring its wicked pages. I had always refused to listen to any description of it, and indeed, nobody ever ventured to discuss the second part aloud, so I had absolutely no knowledge of what those leaves might reveal. I stared at the poisonous mottled binding as I would at ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... dichromatic, polychromatic; bicolor^, tricolor, versicolor^; of all the colors of the rainbow, of all manner of colors; kaleidoscopic. iridescent; opaline^, opalescent; prismatic, nacreous, pearly, shot, gorge de pigeon, chatoyant^; irisated^, pavonine^. pied, piebald; motley; mottled, marbled; pepper and salt, paned, dappled, clouded, cymophanous^. mosaic, tesselated, plaid; tortoise shell &c n.. spotted, spotty; punctated^, powdered; speckled &c v.; freckled, flea-bitten, studded; flecked, fleckered^; striated, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... as he saw how he had been duped by Courthorne. He had heard Shannon's story, and, remembering it, could fancy that Courthorne had planned the trooper's destruction with a devilish cunning that recognized by what means the blame could be laid upon a guiltless man. Winston's face became mottled with gray again as he realized that if he revealed his identity he had nothing but his word to offer ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... of drab tones that she came into. Down below was impenetrable blackness, shading softly overhead into blue-gray which was mottled by lighter areas from breaks in the floes above. All was calm. There was no sign of life save for an occasional vague shadow that, melting swiftly away, might have been a fish or seaweed. Placid always, would be this shrouded sea of mystery, no matter what furious ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... easy range of the child's voice, how smoothly it slid from birdlike queries and chirpings, to the consoling tones of the lower register. It seemed to leave undisturbed the softly-rounded, faintly-mottled chin and cheeks and the full unpouting lips that lay quietly one upon the other before she spoke, and opened flexibly but somehow hardly moved to her speech and afterwards closed again gradually until they lay ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... Greek boubon ("groin")—because it attacks the lymphatic glands of the groins, armpits, neck, and other parts of the body. Among its leading symptoms are headache, fever, vertigo, vomiting, prostration, etc., with dark purple spots or a mottled appearance upon the skin. Death in severe cases usually occurs within forty-eight hours. Bacteriologists are now generally agreed that the disorder is due to a bacillus identified by investigators both in India ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... eyes, and the joyous grin on the flushed face of Laroche, disappeared when, lighting a candle to guide them through the darkened antechamber, they entered the living-room to find Ivan supine on the divan, sunk into a heavy slumber, the mottled white and red of his stained cheeks betraying a secret never afterwards referred to by his kindly discoverers. For Ivan's persistent faith had come to naught. Michael Gregoriev still denied ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... feet long, very thick, and of a dark mottled color. Instantly, each lad had armed himself with a big stick and had attacked him. The snake, stopped in his attempt to get away, turned, and opening his ugly-looking mouth, made a curious blowing noise, half ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... stones. The leaves of these vines were almost as brilliant as the leaves of the maple-trees. They were of all shades of red, up to the deepest claret; they were of light green, shading into yellow, and curiously mottled with tiny points of red; all these shades and colors sometimes being seen upon one long runner. The effect of these wreaths and tangles of color upon the old, gray stones was so fine that Mercy stood still and involuntarily exclaimed aloud. Then she picked a few of the most beautiful vines, ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of marble. This piece is pure white. This is colored. It is marked by many strange forms, as you see in your mantel-pieces and table-tops. In this piece, you see many colored spots—mottled it may ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... wall-painting, sunshine has faded it, mould has mottled the broad surfaces of red and blue and green, and a later age has done away with the dresses represented; yet, when the frescos in the library of the Cathedral at Siena, for instance, were newly finished, they ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... this clamor, calmly aloof, yet withal watchful of eye, sits the coachman, beshawled to the ears of him, hatted to the eyes of him, and in a wondrous coat of many capes; a ponderous man, hoarse of voice and mottled of face, who, having swallowed his hot rum and water in three leisurely gulps, tosses down the glass to the waiting pot-boy (and very nearly hits a fussy little gentleman in a green spencer, who carries a hat-box in one ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... this was a sort of festal day, as well as a day of business. Most of the people were of a bulky make, with much bone and muscle, and some good store of fat, as if they had lived on