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Quadruped   Listen
noun
Quadruped  n.  (Zool.) An animal having four feet, as most mammals and reptiles; often restricted to the mammals.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Quadruped" Quotes from Famous Books



... spent freely of money that was not his, and imagined himself to be leading the life of a gentleman. He rode round on a hired horse to call on his friends, and on the afternoon of the sixth day he alighted from this quadruped at the gate of the ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... was silence again, wherein the birds seemed to sing quite out of tune and Diogenes a lazy quadruped very ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... very unwilling to pass many days here," remarked the Count, as passing along street after street they scarcely met a creature, quadruped or biped. The houses seemed untenanted—not a voice, not a sound was heard; yet they were all clean, in good preservation, and well painted, mostly of a yellow colour with red roofs, many of them with gable ends, one story being smaller ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... most important textile fibres used in the manufacture of woven fabrics of all kinds. It belongs to the group of animal fibres of which three kinds are met with in nature, and used in the manufacture of textile fibres; two of these are derived from quadruped animals, such as the sheep, goat, etc., while the third class comprises the products of ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... "man (body, soul, and spirit) is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World." (vol. ii. p. 372) Mr. Darwin adds: "He who denounces these views (as irreligious) is bound to explain why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... none; and did not care for them, I fancy. She was half-Indian, you know; and I suppose I am like her: for I too, prefer realities to pictures. I love to roam about the woods; and as for the danger—pooh, pooh—I have no fear of that. I fear neither bear nor panther, nor any other quadruped. Ha! I have more fear of a two-legged creature I know of; and I should be in greater danger of meeting with that dreaded biped ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... which the police party had been filling the ruts of the outer roadway, was one never made by government horse or mule. In half a dozen places within a dozen rods, plain as a pikestaff, was the print of a bar shoe, worn on the off fore foot of just one quadruped at the ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... the conjunctiva run over the cornea? Messrs. LECOQ, LEBLANC, and ARTUS, state that they have each seen a case in which regular skin and hair were seen, forming a small patch on the cornea of the eye of a quadruped. This is considered as a proof of the existence there of a membrane naturally analogous to the skin; which must, of course, be the conjunctiva. An officer saw another case, in which a hair was seen in the middle of ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... my third observation,—when the theory which I am examining is adopted, it must be carried out to its consequences, and the bearing of it clearly seen. Man, it is said, is the consummation of the monkey. The monkey is an improvement upon some quadruped or other, and this quadruped is an improvement upon another, and so on. We must descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most elementary manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter. If it is not admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... lameness," yet diagnosis of almost any condition that may be classed under the head of "hip lameness" is not easy except in cases where the cause is obvious, as in wounds of the musculature and certain fractures. To the complexity which the gait of the quadruped contributes, because of its being four-legged, there is added the complicated manner of articulation of the bones of the hind leg. This involves the hip in the manner of diagnostic problems and because of the inaccessibility ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix

... to your suparior judgment," said the Irishman, deferentially, "and would suggist that the sooner the same quadruped is procured the better all round. I hope the thing won't be delayed, as me aunt obsarved when the joodge sintenced ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... flying in from the Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April sun. Sam sang songs as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned, the long-faced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and, judging by his countenance, seemed ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... globe, may be ascribed to the use, and the abuse, of reason; which so variously shapes, and so artificially composes, the manners and opinions of a European, or a Chinese. But the operation of instinct is more sure and simple than that of reason: it is much easier to ascertain the appetites of a quadruped than the speculations of a philosopher; and the savage tribes of mankind, as they approach nearer to the condition of animals, preserve a stronger resemblance to themselves and to each other. The uniform stability of their manners is the natural consequence of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... in which the Governor is the only Englishman, and his cow almost the only quadruped, deserves to be more frequently visited by tourists, as it is perfectly unique in its way. It also merits the study of English politicians. This island rock is the Gibraltar of the North Sea. With a few companies of infantry and casemated batteries, it might be held ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... plant can unite with any other one of the same species; or as one snail or earth-worm can unite with any other hermaphrodite individual. On the contrary, an individual belonging to one form of the cowslip in order to be perfectly fertile must unite with one of the other form, just as a male quadruped must and can unite ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin

... the island, I found several cocoa-nut shells, the remains of an old wigwam, and the backs of two turtle, but no sign of any quadruped. One of my people ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh

... by the breaking up of the company, the tutor and his pupil—the latter of whom had naturally dropped into the less ostentatious posture of a quadruped—were forgotten, or at least overlooked, by the crowd of courtiers, who rushed to congratulate Mar Yusef, or laid their heads together, to whisper their surprise or their suspicions. Titus, therefore, having briefly given directions to Timothy to take care that the book was removed, and to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... pre-eminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title Lord of the White Elephants above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... country continued similar to that above described. It is inhabited by few birds or animals of any kind. Occasionally a deer, or a Guanaco (wild Llama) may be seen; but the Agouti (Cavia Patagonica) is the commonest quadruped. This animal here represents our hares. It differs, however, from that genus in many essential respects; for instance, it has only three toes behind. It is also nearly twice the size, weighing from twenty to twenty-five pounds. The Agouti is a true friend of the desert; it is a common feature ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... prison-house close about us, the new-born things, and all too soon do we forget. And yet, when we were new-born we did remember other times and places. We, helpless infants in arms or creeping quadruped-like on the floor, dreamed our dreams of air-flight. Yes; and we endured the torment and torture of nightmare fears of dim and monstrous things. We new-born infants, without experience, were born with fear, with memory of fear; ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... half-and-half way, with fear and trembling, though with hunger unspeakable, in sight of the viands. A very wretched Bruhl, as seen in these Menzel Documents. On poor Polish Majesty Bruhl has played the sorcerer, this long while, and ridden him as he would an enchanted quadruped, in a shameful manner: but how, in turn (as we study Menzel), is Bruhl himself hagridden, hunted by his own devils, and leads such a ghastly phantasmal existence yonder, in the Valley of the Shadow ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle

... thing I had particularly noticed, and that was the eyes. I should rather say the places where the eyes had been; for the eyes themselves were quite gone, and the sockets cleaned out to the very bottom. Now, I reasoned that no quadruped could do this. The holes were too small even for a jackal to get his slender snout into. The work must have been done by the beak of a bird; and what sort of bird. Why, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... the morning when the grazing animals retired from the open patena to the cool shade of the forest: doubtless, the leopard had taken my approach for that of a deer, or some such animal. And if his spring had been at a quadruped instead of a biped, his distance was so well measured, that it must have landed him on the neck of a deer, an elk, or a buffalo; as it was, one pace more would have done for me. A bear would not have let his victim off ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... [amphibians] frog, toad. [fishes] trout, bass, tuna, muskelunge, sailfish, sardine, mackerel. [insects] ant, mosquito, bee, honeybee. [arthropods] tardigrade, spider. [classification by number of feet] biped, quadruped; [web-footed animal] webfoot. flocks and herds, live stock; domestic animals, wild animals; game, ferae naturae [Lat.]; beasts of the field, fowls of the air, denizens of the sea; black game, black grouse; blackcock^, duck, grouse, plover, rail, snipe. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... of Mary, that as Johnson once said, 'If you called a dog Harvey, I should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species 'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman: she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... great relish, and brought away the carcass of one. I had the creature skinned, and sent the skin to New York to be stuffed and mounted, meaning to exhibit it at the Sanitary Commission Fair hi Boston; but it spoiled on the passage. These quadruped allies were not originally intended as "dogs of war," but simply to detect fugitive slaves, and the men were delighted at this confirmation of their tales of dog-companies, which some of the officers had ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... fallen. That cross is, as you say, an eternal collision; so am I. That is a struggle in stone. Every form of life is a struggle in flesh. The shape of the cross is irrational, just as the shape of the human animal is irrational. You say the cross is a quadruped with one limb longer than the rest. I say man is a quadruped who only uses two of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... quickly snoring, showing his confidence in us; but Mudge thought it would be wiser to keep watch, in case any strange natives might pay us a visit during the night. We knew that we had no danger to apprehend from savage animals, as even the dingo, the only carnivorous quadruped in the country, will not attack a human being able to offer the slightest resistance. We could not, however, tell what a pack of such brutes might do should ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... opportunity to try how thou wilt like to be tost over my head, and be caught again: how thou wilt like to be parted from me, and pulled to me. Yet will I rather give life than take it away, as this barbarous quadruped has at last done by her prey. And after all was over between my girl and me, I reminded her of the incident to which ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... collect fossil crabs and fishes from the London Clay, together with the teeth of gigantic sharks. In the same bed have been found many ear- bones of whales, and the teeth of Mastodon arvernensis, Rhinoceros Schleiermacheri, Tapirus priscus, and Hipparion (a quadruped of the horse family), and antlers of a stag, Cervus anoceros. Organic remains also of the older chalk and Lias are met with, showing how great was the denudation of previous formations during the Pliocene period. As the older White Crag, presently to be mentioned, contains ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... was a mild-eyed, rather good-looking quadruped, tied by a halter to the elm at Miss Cordelia's door and contentedly munching a mouthful of geranium stalks. Cynthia Ann came through the hedge with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... wanted him baptized by the time-honoured title of 'Jacko'; but by a series of exploits in which the monkey distinguished himself at the expense of every member of the household in turn, it became evident that only one name would fit a quadruped of his peculiar disposition; and that was 'Tricky.' Tricky, therefore, he was called, and as Tricky ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond

... general taxidermist it is more often the work of a trained osteologist. Collectors in the field are often asked to preserve rough skeletons of desirable varieties and the skulls at least should be preserved with the skin of each quadruped taken ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... grave before then," said De Breze, in hollow accents. "It is twenty-four hours since I spent my last fifty sous on the purchase of a rat, and I burnt the legs of my bedstead for the fuel by which that quadruped was roasted." ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... same color does on those of bulls and turkeys; she advanced at the pas de charge, and her vociferation, like her amazement, was unbounded. A sound kick from the disgusted officer changed its character, and induced a retreat at the very moment when the mistress of the pugnacious quadruped entered ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... is actionable under the lex Aquilia, whose first chapter provides that if a slave of another man, or a quadruped from his flocks or herds, be unlawfully killed, the offender shall pay to the owner whatever was the highest value thereof within the year next ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... teaches that when Allah was engaged in the work of creation, he tempered the lightning with the south wind, and thus created the horse. Whimsical as is this idea, it yet suggests the swiftness, the fire, the mettlesome, generous, but plastic temperament of our favourite quadruped—the only one of our dumb servants in whose spirit we can rouse at will the utmost emulation, the keenest desire for the approval of its lord. Even the countenance of this animal denotes most of the qualities ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... beautiful story characteristic of old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with the thought—if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white Lady, white as the Walker on the waves—riding upon some mystical quadruped —and high above would have risen "tower above tower a massy structure high" the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the stirrup, and, relaxing the rein, still stood gazing at her over his horse's back. That placid quadruped, whose years had been spent in these pleasant by-ways and were too many to warrant an exhibition of coltish surprise, promptly lowered his head and resumed his occupation of grass-nibbling, making a little crunching noise which Miss Renwick might have heard, but apparently ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... unconscious, and does not differ from that of the wind in producing the same effect.] What is there, in the influence of brute life, that corresponds to this We have no reason to believe that, in that portion of the American continent which, though peopled by many tribes of quadruped and fowl, remained uninhabited by man or only thinly occupied by purely, savage tribes, any sensible geographical change had occurred within twenty centuries before the epoch of discovery and colonization, while, during the same period, man had changed ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... Argus, he bit away the backside of my breeches, and never would consent to any kind of recognition, in despite of all kinds of bones which I offered him. So, let Southey blush and Homer too, as far as I can decide upon quadruped memories. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... their tribes continually at war, and the custom of cannibalism prevailing: he had been on friendly terms with them, and presented them with pigs, fowls, and potatoes—no small boon in a land where there was no quadruped bigger than a rat, and very few esculent vegetables. From this time, whalers occasionally stopped to take in water, &c., and kept up a sort of intercourse with the Maori, sometimes amiable, and resulting in the natives taking voyages on board the vessels, but sometimes quarrelsome, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... had bets to a considerable amount depending upon the result of the day. The bang-up blades were pushing their prads along in gay style, accompanied by two friends, that is to say, a biped and a quadruped. The queer fancy lads, who had hired hacks from the livery-stable keepers, were kicking up a dust, and here and there rolling from their prancers in their native soil; while the neck or nothing boys, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... natural sagacity, and no school education. An interest in wild beasts had been developing in him for several years, and the odor of sawdust had become grateful to his nostrils. It was, however, only one kind of wild beast with which he was especially occupied. The quadruped of the noble aspect, stately gait, and tremendous roar—the lion—was the animal of Rounders's predilection and the object ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... log, many of which still lay scattered about the fields, and the other believed it some cringing animal of the woods. Twice Content raised his piece to tire, and as often did he let it fall, in reluctance to do injury to even a quadruped of whose character he was ignorant. It is more than probable that his less considerate, and but half-obedient companion would have decided the question soon after leaving he postern, had not the peculiar contents of his musket rendered ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... habits and tangled affections of the family; the two sexes, whether happy or unhappy, are glued together too tightly for us to get the blade of a legal penknife in between them. The man and the woman are one flesh—yes, even when they are not one spirit. Man is a quadruped. Upon this ancient and anarchic intimacy, types of government have little or no effect; it is happy or unhappy, by its own sexual wholesomeness and genial habit, under the republic of Switzerland or the despotism of Siam. Even a republic in Siam would not have ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... Albany Captain Glazier pursued his journey alone, and rode the same horse through the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, as far as Omaha. Thence he proceeded on whatever quadruped of the equine species he could obtain, which was capable of shaking the dust from its feet nimbly. That he was fortunate in this respect is proven by the fact that he rode from Omaha to San Francisco, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... me magical medicine That is true! Being of mystery,—grown in the water— He gave it to me! To the face of our Grandfather stretch out your hand; Holding a quadruped, ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... creature,' interposed Thomas, 'who is not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who is not, in a greater or less degree, an admirer of them. Now, I hold opinions in reference to these particular members of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised or savage, over the whole surface of the earth. Taking the horse as an animal ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... "The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured was subjected to the art of our distinguished man-tamer in presence of a numerous assembly. The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... the Doctor. "I'm the talking man here. Yes! gentlemen," addressing the attentive cowboys, "I can cure anything that touches the ground—biped, quadruped, or centipede—glanders, botts, greased hoofs, heaves, blind staggers, it makes no odds. My universal, self-acting, double compound elixir of equestrian ointment will perform a cure in each and every case. It is cheap! It is sure! It is patented! It is the best, and it is here. You may roll ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... "if I treat him in the same way, he won't bite, either;" and he walked straight up to him. The biped did not bark or growl, as the quadruped had done, but he looked wickedly ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... side of her head like so many ears and the jawbone was visible through a gash or scar on one side of her chin. The withered arms and hands, covered with earth by digging and scraping for the snakes and worms on which she fed, more resembled the limbs and claws of a quadruped. She spoke with a low nasal whine, prolonged at the end of each sentence; and this our guide imitated in speaking to her. The mosquitoes tormented her much, as appeared from her incessantly slapping her limbs and body. Mr. Brown's conversation ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... serves to some extent to mask the symptoms, and hence the nonprofessional man is tempted to apply the term "mange" to all alike, and it is only a step further to apply the same treatment to all these widely different disorders. Yet even in the hairy quadruped the distinction can be made in a way which can not be done in disorders of that counterpart and prolongation of the skin—the mucous membrane, which lines the air passages, the digestive organs, the urinary and generative apparatus. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... especially which I had climbed in the rain and fog of early morning. A reckless path goes across its face with a sharp pitch to the ocean. It was so slippery and the wind so tugged and pulled to throw me off, that although I endangered my dignity, I played the quadruped on the narrower parts. But once on top in the open blast of the storm and safe upon the level, I thumped with desire for a plot. In each inlet from the ocean I saw a pirate lugger—such is the pleasing word—with a keg of rum set up. Each cranny led to a cavern ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... sayin'," Mr. Day observed judiciously. "They're all—th' hull quadruped (Yes, Marty, that's what I meant, 'quartette,') of 'em—purty poor pertaters, I 'low. But four hundred dollars is a lot of money for any ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... vocal with the screams of wild geese, still pouring along in their hurried flight to the south, to escape the elemental foe behind, like the rapidly succeeding detachments of some retreating army, yet not a living creature, biped or quadruped, was anywhere to be heard or seen in the forest beneath. All seemed to have instinctively shrunk away and fled, as from the presence of some impending evil, to their dens and coverts, there to await, cowering and silent, the dreaded outbreak. Slowly, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... command a view of all the approaches of an enemy: the acuteness of their sight distinguishes the most distant danger; the delicate sensibility of their smell defeats the precautions of concealment; and, when alarmed, their rapid career seems more like the flight of birds than the movements of a quadruped. After many unsuccessful attempts, Captain Lewis at last, by winding around the ridges, approached a party of seven, which were on an eminence towards which the wind was unfortunately blowing. The only male of the party ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... of remarkable merit, and has, in some respects, served as a model to subsequent inquirers. This "Pygmie," Tyson tells us "was brought from Angola, in Africa; but was first taken a great deal higher up the country"; its hair "was of a coal-black colour and strait," and "when it went as a quadruped on all four, 'twas awkwardly; not placing the palm of the hand flat to the ground, but it walk'd upon its knuckles, as I observed it to do when weak and had not strength enough to support its body."—"From the top ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper. Everything has in fact another side to it, like the moon, the patroness of nonsense. Viewed from that other side, a bird is a blossom broken loose from its chain of stalk, a man a quadruped begging on its hind legs, a house a gigantesque hat to cover a man from the sun, a chair an apparatus of four wooden legs for ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... of dresser with crockery hanging from it, a small table and a little oil stove. The further part was curtained off but no sound came from it, so that it was presumably empty too. William wandered round to inspect the quadruped in front. It appeared to be a mule—a mule with a jaundiced view of life. It rolled a sad eye towards William, then with a deep sigh returned to its contemplation of the landscape. William gazed upon ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... learn. I imagine it sometimes. I fancy some jilted, jaundiced descendant of the sea-rovers, retiring to his castle, and endeavoring, by mating some ugly bloodhound with a wild wolf, to produce a quadruped as fierce and cowardly and treacherous as man or woman may be. He succeeded only partially, but ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... stuffed crocodile, a trained horse which he had just taken from an insolvent circus. I mounted the noble animal to go to the Bois, but at the Place de la Concorde he began to waltz around it, and I was obliged to get rid of this dancing quadruped at a considerable loss. So your contribution to La Guepe would have to be gratuitous, like those of all the rest. You will give me the credit of having saluted you first of all, my dear Violette, by the rare and glorious title of true poet. You will let me reserve the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... concomitant changes necessitated by such developments as that of the long neck of the giraffe. Darwin, however, on the contrary, holds that natural selection alone "would have sufficed for the production of this remarkable quadruped."[8] He is surprised at Mr. Spencer's view that natural selection can do so little in modifying the higher animals. Thus one of the chief arguments with which Mr. Spencer supports his theory is so poorly founded as to be rejected by a far greater authority ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... consideration and long debate, it was settled that I should, if possible, be mounted before starting, instead of trusting to chance beyond the border. This, of course, decided the selection of routes: no quadruped could ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... set out with our guns and game-bags, accompanied by the doctor's dog, Jumbo, who was almost as curious-looking as was his master—a perfect nondescript; but the doctor boasted that he had not his equal, was afraid of neither quadruped nor biped, and would face a jaguar, a bear, or a tamanoir (the large ant-eater), while he would stand to his point till he died of starvation, provided the bird chose to stay and be pointed at. We were ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... something about the pig which is my favourite annimal— The pig is a quadruped—Sometimes he is male in which case he is called a hog. Sometimes he is female in which case he is called a sow. Pigs were rings in their noses and are fond of apple-peal. Their young are called litter and are very untidy in their habbits. Pig's cheek ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... the two in front being sleeping-rooms for travellers, with a kitchen and other offices beyond, and at the back of all a stable, which occupies the whole width of the building. The consequence is, that all the animals, biped and quadruped, inhabiting the stable, must pass the traveller's door, who is regaled with the smell proceeding from the said stable, cook-rooms, &c.; all the insects they collect, and all the feathers from the fowls slaughtered ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... a stone, why they are simply not in it when compared with a dog's method of wearing down your resistance. After the fifth repetition of the above tactics the man rose, stretched, put his pipe in his pocket, and hurling a pebble at the delighted quadruped, followed ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... They thrust their snouts into the mud, and pick a grain of corn out of the rubbish. Nothing within their sphere do they leave unexamined, grunting all the time with infinite variety of expression. Their language is the most copious of that of any quadruped, and, indeed, there is something deeply and indefinably interesting in the swinish race. They appear the more a mystery the longer one gazes at them. It seems as if there were an important meaning to them, if one could but find it out. One interesting trait in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... names, which I found very tantalising, especially when, the New Zealand Robin was announced, and I could only see a fat little ball of a bird, with a yellowish-white breast. Animals there are none. No quadruped is indigenous to New Zealand, except a rat; but then, on the other hand, we are as free from snakes and all vermin as if St. Patrick himself had lived here. Our host has turned several pheasants into this forest, but they increase very slowly on account of the wekas. However, the happiness of this ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... cut the gums; and throughout its life this animal retains, in a similarly rudimentary condition, a number of organs which never could have been of use to any kind of creature save a terrestrial quadruped. The whole anatomy of its internal ear, for example, has reference to hearing in air—or, as Hunter long ago remarked, "is constructed upon the same principle as in the quadruped"; yet, as Owen says, "the outer opening and passage leading therefrom to the tympanum can ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... of the hippopotamus story, mentions that Bailly, when exploring the Swan River, "heard a bellowing much louder than that of an ox from among the reeds on the river side, which made him suspect that a large quadruped lay somewhere near him." It is remarkable that in the several accounts of the early Dutch visits to the northern coast no mention is made of alligators, although they are so common to all the inlets and rivers of that region, the name CROCODILS EYLANDEN on one ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... full bloom of youth and beauty. This horse, which she called JACK, had lost not merely the ornaments of mane and tail, but his head, one fore and one hind leg; so that nothing remained of the once noble quadruped but a barrel with the paint scratched off, rather insecurely perched upon a stand with wheels. But he was a faithful animal, and did his work to the last. The baby used to tie me on to his barrel, and Jack and I ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown

... the physical but in the spiritual constitution that the real basis of his character, his health, and longevity is to be found, for the primitive germ or protoplasm of man cannot be distinguished from that of a quadruped or bird. It is the invisible and incalculable life element that contains the potentiality or possibility of existence as a quadruped or a man, as a virtuous or vicious, and as a long lived or short lived, being. The life element of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... The second, which was equally fatal to both, appeared in Lorraine, in 889. The third broke out among the cavalry of the army of Arnoul, in its passage over the Alps, on its return to Italy. The fourth pervaded the whole of England in 1125, and was equally fatal to the biped and the quadruped. ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... servant lass, in her ardour of search, was found looking under the bed in an upstairs room—scarcely a likely grazing ground for any four-footed animal (unless perhaps it might be a night-mare). But whether she expected to find there the lost quadruped, or the man guilty of its abduction, tradition says not. At any rate, all that any of the searchers found—and that not till broad daylight—was the print of the good mare's hoofs in some soft ground over which she ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... a sleeping sea. Grass upon it; this so short, that the smallest quadruped could not cross over without being seen. Even the crawling reptile would not be ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... with reference to certain colors, we might guess with more chance of guessing right than we have at present. But I don't see exactly how we are going to submit him to examination on this point. If he were only a chemical compound, we could analyze him. If he were only a bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and dislikes. But being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of his own, which he may not choose to have interfered with, the problem becomes more complicated. I hear that a newspaper correspondent has ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... taken to the water, these lovely chicks, and swim like ducklings, to the dismay of those good old cocks and hens, their grandparents! And my love of them is tinged with awe, as was Leech's love of that mighty, beautiful, but most uncertain quadruped, the thoroughbred horse—for, like him, when they are good, they are very, very good, but when they are bad, they are horrid. We have changed other things as well: the swell has become the masher, and is a terrible dull dog; the poor little snob has blossomed into a blatant ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... example, the sprouting kan symbols on Tro. 29b, to which he refers. There can be no doubt that the symbol represents the grain of maize from which the sprouting leaves are rising (plate LXIV, 32). In one place a bird is pulling it up; at another place a small quadruped is attacking it; at another the Tlaloc is planting (or perhaps ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... beings themselves? The one process would seem to be not much more elaborate and intricate than the other. If the inherent qualities of matter have built up a solar system, they may have created, also, the first animalcule, the first fish, the first quadruped, and the first man. There has been a marked progress, in either case, from the chaotic, the rude, the imperfectly developed, up to the orderly, the complex, the matured forms. The first essays, the rude efforts, of nature have gradually been ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... and rested till noon on the 12th, when dinner was eaten, and after it, at 1 p.m., they started once more to find the foe. As you draw cover after cover to find a fox, so in the desert you try watering-places when you are seeking game of any kind, quadruped or biped. And thus information was obtained that Osman Digna had a camp where all his forces were massed at Tamai, a valley well supplied with the precious fluid, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... said Squeers. "A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped's Latin for beast, as every body that's gone through the grammar knows. As you're perfect in that," resumed Squeers, turning to the boy, "go and look after my horse, and rub him down well, or I'll rub you down. The rest ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... of the windows. The road had more traffic than on week-days, for it was the recreation of a certain class of Dunfieldians to drive out in parties to the Heath, either hiring a vehicle or using their own trade-carts. It would have been a consolation to observe that in the latter case the quadruped employed benefited by its owner's regard for his own interests; possibly an acute spectator might have discerned gradations of inhumanity. To the casual eye there showed but a succession of over-laden ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... Avenue, Newyork, between 1949 and 1962 C.E. I had created rapport with several of the aboriginals, who addressed me as Bessie, and presumed to approve the manner in which I heated specimens of minced ruminant quadruped flesh (deceased to be sure). It was ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl

... single member of a group of mutually dependent industries can have this distinction. There is no question that the farmer's best friend is the hog. He will do more for him and ask less of him than any other animal. All he asks is to be born. That is enough for this non-ruminant quadruped, who can find his living in the earth, the roadside ditch, or the forest, and who, out of a supply of grass, roots, or mast, can furnish ham and bacon to the king's taste and the poor man's maintenance. The half-wild razorback, with never a clutch of corn to his back, gives ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... best acquainted. In the Historia Animalium he takes man as a standard, and describes his external and internal parts in detail, then considers viviparous quadrupeds and compares them with man. "Whatever parts a man has before, a quadruped has beneath; those that are behind in man form the quadruped's back" (Cresswell, loc. cit., p. 26). Apes, monkeys, and Cynocephali combine the characteristics of man and quadrupeds. He notices that all viviparous quadrupeds have hair. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... on his body, and by his apparent debility, that he would soon sink under his afflictions. Mr. Walcott told me that it was with the greatest difficulty he could keep a few fowls, on account of the smaller vampire; and that the larger kind were killing his poor ass by inches. It was the only quadruped he had brought up with him into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... feet. The branches and trunk are covered with strong curved spines, set in pairs, from which it receives the name of the bull's-horn thorn, they having a very strong resemblance to the horns of that quadruped. These thorns are hollow, and are tenanted by ants, that make a small hole for their entrance and exit near one end of the thorn, and also burrow through the partition that separates the two horns; so that the one entrance serves ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... experience for me, who had written "The Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds," thus to see, at first hand, the life which I had only been able to speculate on before. We captured many rare specimens, and shot a fine sea-otter, the only known quadruped that inhabits the rocky depths of the Pacific. It was five feet long, and its skin ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... I would not do that." The pony was now the only quadruped kept for the countess's own behoof; and the young earl's hunter was the only other horse in the Desmond Court stables. "I wouldn't do that, mamma; Mary and Emmeline will not mind ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... stands on her hands and feet like a quadruped, and her lover mounts her like a bull, it is called the "congress of a cow." At this time everything that is ordinarily done on the bosom should be done on ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... village, and to hang the hampers, as usual, from the pommel. In one of these she placed the steel casket, in the other a pistol, and filled them both with all sorts of provisions. Thus disguised, she mounted the quadruped, and set out alone on her ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... more easily avoided than is usually supposed. The way the Spanish bull-fighters play with the bull, is well known: any man can avoid a mere headlong charge. Even the speed of a racer, which is undeniably far greater than any wild quadruped, does not exceed 30 miles an hour or four times the speed of a man. The speed of an ordinary horse is not more than 24 miles an hour: now even the fastest wild beast is unable to catch an ordinary horse, except by crawling ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... themselves exert their force in a direct line with the plane of their motion, but at an angle to it, the same principle would, if applied to a steamship, increase its speed. But let us look at the subject from another standpoint. The quadruped has to support the weight of his body, and propel himself forward, with the same force. If the force be applied perpendicularly, the body is elevated, but not moved forward. If the force is applied horizontally, the body moves forward, but soon falls to the ground, because ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... that it served as a receptacle for some valuable objects. It is painted inside with a wall of quadrangular pieces of marble of various colors, terminated at top with a cornice. In each of the squares is a fish, bird, or quadruped. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... were necessary for the decomposition of water, and the conversion of it into saccharine matter, which would have been not only cumberous but totally incompatible with the locomotion of animal bodies. For how could a man or quadruped have carried on his head or back a forest of leaves, or have had long branching lacteal or absorbent vessels terminating in the earth? Animals therefore subsist on vegetables; that is, they take the matter so far prepared, and have organs to prepare it further for the purposes ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... especially the sea-otter, Enhydra lutris, which is almost exclusively aquatic, but these are all decidedly of the quadrupedal type, whereas in the amphibia we see the approach to the fish form necessary for their mode of life. The skeleton reveals the ordinary characteristics of the quadruped with somewhat distorted limbs. The bones of the forelimbs are very powerful and short, a broad scapula, short humerus and the ulna and radius are stout, parallel to each other, and the latter much broader at the base; often in old animals the two are ankylosed at the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... miles from Rochester—so the evidence of distance does not help us. Where, too, did Mr. Pickwick drop his whip? The Pickwickian enthusiast can ascertain this—'an he will—by a little calculation. After leaving "The Bull," the tall quadruped exercised his "manoeuvre" of darting to the side of the road, rushing forward for some minutes—twenty times—which would cover about an hour. In the etching, there is a picture of the spot—a hedge-lined ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... have just referred consisted of three individuals, with their servants, biped and quadruped, from whom their masters derived the requisite assistance during their useful and arduous exploits—the results being conspicuous in the death of some dozen or two of silly grouse or red game, with which these hills are tolerably well supplied during the season. But ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... thinking how little was the difference between man and beast. It was only in its objective. The manner was much the same. Yes, and the very means employed created in him an impression favorable to the hapless quadruped. Surely their battle for existence was more ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... arrange the calves, and pack them carefully in straw. Here is a promising young calf, not sold, whom Madame Doche unbinds. Pardon me, Madame Doche, but I fear this mode of tying the four legs of a quadruped together, though strictly a la mode, is not quite right. You observe, Madame Doche, that the cord leaves deep indentations in the skin, and that the animal is so cramped at first as not to know, or even remotely ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... to work his wings, but he stretched them out to their full extent, and then dropped quietly to the ground. When he touched the earth, his wings fell off, and he looked like an ordinary quadruped. ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... cannot rise from the earth, as serpents, or those whose feet are too short to lift them far from the ground, as the lizard and tortoise. But since certain animals, as deer and goats, seem to fall under none of these classes, the word "quadrupeds" is added. Or perhaps the word "quadruped" is used first as being the genus, to which the others are added as species, for even some reptiles, such as lizards and tortoises, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... his companion. "Thick-headed, muddy-brained brute; more like a quadruped than a man! The Kaffirs are gentlemen to some of these up-country farmers, and yet they are ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... it to-morrow morning," replied Phoebicius with perfect indifference, but with an evil smile on his flaccid lips. "So many two-legged lovers make themselves free to my house, that I do not see why I should share your affections with a quadruped into the bargain. How came this sheepskin here?" Sirona vouchsafed no answer to this last question, but she exclaimed in great excitement, "By God—by your God—by the mighty Rock, and by all the gods! if ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... is gone intirely!" The quadruped referred to was tossed to a height of about thirty feet, and alighted senseless upon the ice. The bear seized him with her teeth and tossed him with an incredibly slight effort. The other dogs, nothing ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!)—one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... wanderer, when he perceived his mistake. It should be mentioned that the above individual had, on nearly the precise spot, on the previous night, assisted one of his fellow creatures in the same manner as that in which he was about to relieve the quadruped. The EDITOR of the MIRROR will be happy to substantiate this fact to such as may be disposed to doubt its authenticity:—"if it be madness, there's method ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various

