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Plumage   /plˈumədʒ/  /plˈumɪdʒ/   Listen
Plumage

noun
1.
The light horny waterproof structure forming the external covering of birds.  Synonyms: feather, plume.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Plumage" Quotes from Famous Books



... living fibre shoots On lengthening branches, and protruding roots; Or on the father's side from bursting glands The adhering young its nascent form expands; In branching lines the parent-trunk adorns, And parts ere long like plumage, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... Shore! [9] If this or that way he should stir, Woe to the poor blind Mariner! For death will be his doom. 105 [10] But say what bears him?—Ye have seen The Indian's bow, his arrows keen, Rare beasts, and birds with plumage bright; Gifts which, for wonder or delight, Are brought in ships from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... time Willie stood there thinking, his gaze fixed upon the gently swaying plumage of the pines. The shock of his discovery left him suddenly feeling very sad and very much alone. It was as if he had buried the friend of half a century. Yet even to bring Janoah back he could not retract the words he had uttered or exchange the light he followed ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... ''tis not I who am the Dauphin, but his Highness yonder,'—pointing to the young knight, who showed all his plumage like ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... with delight in him. Another woman than Robin counted over his charms and made a tender list of them, wondering at each one. As a young male pheasant in mating time dons finer gloss and brilliancy of plumage, perhaps he too bloomed and all unconscious developed added colour and inches and gallant swing of tread. As people turned half astart to look at Robin bending over her desk or walking about among them in her modest dress, so also did they ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... possess'd, In gay and brilliant plumage dress'd; He loved it well, and in boyish sport Its food to take from his mouth he taught, And in his pigeon he took such pride, That his joy to ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... been the first to direct his attention to the study of birds, and to the observance of Nature generally. Through him he learned to notice the beautiful colourings and markings of the birds, to know their haunts, and to observe their change of plumage with the changing seasons; what he learned of their mysterious migrations ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... thickets where bloom great flowers of unearthly beauty yet rank of smell and poisonous to the touch; here are birds of every kind and hue and far beyond this poor pen to describe by reason of the beauty and brilliancy of their plumage, some of which would warble so sweet 'twas great joy to hear while the discordant croakings and shrill clamours of others might scarce be endured. Here, too, are trees (like the cocos) so beneficent to yield a man food and drink, aye, and garments to cover him; ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... moment I was uncertain; I wondered if my gun could have gone off in my hands just as I was leaving Edmee. I distinctly remembered firing it at a pewit an hour before, for Edmee had wanted to examine the bird's plumage. Further, when I heard the shot which had hit her, my gun was in my hands, and I had not thrown it down until a few seconds later, so it could not have been this weapon which had gone off on falling. Besides, even granting a fatality which was incredible, I was much too far from Edmee at that moment ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... swiftly and gracefully toward the Magic Isle, and as it drew nearer its gorgeously colored plumage astonished them. The feathers were of many hues of glistening greens and blues and purples, and it had a yellow head with a red plume, and pink, white and violet in its tail. When it reached the Isle, it came ashore and approached them, waddling slowly and turning its head ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... place silently and looked out of the window into the blur of moving lights as Vienna was left behind them. Upon the seat opposite her sat the newly created officer of the Fifteenth Army Corps, Ober Lieutenant Carl von Arnstorf, looking rather smart in his borrowed plumage. The intimacy of their new situation did not frighten her, for she thought that already she had read enough of her companion's character to know that at least so far she was on safe ground. She gave him permission to smoke without ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... bush, along paths and the green-covered walls; and I am not alone in my chase, for there are others pursuing. It is a bitter struggle to win the wild thing. And why? Because there is pursuing one of the pursuers another bird of red plumage. Do ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was that his expensive courtship had taken every penny of his salary. With competitors like Charley Greengay, you had to spend money or drop out. Certain birds, he reflected ruefully, are supplied with more attractive plumage when they are courting, but nature hadn't been so thoughtful for men. When Percy reached the office in the morning he climbed on his tall stool and leaned his arms on his ledger. He was so glad to feel it there that he was ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... Womankind was in spring plumage. The mere consciousness of the value of light to their costumes, no less than the elixir in their nostrils, gave vivacity to their features. As usual, Jack was seeing them only to see Mary. The creation of no couturier could bear ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... which perhaps more than any other attract the general attention, as well as the general admiration, of mankind: I mean all that class of phenomena which go to constitute the Beautiful. Whatever value beauty as such may have, it clearly has not a life-preserving value. The gorgeous plumage of a peacock, for instance, is of no advantage to the peacock in his struggle for life, and therefore cannot be attributed to the agency of natural selection. Now this fact of beauty in organic structures is a fact of wide generality—almost ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... flowers born so beautiful and yet so hapless? Insects can sting, and even the meekest of beasts will fight when brought to bay. The birds whose plumage is sought to deck some bonnet can fly from its pursuer, the furred animal whose coat you covet for your own may hide at your approach. Alas! The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly; all others stand helpless before ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... Plumage pure white, with a black cap on the head, a pearl-blue mantle, and silver-black shades on the long wing-feathers, which look as if they had hoar ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... else dost thee array In a most sombre suit of black? 