flesh-diet; with mottled faces, too, hard and red, like those of persons who adhered to the old fashion of spirit-drinking. Great, round-paunched country squires were there too, sitting under the porch of the tavern, or waddling ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nothing but a waste of laughing, springing, foamy waves, turning, crossing, even seeming to stand for an instant erect, but always borne impetuously forward like a crowd of triumphant feasters. Sit close down by it, and you see a fragment of the torrent against the sky, mottled, steely, and foaming, leaping onward in far-flung criss-cross strands of water. Perpetually the eye is on the point of descrying a pattern in this weaving, and perpetually it is cheated by change. In one place part of the flood plunges over a ledge a few feet high and a quarter ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... darling of Antenor's hearth, Forego Pierian songs, the sisters' dances: No girl among them ever gave a dime. Phoebus is nought; Minerva has the cash, Is shrewd, is only usurer to the gods. What's there in Bacchus' ivy? The black tree Of Pallas bends with mottled leaves and weight. On Helicon there's only water, wreaths, The divine lyres, and profitless applause. Why do you dream of Cirrha, bare Permessis? The forum is more Roman and more rich. There the coins clink, but round the sterile chairs And desks of ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird would soar among the clouds no more, nor ride upon its native waves; so I drew near, and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for a remembrance. Another day, I discovered an immense bone, wedged into a chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a cimeter, bejewelled with barnacles and small shell-fish, ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pontypool cold-blast pig iron. Those made from No. 1 pig iron—the most graphitic and costly—broke more easily than those from No. 2, and so on until those made from No. 4 were tested, when the maximum strength was reached. No. 4 pig iron was in fracture a pale gray, bordering on mottled. Several points regarding foundry operations in the production of chilled castings were raised for discussion. They embraced the depth of chill to be imparted to chilled rolls and railway wheels, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds to break them,— Some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking,—some are buff-colored, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign!) look you! the bright hides See the two with stars on their foreheads—see the round bodies and broad backs ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... up showing part of a mottled nude lady who was smiling and reaching one hand up over to about where her shoulder blades would meet in the back, who should be let in on the scene but Lon Price and Cousin Egbert Floud. Lon had called for Henrietta, and Cousin Egbert had trailed along, I suppose, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... globose or depressed-globose, or reniform, iridescent-blue, mottled with various tints, red, orange, yellow, white, stipitate; stipe equal, or tapering slightly upward, rugose, orange or orange red, without lime, rising from a small concolorous hypothallus; columella none; capillitium dense, crowded with calcareous, brilliant orange nodules which are ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... at him quickly and flushed. When she reddened her pasty skin acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream that had ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... her—a young woman of the working classes, her plump face sagging and mottled with terror, her eyes staring, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... sensation, and, at the same time, the evaporation, are greater than they would be with the thermometer at the same point in America. I have frequently felt in Italy, with the mercury below 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and with a mottled and almost opaque sky, a heat of solar irradiation which I can compare to nothing but the scorching sensation experienced in America at a temperature twenty degrees higher, during the intervals between showers, or before a rain, when ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... John advanced to Clara's room. As he closed the door behind him she rose. His face was mottled; there were tear-stains about his eyes, and he had a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... one of the reasons I have brought you here." And moving towards the window she opened it cautiously. As she did so there appeared, about three feet or more away, the grey and mottled ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... they burned brightly yet, trying hard to pierce the bitter cold outside with a ray of warmth and cheer. Where the lamps in the delicatessen store made a mottled streak of brightness across the flags, two little boys stood with their noses flattened against the window. The warmth inside, and the lights, had made little islands of clear space on the frosty pane, affording glimpses of the wealth within, of the piles of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... aurora, while yet the long, low clouds hung lustreless above; nor could the eye prophesy where should open