... accommodated with a long bench. Here I often sat with my host, who like Parson Adams always wore the cassock; but he did not read AEschylus. Mr. Vandyke was at least sixty; yet if a colt, a pig, or any other quadruped entered his paddock, he sprang from his seat with more than youthful agility, and vociferously chased the intruder from his domain. I could not but smile to behold the parson running after a pig and mingling his cries ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... swathings. I looked narrowly at these divinities, but could detect no difference betwixt the god-cat of Egypt and the cats of our day. Were it possible to re-animate one of them, and make it free of our streets, I fear the god would be mistaken for an ordinary quadruped of its own kind, pelted and worried by mischievous boys and dogs, as other cats are. I do not know that a modern priest of Turin has any very good ground for taunting an old Egyptian priest with his cat-worship. If it is impossible to tell the difference betwixt a cat which is simply a cat, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... favorite companion and constant friend of grave philosophers and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their "lives and safeties" were tendered more dearly than those of any other animal, whether biped or quadruped. "He who has voluntarily killed a consecrated animal," says this writer, "is punished with death; but if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is impossible for him to escape death: ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... are, however, of a nature altogether different from the apparently analogous organs which the bird uses in flight. The wings of the bird are merely altered fore-legs. Lift up the front extremities of a quadruped, keep them asunder at their origins by bony props, fit them with freer motions and stronger muscles, and cover them with feathers, and they become wings in every essential particular. In the insect, however, the case is altogether different. The wings are not altered ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various

... active in the generation of hope. He had almost forgotten what he came there for; and had it not been that he had promised Shargar, he would have crept back to his bed and left him to bear his hunger as best he could. But now, first his right hand, then his left knee, like any other quadruped, he crawled to the door, rose only to his knees to open it, took almost a minute to the operation, then dropped and crawled again, till he had passed out, turned, and drawn the door to, leaving it slightly ajar. Then it struck him awfully that the same terrible passage must be gone ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... held sacred, are at least as much esteemed by them as their own kindred. I have known an instance of a quadruped of the cynic sect being appointed successor to a biped chief, and discharging the duties of his office with the utmost gravity and decorum; appearing at the feast given in honour of his deceased predecessor, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... austere a realist. From one angle the figure might be taken for a Bengal tiger, and from another for a zebra—a good proof of the suggestiveness of the artist's method. But, whether it be reptile or quadruped, the spirit of repletion broods over the canvas with irresistible force. Mr. Thaddeus Tumulty sends some admirable drawings in pise de terre, one of which, called "The Pragmatist at Play," is a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various

... enthusiastic Nimrod went at everything, and feared nothing! Well was it for him that he had arranged to follow Tom Stoutheart, else assuredly he would have run Slapover at fences which would have taxed the temerity even of that quadruped, and insured his destruction. Tom, seeing his condition, considerately kept him out of danger, and yet, being thoroughly acquainted with the country, managed to keep him well up ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... beche de mer were observed in the crevices of the rocks but were neither large nor plentiful. Mr. Cunningham saw two land snakes, one of which was about four feet in length; the colour of its back was black and the belly yellow; the only quadruped seen was a small opossum. A seal of the hair species, like those of Rottnest Island, was seen on the rocks, probably of the same description that Dampier found in the maw of the shark;* and also what was found by the French on Faure Island, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... a host of memories, to shake them off, 'no more of the quadruped man! You tempt him—may I tell you that? Why, now, this moment, at the snap of my fingers, what is to hinder our taking the short cut to happiness, centaur and nymph? One leap and a gallop, and we should be into the morning, leaving night ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... discovered, which their situation had kept isolated from the rest of the world, the class of quadrupeds which they contained has been found extremely different from any that had existed elsewhere. Thus, when the Spaniards first penetrated into South America, they did not find a single species of quadruped the same as any of Europe, ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton

... am a Cave-dweller, a contemporary of Mastodons and Mammoths; I am pleistocene and neolithic, and full of the lusts and terrors of the great pre-glacial forests. But that's nothing; I am millions of years older; I am an arboreal Ape, an aged Baboon, with all its instincts; I am a pre-simian quadruped, I have great claws, eyes that see in the dark, and a long ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... help him as far as his bungalow. There seemed nothing strange to either of us that he should requisition my services or that I should cheerfully obey. I helped him bandage his ankle, and we set out, I his crutch, the two of us making up a sort of limping quadruped, along the winding lane toward the cliffs ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... nothing but an inarticulate neighing, its handiness mere hoofiness, the fingers all constricted, tied together, the finger-nails coagulated into a mere hoof, shod with iron. The more significant, thinks he, are those eye-flashings of the generous noble quadruped; those prancings, curvings of the neck clothed ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... enjoined upon every living creature able to mount a horse, a mule, or any quadruped whatever, to visit Gavarnie; in default of other beasts, he should, putting aside all shame, bestride an ass. Ladies and convalescents ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... meandered over the ground much like one. Its coat more resembled coarse bristles than hair, and with respect to size, I have seen many a Westphalian hog quite as tall. I was not altogether satisfied with the idea of exhibiting myself on the back of this most extraordinary quadruped, and looked wistfully on the respectable animal on which my guide had thought proper to place himself; he interpreted my glances, and gave me to understand that as he was destined to carry the baggage, he was entitled to the best horse; a plea too well grounded on reason for me to make any objection ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... wind-slash. This particular example differed only in being a trifle more rickety and mud-bespattered than any I had seen; and the mare had evidently been foaled to draw it—a fur-coated, moth-eaten, wisp-tailed beast, tied to the shafts with clothes-lines and scraps of deerhide—a quadruped that only an earthquake could have shaken into nervousness. And yet Jim backed her into position as carefully as if she had felt her harness for the first time, handing me the reins until he strapped my belongings to the hind axle, calling "Whoa, Bess!" every time ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... momentary glimpse of a tawny body as it rose in the air, and, turning a complete somersault, landed on the ground all in a heap. One of the dogs, in his eagerness to do something grand, had approached a little too close to the mule's heels—an impertinence which that sagacious quadruped promptly resented by kicking out with both hind feet and knocking his would-be assailant into a cocked hat. The dog was not killed, but he was terribly demoralized, and his howls of anguish did much to dampen the ardor ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon

... across it for the purpose, when some youths, recollecting that the Greek word melon signified both sheep and an apple, stuck wooden pegs into the fruit to represent legs, and brought this vegetable quadruped as a substitute for the usual offering. After this date, the apple was considered as especially ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... the first specimen of the new animal, called wombat. This little bear-like quadruped is known in New South Wales, and is called by the natives womat, wombat, or womback, according to the different dialects—or perhaps to the different rendering of the wood-rangers who brought the information. It does not ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... hands, and willed not that our bodies should be tortured {by} being shut up within the entrails of the distended parent, and brought us forth from our dwelling into the vacant air. Brought to light, the infant lies without {any} strength; soon, {like} a quadruped, it uses its limbs after the manner of the brutes; and by degrees it stands upright, shaking, and with knees still unsteady, the sinews being supported by some assistance. Then he becomes strong and swift, and passes over the hours of youth; and the years of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... is in great demand and is not only sought by the human biped, but is also in favor with the equine quadruped. Every morning after the stable doors are thrown open and the horses turned loose they invariably, of their own accord, proceed to the lake, wade out into shallow water and take a bath. They lie down and splash the water about like a lot of ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... reasonably be drawn from this strange fact is that we are here dealing with a fossilized structure, a functionless survival. It leads irresistibly to the inference that man has descended from a quadruped ancestor, and that when his body took the upright position the structure of the veins, not being seriously detrimental, remained unchanged. Those which had been vertical became horizontal, and retained their now useless valves; ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... agriculture is to feed our beasts. Approximately nine tenths of the proceeds of American agriculture goes to nourish the quadruped, and man eats the remaining one tenth; therefore, if we want to get clear of the possibility of a crop being overproduced, let us grow something the beast can eat. To say that we will never overproduce food crops for man is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various

... plain which extended to the edge of the laurel thicket a quarter of a mile distant. Jonathan could not see the wolves, but he heard distinctly their peculiar, broken howls. They were in pursuit of something, whether quadruped or man he could not decide. Another moment and he was no longer in doubt, for a deer dashed out of the thicket. Jonathan saw that it was a buck and that he was well nigh exhausted; his head swung low from side to side; he sank ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... about taking a journey into the country. He was rather of a nervous tendency, having met with two or three accidents in travelling. Before getting into the hired conveyance he asked the driver, "Can you, my friend, conduct this quadruped along the highway without destroying the equilibrium of the vehicle?" The journey having been made without the "equilibrium of the vehicle" being destroyed, when he reached the inn where the horse was to lodge for the night, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... pours its refreshing waters. Among the remembrances of former days, is the effigy of a guardian 'lion,' (which, under the name of a 'bear,' has been noted by an author whom we have quoted;) the melancholy quadruped is now considerably "used up," and excites a laugh at the burlesque on the monarch of the forest, which his attenuated figure and shrivelled hide present. Plas-Newydd is unquestionably a delightful residence; and its ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... of fossil quadruped be enlightening, it has its own special difficulties. One great difficulty arises from the fact that it is very rare to find a fossil skeleton approaching to a ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... hold him while I wipe his feet. I can't have any dirty quadruped like that, tracking up ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... months after from any damage of tods; for tods will eat no flesh that gusts of their own kind." The last wolf killed in Scotland is said to have fallen by the hand of Sir Ewen Cameron, about 1680; and singular to say, the skin of this venerable quadruped may yet be in existence: in a catalogue of Mr. Donnovan's sale of the London Museum, in April, 1818, there occurs the following item, "Lot 832. Wolf, a noble animal in a large glass case. The last wolf killed in Scotland, by Sir E. Cameron." It would be interesting ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... then, Minny?" she said, stooping in answer to some whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy head against her pink cheek. "Did you think I was going without you? Come, then, let ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... by Champollion, is, from force of custom, still adhered to, in nearly all works on Egyptology. But we know from ancient evidence that the cucupha was a bird, perhaps a hoopoe; the sceptre of the gods, moreover, is really surmounted by the head of a quadruped having a pointed snout and long retreating ears, and belonging to the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... The lemming, or leming. A rodent quadruped. "It is very prolific, and vast hordes periodically migrate down to the sea, destroying much vegetation in ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... ball must answer before he finishes counting ten. If "earth" was called he must name some quadruped found therein; if "water," some fish must be named, or "air," the name of some bird; but if "fire" was called ...
— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann

... from end to end, not mixing or intermingling. Fish, birds, quadrupeds—some had died out indeed, but no creature mentioned in the earliest records showed the smallest sign of approximating or drawing near to any other creature; no bird had lost its wings or gained its hands; no quadruped had deserted instinct for reason. Bees were a case in point. They were insects of a marvellous wisdom. They had a community, a government, almost laws. They knew their own business, and followed it with intense enthusiasm. Yet in all the centuries during ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the South African Republic with an eagle, bird of prey beloved of conquerers. It is true that in the left quarter of their coat of arms is a small lion lying down with bristling mane. It is probably the lady-friend of this ferocious quadruped which Dr. Kuyper has chosen to symbolise ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... to behold, and to many a cow-man it would have been information. The jack rabbit, next to the antelope, is the speediest quadruped on the plains. The cowboy does not try to follow the jack rabbit, but the blooded racer did. In a quarter of a mile the horse was nearly on him. He dodged like chain lightning—dodged as his life had taught him to dodge before the coyote and the hawk. The horse slowed up; the rabbit crossed ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... unfortunately for him, that he did so with an enemy at hand. With his own horse he was sufficiently familiar to escape ordinary accidents. It will be seen that he incurred some risks with the more spirited quadruped. His patrol had brought in a negro, whom he placed under guard. He had in his command a Captain Clarke, who, knowing the negro, set him free during the night. "Reader," says our colonel, with a serenity ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... the noble quadruped, Whom Orientals oft presume to scorn, Who glorifies the food that he is fed, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... hands hung idly by his sides; while the bear, recovering from his surprise, rose on his hind legs and walked up to him—a sure sign that he was quite undaunted, and had made up his mind to give battle. As for La Roche, the instant he cast his eyes on the ferocious-looking quadruped, he uttered a frightful yell, bounded towards a neighbouring tree, and ceased not to ascend until its topmost branches were bending beneath his weight. Meanwhile the bear walked up to Bryan, but not meeting with the anticipated grapple ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... reprover, may seem to people blessed with a sense of humour. But it is a quality, the defects of which have been painfully obvious to me all my life; and I try to keep my Pegasus—at best, a poor Shetland variety of that species of quadruped—at a respectable jog-trot, by loading him heavily with bales of reading. Those who took the trouble to study my paper in good faith and not for mere controversial purposes, have a right to know, that something more than a hasty glimpse of two or three passages ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... precincts into those of his landlord. But the open casket contained matter, or rather metal, so attractive to old Trapbois, that he remained fixed, like a setting-dog at a dead point, his nose advanced, and one hand expanded like the lifted forepaw, by which that sagacious quadruped sometimes indicates that it is a hare which he has in the wind. Nigel was about to break the charm which had thus arrested old Trapbois, by shutting the lid of the casket, when his attention was withdrawn from him by the question of the messenger, who, holding out the letter, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... out in the "campo." He rarely visited the capital, except on matters of business. For a business he had; this of somewhat unusual character. It consisted chiefly in the produce of his gun and insect-net. Many a rare specimen of bird and quadruped, butterfly and beetle, captured and preserved by Ludwig Halberger, at this day adorns the public museums of Prussia and other European countries. But for the dispatch and shipment of these he would never have cared to show himself in the streets of Assuncion; ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... Guinevere had been a fish, then a helpless biped, and now suddenly, somewhere between my salad and coffee, she became an aquatic quadruped. Strangest of all, her hands were mobile, her feet useless; and when the dance was at an end, and she sank slowly to the bottom, she came to rest on the very tips of her two longest fingers; her legs and toes still drifting ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... Ceases are fed under busha's own eye on all estates—for this excellent and most cogent reason, that otherwise the maize or guinea—com, belonging of right to poor mulo, would generally go towards improving the condition, not of the quadruped, but of the biped quashiet who had charge of him—and there he lay in a ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... yet met our gaze, when at that moment I saw the Captain shoulder his gun quickly, and follow a moving object into the shrubs. He fired; I heard a slight hissing, and a creature fell stunned at some distance from us. It was a magnificent sea-otter, an enhydrus, the only exclusively marine quadruped. This otter was five feet long, and must have been very valuable. Its skin, chestnut-brown above and silvery underneath, would have made one of those beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets: the fineness and the lustre of its coat would ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... by chance encounters with enemies who were mounted upon them. Although the naturalist of to-day perceives the impossibility of there ever having been on this earth a form uniting the trunk and fore-limbs of a quadruped to the upper part of a man's body, such scientific conceptions are a part of our modern, recently acquired store of knowledge. To the Greeks of the myth-making age the creature, half man, half horse, added but one ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... vices of the age He manfully did battle; His chickens were a biped breed, And quadruped ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... stunt; something like taking my eyes out, playing marbles with them, and getting them sewed back again all in three minutes and a half. The result to the patient is of course purely a minor consideration, but it may interest you to know that I can tell a biped from a quadruped, and may in time, by the aid of powerful glasses, ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice

... partridge."—H. C.] The hind-toe is absent, the toes are unseparated, recognisable only by the broad flat nails, and fitted below with a callous couch, whilst the whole foot is covered with short dense feathers like hair, and is more like a quadruped's paw ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... a further sourge of danger. In few parts (if any) of the body is a blow more fatal than over what is popularly called the "pit of the stomach." In the quadruped this part is little exposed either to accidental or intentional injuries. In man it is quite open to both. A blow, a kick, a fall among stones, etc., may thus ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various

... is art, truth, or sense to fuse a cow, a horse, and a critic into one undistinguishable quadruped, with six legs, then it will be art to melt an ash, an elm, and a lime, things that differ more than quadrupeds, into what you call abstract trees, that any man who has seen a tree, as well as looked at one, would call ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... in the forests and mountains of Grenada. The agouti, the armadillo, and the opossum, are sometimes, though rarely, seen. The only quadruped I ever met with in my rambles was an opossum, which I shot as it was climbing a tree. Of reptiles there are none in the mountains. There are several kinds of snakes in the island, some of which have never been described by naturalists. The species which is most common is ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... and association; and also with some acquired habits or propensities peculiar to the parent: the former of these are in common with other animals; the latter seem to distinguish or produce the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of feature or form to the parent. It is difficult to be conceived, that a living entity can be separated or produced from the blood by the action of a gland; and which shall afterwards become an animal similar to that in whose vessels it is formed; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

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

... something between a rat and a rabbit, and supposed by Mr Buffon to be the same with the aperea of Brazil, was the largest viviparous quadruped in St. Domingo. This species seems never to have been very numerous; and the dogs and cats of the Spaniards are said to have long ago almost entirely extirpated it, as well as some other tribes of a still smaller size. These, however, together ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith



Words linked to "Quadruped" :   biped, loin, rump, hind leg, croup, forefoot, animal leg, hindquarters, tetrapod, haunch, hindfoot, quadrupedal, flank, lumbus, posteriority, four-footed, foreleg



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