'Surely,' he sighed, 'some load of grief, Past all our thinking—and belief— Must weigh upon his back!' Do, then, in turn, tell me, If joy Thy heart as well as voice employ Why dost thou now most Sable, shine In plumage woefuller far than mine? Thy silence is a sadder thing Than any ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... cannot explain. Nowhere are the loneliness and grandeur of God so manifested. Mind, I don't quite sympathize with that comparison of St. Augustine's where he detects a resemblance between yon spectra of purple and green and the plumage of a dove. What has a dove to do with such magnificence and grandeur? It was an anti-climax, a bathos, of which St. Augustine is seldom guilty. 'And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... out of the upper end of the big tree branch, he noticed that he was up among the birds which had been singing a lively concert until he interrupted them. There were birds which Bumper had never seen before, some with startling plumage, and others with voices that sounded ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh

... clearing a piece of wood on his place, they met with a large dead pine tree, on which was a bald eagle's nest and young. The tree being on fire more than half way up, and the flames rapidly ascending, the parent eagle darted around and among the flames, until her plumage was so much injured that it was with difficulty she could make her escape, and even then, she several times attempted to return to relieve ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... aloft, and by means of them set studding sails out several yards clear of the hull on either side; so on she plowed, her canvas spread out like an enormous fan or a huge albatross all wings. A goodly, gallant show; but under all this vast and swelling plumage an exile's heart. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... and moans the days of his life away; but rather be like the proud eagle that leaves its craggy summit, starts on its pinion flight through the clouds, rides upon the face of the storm, then on beyond bathes its plumage in the "sunlight of the day god, and laughs in the face of the ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... saw beside the bathing-pools the bowers Defiled by elephants grown overbold, Strewn with uprooted golden lotus-flowers, No longer bright with plumage of ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa

... hot floor of the desert for a soft, cool carpet of velvet grass all inwrought with blossoms that filled the air with fragrance. Over his head, tall trees gently shook their glistening, shadowy leaves, while sweet voiced birds of rare and wondrous plumage flitted from bough to bough. Across a sky of deepest blue, fleets of fairy cloud ships, light as feathery down, floated—floated—drifting lazily, as though, piloted only by the wind, their pilot slept. All about him, as he walked, multitudes of sunlight ...
— The Uncrowned King • Harold Bell Wright

... delight in shooting; but he soon lost the zest for this sport, for the birds gave themselves to his gun too easily. He was capable of deriving pleasure from them other than in their slaughter, and often he rode under their rocky homes, noting how dark their white plumage looked against their white resting-places, where groups of them huddled together upon the icy battlements and snowdrift towers of the castles that the frost had built them. He would ride by slowly, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... foundation, despised and neglected by those who talk most loudly about civilization, art, culture, and so on. They aspire to the clouds and the stars at once—and arrive nowhere except in talk and pretense and flaunting of ill-fitting borrowed plumage. They flap their gaudy artificial wings; there is motion, but no ascent. Susan wished to build—and build solidly. She ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... shot the bird," I said, "but it was Oliver who saw by its multi-coloured plumage that it was one of the Psittacidae, an excellent substitute ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... by this time discovered that the shaft directed against him by Sir Edward Grey was feathered with his own plumage. To meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and our own court decisions. It remains to be seen whether out of strands plucked from the mane and tail of the British lion we can fashion a bowstring ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... clean-spotted column of the leopard tree, creamy white on slate, from base to topmost twig. She pitied the unlovely belar, when the wind sighed through its coarse, scanty, grey-green tresses; and she loved to contemplate the silvery plumage of the two drooping myalls which, because of their rarity here, had been allowed to remain in the horse-paddock. For the last two or three springs of her vivacious existence, she had watched the deepening crimson of the quondong, amidst its thick contexture of Nile-green leaves; she had ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... breakfast run round behind the pheasantry, and there I'll find you. And if any one comes to you before I come, say you are admiring the plumage of the Himalaya—the beautiful Indian bird; and if we're found together, we run a race, and of course you can catch me, but you mustn't until we're out of sight. Tell Mr. Vernon at night—tell Mr. Whitford ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... in surprise, toward this querulous "child" as the girls fancied it, though the Judge was already smiling his understanding of the matter. Then there appeared in the doorway a parrot, of wonderful plumage and exaggerated awkwardness; who waddled from side to side, climbed one side of its mistress's gown to her shoulder and walked head-first down the other, rolling its eyes and emitting the most absurd moans till the two girls were ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... globes of malachite; English bullfinches, with ashen-colored backs, in which their black heads were buried, and corselets of a rosy down; Java sparrows, fat and sleek and cleanly; troupials, so glossy and splendid in plumage that they looked as if they were dressed in the celebrated armor of the Black Prince, which was jet, richly damascened with gold; a cock of the rock, gleaming, a ball of tawny fire, like a setting sun; the Campanero of Brazil, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... made her nest in the early Spring on the young green wheat. The brood had almost grown to their proper strength, and attained the use of their wings and the full plumage of their feathers, when the owner of the field, overlooking his crop, now quite ripe, said, "The time is come when I must send to all my neighbors to help me with my harvest." One of the young Larks heard his speech, and told it to his mother, asking her to what place they ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... up and saw the bird, one of those pretty little parrots with soft, silky, dull-green plumage. It was hanging by the beak from a bar of its cage, swinging itself and flapping its wings, all mirth in the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... then, your envious complaint; Or I, instead of making up your lack, Will take your boasted plumage from your back.' ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... men could be so described. "Well then," said I, "would you rather I should call them donkeys, or even monkeys? What I mean is that the poor girl—a perfect little DECORATIVE person, who ought to have iridescent-gray plumage and pink-shod feet to match the rest of her—shouldn't be thrust into any general menagerie-cage, but be kept for the dovecote and the garden, kept where we may still hear her coo. That's what, at college, they'll make her unlearn; she'll learn ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... formed and colored, Glistening in the silver sunshine, Glimmering in the golden moonlight, Many-colored as the rainbow, Fitting ornaments for heroes, Jewels for the maids of beauty. This the origin of sea-pearls And the blue-duck's beauteous plumage. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... moults three times in the year. Its summer plumage is rather grouselike above, with a good deal of rufous brown; the back becomes much more grey in autumn; almost all the feathers of the winter plumage are white. That is to say, they develop without any pigment and with numerous gas-bubbles in their cells. Now there can be no ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... stuck to her all her life, and she hoped to shake him off for a moment after death. He enforces the virtue of moderation and contentment from Aesop's fables, of the frog, of the daw with borrowed plumage, of the lean weasel who squeezed himself into a granary through a tiny hole, and grew so fat that he could not return; from the story of Philippus, who amused himself by enriching a poor man to the ruin of his victim's peace and happiness (Ep. I, vii, 46); and from the delightful apologue ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... the mother bird on their nests while they are rearing their young, because their plumage is prettiest at that time. The little ones cry pitifully, and starve to death. Every bird of the rarer kinds that is killed, such as humming birds, orioles and kingfishers, means the death of several others that is, the young that starve to death, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... dragoman, all his former plumage gone, was whining and snivelling as he argued to a dark-browed crowd that was running beside the cavalcade. The groom, who always had been a miraculously laconic man, was suddenly launched forth garrulously. The, drivers, from their high seats, palavered like mad men, driving with oat hand ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... and to have found that it is as other valleys,—rocks and stones, with a little grass, and a thin stream of running water? But beyond that pressure of the hand, and that kissing of the lips,—beyond that short-lived pressure of the plumage which is common to birds and men,—what could love do beyond that? There were children with dirty faces, and household bills, and a wife who must, perhaps, always darn the stockings,—and be sometimes cross. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... northward when the call should come to return. With them, the red-breasted meadowlarks of the pampas sang and frolicked as if constituting themselves a welcoming committee to the strangers during their annual visit. Their gaudy plumage contrasted strongly with the sombre, spotted attire of ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between Men and Apes. At most, they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat towards the pithecoid type—just as a Carrier, or a Pouter, or a Tumbler, may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the 'Columba livia'. And indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known human skulls, the Neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it appears to be at first, but ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... more progressive, that of an artful husband hunter, and its summit—ah! its summit was where she stood herself, and where a deplorable percentage of our society wives and mothers are standing or strutting about with their brilliant plumage expanded, airing their silly pride and lisping out in self-laudatory accents the story of their empty ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... long ago lost and is still seeking. And again one is reminded of Tieck when Thoreau says: "I had seen the red election birds brought from their recesses on my comrades' strings and fancied that their plumage would assume stranger and more dazzling colours in proportion as I advanced farther into the darkness and solitude of the forest." Heinrich von Ofterdingen travels to Augsburg to visit his grandfather, conversing on the way with various shadowy persons, a miner, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... similar to that of Otaheite. Their arms consisted of clubs, spears, and slings, the two former very neatly made, and with the latter they threw stones a considerable distance but without accuracy. Mr. Forster managed to secure a quantity of small birds with very beautiful plumage. ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... Sweden. Her description reads like a catalogue of all human perfections. Of medium height and a figure as faultless in its exquisite modelling as in its grace and suppleness; her hair, black as a raven's plumage, and falling, like a veil of night, below her knees, emphasised the white purity of face and throat, arms, and hands. Her teeth, twin rows of pearls, glistened between smiling crimson lips, curved like Cupid's bow. Her face of perfect oval, with its delicately moulded features, ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... was covered with heather, and with other bright-coloured small flowers, but all without scent. This was supplied, however, in abundance from the groves of acacia, near which we passed. The birds with gay plumage, especially the parrots—parroquets climbing from branch to branch or flying amid the trees—made us feel still more that we had got into ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston

... conservatories, where the plants and flowers had been so arranged as to look like a sort of tropical forest, in the midst of which was an aviary filled with parrots, cockatoos, and other birds of brilliant plumage. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... months, the student of ornithology can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage. And what is a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... merely of this hoped-for pleasure so brightened up the little bird that he looked positively lovely! Not even a bird of paradise could have appeared more glorious, dingy brown though our tiny hero's plumage was; but good deeds and kind words always bring a brightness ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... soon discovered that they could do very little without horses—but managing, by patient stalking and the secreting of themselves in artfully devised ambushes, to secure a few choice and rare skins and horns, besides the tusks of eight elephants and the plumage of over ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... may one see such great picturesqueness, variety, and brilliancy of color in the costumes of the masses as then still prevailed in Mexico. Largely of more or less pure Indian blood, come of a race Cortez found habited in feather tunics and head-dresses brilliant as the plumage of parrots, great lovers of flowers, three and a half centuries of contact with civilization had not served to deprive them of any of their fondness for bright colors. Thus with the horsemen in the graceful traje de chorro—sombreros ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... arrival of the strangers, and quite believed that these white men must have fallen from the skies. It was with a mixture of respect and curiosity that they touched the garments of the Spaniards, considering them doubtless, a kind of natural plumage. The scarlet coat of the admiral excited their admiration above everything, and it was evident they looked upon Columbus as a parroquet of a superior species; at once they seemed to recognize him as the chief amongst ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... weather gradually grew milder; the snow-drifts began to melt. The doctor made a tolerably large collection of northern birds, such as gulls, divers, molly-nochtes, and eider-ducks, which resemble ordinary ducks, with a white back and breast, a blue belly, the top of the head blue, the rest of the plumage white, shaded with different tints of green; many of them had already plucked from their bellies the eider-down, which both the male and the female devote to lining their nests. The doctor also saw great seals breathing at the surface of the water, but he was unable ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... horse-hair. Its efforts to free itself appeared only to result in its being more securely and hopelessly bound; and there it perished; and there its form, dried and embalmed by the summer heats, was yet hanging in September, the outspread wings and plumage showing nearly as bright ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... the shape of a bird fits it for moving rapidly in the air, and all parts of its body are arranged so as to give it lightness along with strength. The soft and delicate plumage of birds protects them from cold or moisture; their wings, though so delicate, are furnished with muscles of such power as to strike the air with great force, whilst their tails act like the rudder of a ship, so that they can direct ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... winter. Three weeks later, and shores and hills glowed with gay prognostics of approaching desolation,—the yellow and scarlet of the maples, the deep purple of the ash, the garnet hue of young oaks, the crimson of the tupelo at the water's edge, and the golden plumage of birch saplings in the fissures of the cliff. It was a short-lived beauty. The forest dropped its festal robes. Shrivelled and faded, they rustled to the earth. The crystal air and laughing sun of October passed away, and November ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... unending panorama of extraordinary picturesqueness is unfolded to the voyager. The banks are fringed with flowers, carpeted with the all-pervading moss or tundra. Birds countless in numbers and of infinite variety in plumage, sing out a welcome from every treetop. Pitch your tent where you will in midsummer, a bed of roses, a clump of poppies and a bunch of bluebells will adorn your camping. But high above this paradise ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... The mosquitoes were a constant annoyance. But the abundant bird life upon this open moorland, continually reminding one as it did of moorlands in the north of England or of Scotland, was full of interest. Ptarmigan, half changed from their snowy plumage to the brown of summer, and presenting a curious piebald appearance, were there in great numbers, cackling their guttural cry with its concluding notes closely resembling the "ko-ax, ko-ax" of the Frogs' Chorus in the comedy of ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... risen, plumage puffed out, strutting with wings bowed and tail spread, facing the dog. The sudden pigmy defiance thrilled her. "Brave! Brave!" she exclaimed, enraptured; but at the sound of her voice the bird crouched like a flash, large dark liquid eyes shining, long bill pointed ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... she saw only fair groves with trees bedecked with fruit and blossom, fragrant meadows, flowers whose beauty made her eyes grow glad. And from the trees sang birds with song more sweet than any that Psyche had ever known, and with brilliant plumage which they preened caressingly when they had dipped their wings in crystal-sparkling fountains. There, too, stood a noble palace, golden fronted, and with arcades of stainless marble that shone like snow in the sun. At first all seemed like ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... slavery, she has seen the Commune, she knows two continents, she has seen a civil war, the glory of the Second Empire, the horrors of two sieges; she has been in contact with marked personalities, with great events, she has lived on her wealth, on her personality, and there she is with her plumage unruffled, as glossy as ever, unable to get old:—a sort of Phoenix free from the slightest signs of ashes and dust, all complacent amongst those inanities as if there had been nothing else in the world. In my youthful haste ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... closed by a plug of down rammed into it by the shot. The Fly takes up her position without separating the feathers or uncovering the wound. She remains here for two hours without stirring, motionless, with her abdomen concealed beneath the plumage. My eager curiosity does not distract her from ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... of which was found in the Archives at Manila, after the capture of that city by the British, in 1762) "is peopled with Indians, not very white, much painted, and naked, except a cloth made of the bark of trees. They fight with darts, targets, and some stone clubs, which are made fine with plumage. Along the coast are many islands and habitations. All the coast has many ports, very large, with very large rivers, and many plains. Without these islands there runs a reef of shoals, and between them (the shoals) ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... changed