the door in heaven. At length, a flush, as of shame or joy, presaged the pathway. Tongues of many-colored light vibrated beneath the strata of clouds, now dappled, mottled, streaked with fire; those on either hand of a light, flaky, salmon tint, those in the path and portal of the dawn of a gorgeous blending and blazoning of golden glories. The mists all abroad stirred uneasily. Tufts of feathery down came up out of the mass. Soft, floating films lifted from the surface ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... man looked at the sky. It was evening and the sun had set. The sky was all mottled with grey clouds. "I paint beautiful pictures and give them away," he declared. "My brother is in the penitentiary. He killed a man who called him ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... organs, one on each side of the chest, embracing the heart, (fig. 88,) and separated from each other by a membranous partition. The color of the lungs is a pinkish gray, mottled, and variously marked with black. Each lung is divided into lobes, by a long and deep fissure, which extends from the posterior surface of the upper part of the organ, downward and forward, nearly to the anterior angle of the base. In the right lung, the upper lobe is subdivided ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... you a thing right now that'll help you to remember—mighty nigh every bird lays a egg that's mighty nigh like the bird herself. The cat bird's eggs is sorter blue—an' the wood-pecker's is white, like his wing, an' the thrasher's is mottled ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... that Pattie Batch might easily have wept. A boy—a boy! Oh, shoot! But still, she reflected, considering the scarcity, a boy—this boy, in fact, cleaned up—Pattie Batch was all the time running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes—yes, the child had possibilities, unquestionably so, which soap and water might astonishingly improve—and, in fine, this little ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... arched over the narrow path, and a wild canary, singing in the sun, hopped from bough to bough. A robin's cheery chirp came from another tree, and the clear notes of a thrush, with a mottled breast, were answered by another in ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... head in its brown wig was still shaking with fatigue, but under the prickle of white on his shaven jowl the purplish color came back in mottled streaks. He sipped the sherry breathlessly, the glass trembling in his veined and shrunken hand. "Well," he demanded, "how do you ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... from Andalusia," said Padraig, showing seven small eggs mottled with crimson and black in a medicine box. Gregory touched one very gingerly. They were in fact waxen shells filled with volatile liquids, and Padraig had spent most of the night preparing them. He explained that they were no larger than ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... however, on going into the theatre, one of the chorus girls passed her all newly arrayed in a pretty mottled tweed suit, which took Carrie's eye. The young woman wore a fine bunch of violets and seemed in high spirits. She smiled at Carrie good-naturedly as she passed, showing pretty, even teeth, and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... abundance from the tree already mentioned, as constituting the firewood which the natives use in fishing by night. It is of a mottled red or brown colour, of a firm consistency and sweet taste, resembling exactly in appearance, flavour, and colour, the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... across her mufflers on his face. There was a bright moonlight, broken by the shadows of overhanging boughs and withered leaves; and the mottled lights and shadows glided oddly across his pale features. But she saw that he was smiling his sly, sleepy ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... explain and lie and bully me. Anything would do to tell me, I'd swallow it like one of those big grapes." She was speaking in gusts, between the labored heavings of her breast; her eyes were staring and dark; and her hands opened and shut, shut and opened, continuously. Fanny's cheeks were now mottled, there were fluctuating spots of red, blue shadows, on the pallor ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... jocular way of speaking; but if any one could have looked on, he would have seen that his face was curiously mottled with sallow, while his hands were trembling when at liberty, and that there was a curiously wild, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... of varieties: when we see an animal highly kept producing offspring with an hereditary tendency to early maturity and fatness; when we see the wild-duck and Australian dog always becoming, when bred for one or a few generations in confinement, mottled in their colours; when we see people living in certain districts or circumstances becoming subject to an hereditary taint to certain organic diseases, as consumption or plica polonica,—we naturally attribute such changes to ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... Hong-Kong packet dock to ambush the possible tourist, he witnessed the arrival of a tubby schooner, dirty gray and blotched as though she had run through fire. Her two