color, but I have never deciphered it. It is healthy, in good condition, sweet-tempered and very fond of me. It does not talk much, but its talk is innocent and rational. No morbid symptoms have ever appeared in it since I took it from the nunnery in Montreal. Its plumage is soft and thick, and perfectly, entirely gray. My own impression is that it was naturally a gray parrot and had at that time of my sojourn in New York, either been dyed or painted that peculiar pea-green which so distinguished it ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... speech. If persecuted, they will hold together, as cattle on the prairies huddle against the storm. But if left alone the Law of Reversion to Type catches the second generation, and the young men and maidens secrete millinery, just as birds do a brilliant plumage, and the strange sect merges into and is lost in the mass. The Jews did not say, Go to, we will be peculiar, but, as Mr. Zangwill has stated, they have remained a peculiar people simply because ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... somewhere in that vast hall, there were a few preparations, exemplifying the leading structural peculiarities and the mode of development of a common fowl; if the types of the genera, the leading modifications in the skeleton, in the plumage at various ages, in the mode of nidification, and the like, among birds, were displayed; and if the other specimens were put away in a place where the men of science, to whom they are alone useful, could have free access to them, I can conceive that this collection might become a great ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... and beheld a bird of medium size, and of plain plumage. It cocked its little head to one side, and eyed the child as if it knew no ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... blossoming dog-wood, the mountain brake, and his childhood's friend the mullen stalk. Even to this day when he came upon an orchid, or a wild rose, with its small pink petals (smaller in this red sterile soil than in his native country), or when a humming bird in its shining plumage came to sip honey from the flowers, or when in the still woods he heard the liquid notes of a hermit thrush, the romance and the ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... sea-fowl" was no metaphor, but exact. None were better qualified to pronounce than we, for the South Atlantic abounds in aquatic birds. We were followed continuously by clouds of them, low flying, skirting the water, of varied yet sober plumage. The names of these I cannot pretend to give, except the monarch of them all, in size and majesty of flight, the albatross, of unsullied white, as its name implies—the king of the southern ocean. Several ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... heavy, exterior objects became indifferent to him. He no longer admired the leafy colonades stretching out as far as the eye could see, into the shadows of the forest. He cast a careless glance at the sparkling and varied plumage of the parrots, birds of paradise and other birds joyfully crying out and pursuing the golden-winged insects or snapping in their beaks the aromatic woods of the Indies. The gambols of the monkeys, balancing themselves on the garlands of passion vines, or springing ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... let the cat out of the bag, when I might, according to the usual way of the world, have sported for awhile in borrowed plumage, and rejoiced in the reputation of being in more prosperous circumstances without fear of detection, I determined to pursue the same course, and make use of the little insight I had obtained into the ways of the land-jobbers of Canada, to procure ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... warning, however, the Peers gave a Second Reading to the measure and also to the Coal Mines Emergency Bill, which is less up-to-date than it sounds, and deals not with the present emergency but with the last emergency but one. They also passed the Importation of Plumage Bill, at the instance of Lord ABERDEEN, who pleaded that beautiful birds, "the result of myriads of years of evolution," should not be exterminated to make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... well-witnessed Will haply by name did appear, And 'spite impious hopes of baffled claimant to kinship Startles the Vulturine grip clutching the frost-bitten poll. Nor with such rapture e'er joyed his mate of snowy-hued plumage 125 Dove-mate, albeit aye wont in her immoderate heat Said be the bird to snatch hot kisses with beak ever billing, As diddest thou:—yet is Woman multivolent still. But thou 'vailedest alone all these to conquer in love-lowe, When conjoined once more unto thy yellow-haired ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... night." The poppies are worked with blue-green purse silk in 5 shades; the plumage of the owl is worked with brown silk of 4 shades in satin stitch, the colours blending one into the other, as can be clearly seen in illustration No. 182. The eyes of the owl are embroidered in scarlet and white silk. Illustration No. 183 ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton

... shadowy land Of soft enchantment. Now Salmala's peak Shines high in air, and Ceylon's dark green woods Beneath are spread; while, as the strangers wind Along the curving shores, sounds of delight Are heard; and birds of richest plumage, red And yellow, glance along the shades; or fly With morning twitter, circling o'er the mast, 140 As singing welcome to the weary crew. Here rest, till westering gales again invite. Then o'er the line of level seas glide on, As the green deities of ocean guide, Till Ophir's distant ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... lightly as a ghost, and almost touched the ice-cakes now and then as his round, yellow eyes, savagely hard and brilliant, searched the dark crevices for prey. With his black beak, his black talons protruding from the mass of snowy feathers which swathed his legs, and the dark bars on his plumage, one might have fancied him a being just breathed into menacing and furtive life by the sorcery ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... in her hands, She presses to her breast; The bird that brought the olive spray Was never more caressed. Her tears upon its plumage fall, They fall like soft warm rain— Sure if the bird were dead such love ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... but they differ one from another only in form and in odor—they are all quite hueless. And this effect of artificial heat in connection with absence of sunlight has a similar effect on animal life, the plumage of the birds being a pure white. But in the appearance of animals the summer sun does not produce much change—in that of ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... the wings of night, was sharp with the fragrance of heather and the sea. One fancied how it would surge through the dim aisles of cathedral-like forests, ruffling the plumage of drowsy birds, stirring the surface of some dark pool, where the trout still slept, and making sibilant music among the ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... other hand, the stately form of the Norman appeared to dilate in magnitude, like that of the eagle, which ruffles up its plumage when about to pounce on its defenseless prey. He paused within three steps of the corner in which the unfortunate Hebrew had now, as it were, coiled himself up into the smallest possible space, and made a sign for one of the slaves to approach. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... story is told of his lying on his back in the woods with some moss for his pillow and looking through a telescopic microscope day after day, to watch a pair of little birds while they made their nest. Their peculiar gray plumage harmonized with the color of the bark of the tree, so that it 5 was impossible to see the birds except by the most careful observation. After three weeks of such patient labor, he felt that he had been amply rewarded for the toil and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... very slow. As it gained height it looked—save for its speed—like a fantastic meteor flaming through the night, for the orange plumage that streamed from beneath lit the ball with dazzling color. A glowing sphere, it staggered midway between floor and ceiling, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... them coursing over the daisy-bespangled grass fields; now they skim just over the blades of grass, and then with a rapid stroke of their long wings mount into the air and come hovering above your head, displaying their rich white and chestnut plumage to perfection. Now they chase each other for very joyfulness, uttering their sharp twittering notes; then they hover with expanded wings like miniature Kestrels, or dart downwards with the velocity of the sparrowhawk; anon ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... it brush the dew From bough and budding spray. And deemed its snow-white plumage grew More beauteous, day ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... about butter-cups and clover blossoms, than parties and fashions,—little guileless children, who danced and jumped and laughed for the same reason the birds sing—because they couldn't help it,—who didn't care any more than the birds, whether their plumage was red, green, yellow or brown, so that they could dart and skim and hop where they liked, warble when they had a mind, and fold their wings where they pleased, when weary. But these little city hot-house ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... spreads his snares in sight of those innocent birds that perch on the tree of life in paradise. As Arthur's soul (it was a vain soul) preened its wings before her, Aggie never inquired whether the brilliance of its plumage was its own, or merely common to all feathered things in the pairing season. Young Arthur's soul was like a lark, singing in heaven its delirious nuptial hymn. Aggie sat snug in her nest and marvelled at her mate, at the mounting of his wings, the splendid and untiring ardors of his song. Nor was ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair

... different kinds of "carpinteros" or woodpeckers, most of them having most wonderful plumage of brown, green, scarlet, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... vegetables, she has the yam, cassado, tan yan, and sweet potato. She has beeswax and honey, and most valuable skins and furs. In woods, she has the ebony, mangrove, silver tree, teak, unevah, lignumvitae, rosewood, and mahogany. She has birds with the sweetest notes and brightest plumage, and fish and animals in the greatest variety. There are the giant elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. There the lordly lion roams, the monarch of his native forest, as if conscious of furnishing robes for royalty and symbolizing the flag of a great ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... through the still air upon their heads. The boat, with damask cushions and silken awning, invites them upon the lake. The strong arms of the rowers bear them with fairy motion to sandy beach and jutting headland, to island, and rivulet, and bay, while swans and water-fowl, of every variety of plumage, sport before them and around them. Such were the scenes in which Maria Antoinette passed the first fourteen years of her life. Every want which wealth could supply was gratified. "What a destiny!" exclaimed a Frenchman, as ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... upon the arms of his chair, derricked himself up, and went over to the mirror. He peered at himself and seemed to rearrange his countenance, much as a woman would smooth the ruffled plumage of her hat. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... sous-lieutenant struck me violently upon the back and said, ma foi, that I was a 'downy old bird,' It was a compliment tres 'bizarre mais tres aimable. I was, it appeared, an old bird of the downiest plumage. I had noted the name of the house, and the Inspector seized a Directory. 'We have suspected that house for some time,' said he. There is a big boat-house at the bottom of the garden containing a large sea-going motor-boat. The proprietor calls himself English, ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... he were entertaining a bird of brilliant tropical plumage in his cabin, as if it had flown thither from glowing southern lands and brought with it sensuous memories of color and fragrance, and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... geese, by chopping blocks of dry pine into rough images of their bodies, and fashioning their necks and heads from bent willow sticks; as well as roughly staining the completed models to represent the plumage. And while he worked he talked of the coming of the birds ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... back! One of the earliest recollections of childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at home they had nothing better than fussing guineas. She had never come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a family ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... the "peachy one." She seemed to be holding her lustrous blonde head carefully centered in the oval between the "thin one's" green-and-yellow plumage. She looked like a portrait ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... turned his eyes to the window and discovered something there which interested him still more, for in a wicker cage above the doctor's head there was a lively little jackdaw. He was a smart active bird with glossy plumage, and looked strangely out of place amongst the quiet old brown books and dusty objects in the room. Ambrose gazed at him with satisfaction. He had a jackdaw at home, and when he saw this one he felt at ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... these lines he is disporting himself in scoots and rings over the wider parts of the pond, into whose surface he dashes, once or twice making a loud souse—the spray flying in the sun—beautiful! I see his white and dark-gray plumage and peculiar shape plainly, as he has deign'd to come very near me. The noble, graceful bird! Now he is sitting on the limb of an old tree, high up, bending over the water—seems to be looking at me while I memorandize. I almost fancy he knows me. Three days later.—My second kingfisher ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... solemn procession before him. The only valuable part of them consisted in some little fillets, bracelets, and other ornaments of gold, and in some bales of cotton. The rest were mere objects of vulgar wonder and curiosity; some reeds of an extraordinary size, some birds of a very beautiful plumage, and some stuffed skins of the huge alligator and manati; all of which were preceded by six or seven of the wretched natives, whose singular colour and appearance added greatly to the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... V—-e has just sent me a beautiful bird with the most gorgeous plumage of the brightest scarlet and blue. It is called a huacamaya, and is of the parrot species, but three times as large, being about two feet from the beak to the tip of the tail. It is a superb creature but very wicked, gnawing ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... forms that are the parasites of birds. Many of them are just plainly visible to the naked eye, others are too minute to be clearly seen, and others yet again wholly elude the unaided sight. The epizoa generally lodge themselves in various parts of the plumage of birds; and almost every group of birds becomes the host of some specific or varietal form with distinct adaptations. There is here seen a parasite that secretes itself in the inner feathers of the peacock, this is a form ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... their southern pilgrimage, to feed on the minute creatures which now people the plains, the hill-sides and forests, and on the abundant productions of the earth, enlivening the forests with their varied plumage, and delighting man by their ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... Lucretia Borgias, Salomes—I could weary you with names. Your Roman task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been other women also—noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the dark waste of history. So there have been noble men—saints, martyrs, heroes. The sex-line divides us physically, not morally. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... considered by Mr. Gould as specifically distinct. Fifthly, there are three species of mocking thrush — a form highly characteristic of America. The remaining land-birds form a most singular group of finches, related to each other in the structure of their beaks, short tails, form of body and plumage: there are thirteen species, which Mr. Gould has divided into four sub-groups. All these species are peculiar to this archipelago; and so is the whole group, with the exception of one species of the sub-group Cactornis, lately brought from Bow Island, in the Low Archipelago. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... don't quite understand how any one can be so changed, yet—recognizable. I guess it's the plumage. You're in ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... came out that the man was a chemist, and that he had invented a process by which he could dye the feathers of living birds any color he pleased, retaining at the same time all the natural gloss of the plumage. Barnum at once closed a bargain with him for the birds, for ten dollars, and then put them in his "Happy Family" at the Museum. He marked them "Golden Pigeons, from California," and then gleefully awaited ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... but happening one day to see a small negro girl peacocking round in a flaming scarlet petticoat, she struck for bright colors in her own apparel, and carried her point at last. It was as if a ground-sparrow had changed her gray feathers for the burning plumage of some tropical wanderer; and it was natural enough that Cyprian Eveleth should have called her the fire-hang-bird, and her little chamber the fire-hang-bird's nest,—using the country boy's synonyme ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... you see this beautiful bird close to the ship—swimming so steadily—its snowy plumage apparently unwet from its contact with the wave? To what can ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... youngsters, they gazed for a moment upon the downfall of one of their progeny, and then giving vent to their indignation in loud cries pounced upon their tipsy offspring and pecked him until he struggled upright and staggered away. The last we saw of the young scapegrace he was smoothing his ruffled plumage before a shining milk-pail and apparently admonishing his unsteady double. It is worth recording that the turkey was better the next day, and lived, as we were afterwards told, to ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... it comes to that," rejoined Richard, "why do not you and Sherborne wear it, instead of flaunting like daws in borrowed plumage? I scarce know you in your strange garb, and certainly should not take you for an Assheton, or aught pertaining to our family, from your gaudy colours and the strange badge ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... placing the complete bird on their hats—a most ridiculous exhibition of bad taste. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should take up the question of the destruction of birds for their plumage, and agitate until the law makes it illegal to wear a bird on a hat. Some may say that if people kill animals and birds for food they might just as well wear a dead bird on their hats, if they wish to be so silly, although the large majority of America's population, I am sorry to ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... bird is found in the Australian countries, called the emu. In its habits and general appearance it resembles the ostrich, although it does not possess the exquisite plumage of that bird. The long drooping feathers of the emu are brownish-black in color, and covered with hairy fibres. A full-grown bird is five or six feet in height. It never flies, but, like the ostrich, is a very swift runner, and as it is very shy, is difficult to capture. Its nest is ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... speak, with many more doors in them than one can discover houses belonging to the doors. Two cottages, I am told, have no ground floors at all. Cats sun themselves on walls or squat about gnawing fish bones. A houdan cockerel with bedraggled speckly plumage and a ragged crest hanging over one eye struts from doorstep to doorstep. The children, when any one strange walks through the Square, run like rabbits in a warren to their respective doors; stand there, and stare. Tony Widger's house ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... mallard