sticks were bare and brown, her snugged canvas drab, her brasses dull, her anchor mottled with rust. There was only one clean spot in the picture—the ship's wash (all white) that fluttered on a line stretched between the two masts. The half-nude brown bodies of the crew informed Ah Cum that the schooner had come up from the South Seas. The boiling ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was the last of a string of four that were describing a wide curve in the midst of a reach of silvery river full of glittering patches of pale, pea-green lavender, hemmed in on either side by frail blue roots of poplars. The sky was a mottled luminous grey with occasional patches, the color of robins' eggs. Andrews breathed in the dank smell of the river and leaned against the tiller when he was told to, answering the old man's ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... spot moving in to intercept the gray. Then the spot turned broadside and he appreciated what had made the Pinto so elusive to hunters. The mottled red-and-white patches of the wild stud's coat melted into the landscape in an uncanny fashion, making the horse seem to appear and disappear as he ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... way home from Dr. King's that Philippa's feeling of responsibility about Mary brought her a sudden temptation. They were walking hand in hand along the road. The leaves on the mottled branches of the sycamores were thinning now, and the sunshine fell warm upon the two young things, who were still a little shaken from the frightful experience of tooth-pulling. The doctor had put the small white tooth ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... remnants of thatched roofs through which they had aspired toward the sun, rose about him. Quick-growing trees had shadowed the kingposts so that the idols and totems, seated in carved shark jaws, grinned greenly and monstrously at the futility of man through a rime of moss and mottled fungus. A poor little sea-wall, never much at its best, sprawled in ruin from the coconut roots to the placid sea. Bananas, plantains, and breadfruit lay rotting on the ground. Bones lay about, human bones, and Jerry nosed them out, knowing them for what they were, emblems ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... may be called round, though it is somewhat irregular in shape. It grows large, and often becomes hollow. It should, therefore, be used while young, or when not more than an inch or an inch and a half in diameter. The outside coat is mottled with greenish-brown, wrinkled, and often marked with transverse white lines. The flesh is mild, not so solid as that of many varieties, and of a greenish-white color. The leaves are similar to those of the Yellow Turnip-rooted, growing long ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... her overflow of animal activity, shaded gradually into the white of lethic Winter; then in slow dissolution relinquished supremacy to the tans and mottled greens of Springtime. Unsatisfied as man, the mighty cycle of the seasons' evolution moved on until the ripe yellow of harvest and of corn-field wrote "Autumn" on the broad page of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... that Zack was awake. In another minute the young gentleman appeared gloomily, in his night gown, at the folding doors by which the two rooms communicated. His eyes looked red-rimmed and blinking, his cheeks mottled and sodden, his hair tangled and dirty. He had one hand to his forehead, and groaning with the corners of his mouth lamentably drawn down, exhibited a shocking and salutary picture of ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... parallel to the proboscis; while those of Anopheles are so large that it appears to have three probosces. There are no markings on the wings of the ordinary species of Culex, while the wings of Anopheles are distinctly mottled. The Culex, sitting on a wall or ceiling, holds its hind legs above its back and its body nearly parallel to the wall or ceiling, but the Anopheles carries its hind legs either against the wall or hanging ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... mottled and crimson with anger. Madge's face was very white. She held her head high and looked her ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... her request, I then reached for her. I turned the pages. The book was full of beautiful relics from tokens of remembrance which kind friends had sent to her, and among them were some curiously mottled, green and rose-colored, petals, which she had designed for a wreath, on the first page of the little herbarium, which it was her intention to prepare; and then, with great hesitancy, and protesting their unworthiness, she repeated these simple ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... which to that structure old Winds an accordant curve. Above my head Dilates immeasurable a wild of leaves, Seeming received into the blue expanse That vaults this summer noon. Before me lies A lawn of English verdure, smooth, and bright, Mottled with fainter hues of early hay, Whose fragrance, blended with the rose-perfume From that white flowering bush, invites my sense To a delicious madness,—and faint thoughts Of childish years are borne into my brain By unforgotten ardors waking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various |