is splendid in plumage, and in shape is far more graceful than his domesticated brother. In early winter the wild ducks fly overhead in a wedge-shaped phalanx, and by and by they pair, and if disturbed start up with a sudden quack, quack from the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... porcupine-quills, the work of the savages, which especially drew forth the king's admiration. He also presented two specimens of the scarlet tanager, Pyranga rubra, a bird of great brilliancy of plumage and peculiar to this continent, and likewise the head of a gar-pike, a fish of singular characteristics, then known only in the waters of Lake ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... total strangers who took us for a lady friend, we are willing to die. We couldn't help it. For an hour we would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, but finally the bell fluttered as though a tiny bird had lit upon the wire and was shaking its plumage. It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was handling the other end of the transmitter, and we felt as though it was wrong for us to sit and keep her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to pour into our ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... powerful still the weak control; Be Man the wit and tyrant of the whole: 50 Nature that tyrant checks; he only knows, And helps, another creature's wants and woes. Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove? Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings? Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods, To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods; For some his interest prompts him to provide, For more his pleasure, yet ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... to get away there, for what was he doing whatever, and with a great deal of fussing and steaming and whistling the voyage was again commenced. The band gave place to the Piper, and he marched out to the tune of "The Cock o' the North," looking exactly like a great giant humming-bird, his plumage flashing in the sunlight, as he went buzzing around the deck. Harry Lauder and the doctor and two or three others of the frivolous young folk in the kilts went away off to where the minister could not see them and danced a Highland reel. The people who did not quite approve of ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... I hear in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We frolic while ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... Hence, their summer dress becomes thin and suitable. Previous to winter, however, and immediately after incubation and rearing of the young is finished, the old feathers are pushed off in succession by the new ones, and thus the greater part of the plumage of ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various

... plumage gay, With many an amorous dame, Fierce strutted o'er the way; And motley ducks Were waddling seen, And drake with neck ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte

... this on your turkey legs. Danneil is of the opinion that the head and its feathers were to be saved for decorative purposes, in style during the middle ages when game bird patties were decorated with the fowl's plumage, a custom which survived to Danneil's time (ca. 1900). But this is not likely to be the case here, for it would be a simple matter to skin the bird before cooking it in order to save ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... beautiful as a well-busked trout or salmon fly. And then it is comparatively indestructible. Take a natural May Fly and squeeze it in your hand. It is reduced to a pulp. Try the same experiment with an artificial one, and its plumage remains unruffled—which is more than you do, since the chance is that you will have to employ a surgeon to extract the hook from the ball of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... a bird of golden plumage, who has been swimming for the last four years in the auditor's pond at 5000 dollars a year. I am for rotation. I want to rotate him out, and to rotate myself in. There's a plenty of room for him to swim outside of that pond; therefore pop in your ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... shade of the steep shores of the mainland. Overhead was a sky of matchless, cloudless blue, and sailing to and fro on motionless wing were numbers of tropic birds, their long scarlet retrices showing in startling contrast to their snow-white body plumage. All round about us turtle would rise every now and then, and taking a look at us, sink out of sight again. From the dense mountain forest, that earlier in the morning had resounded with the heavy booming note of the great grey pigeons and the cooing note ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... their form; (2) "Deucalion," a sort of glorified geological text-book, treating of stones and their life-history, and showing the wearing effect upon them of waves and the action of water; and (3) "Love's Meinie" (1873), a rapture about birds and their feathered plumage, delivered at Eton and at Oxford. This trilogy, dealing with botany, geology, and ornithology, was presented to his audiences with illustrative drawings, representing the flora met with in his travels or found in the neighborhood ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Goncourt, Journal des Goncourt, vol. iii, p. 5.) She has put off a sexual livery that has no longer any important part to play in life, and would, indeed, be inconvenient and harmful, just as a bird loses its sexual plumage when the pairing season ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... combats it was my privilege to witness. The war arose on our announcement to Mere Mouchard, the lady of the inn by the sea, of our decision to move next door. To us Mere Mouchard presented the unruffled plumage of a dove; her voice also was as the voice of the same, mellowed by sucking. Ten minutes later the town was assembled to lend its assistance at the encounter between our two landladies. Each stood on their respective doorsteps with arms ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... feathers stick together and remain so even after being dried; if they then are waved through the air, the barbs of the feather separate, owing to differences of electrification. No bird needs to attend to its plumage at the end of a long flight, for while the large feathers are positively electrified by friction against the air, the white down has become negative, and so there is attraction between it and the feathers. Another consequence of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various



Words linked to "Plumage" :   animal material, bird, alula, hackle, keratin, calamus, contour feather, down, quill, pinion, scapular, ceratin, body covering, web, shaft, spurious wing, marabou, flight feather, vane, plume, bastard wing, melanin, quill feather, down feather, aftershaft



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