United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Faithful to her unhatched young as Gavia was, it is not likely that she alone kept them warm for nearly thirty days and nights; for Father Loon remained close at hand, and would he not help her with this task? Gavia, sitting on her nest, did not look like herself of the early winter months when she had played among the ocean waves.
He was once cast upon an island, where he abode a long while and returning thence to his native country, brought with him the quill of the wing-feather of a young roe, whilst yet unhatched and in the egg; and this quill was big enough to hold a skinful of water, for it is said that the length of the young roe's wing, when it comes forth of the egg, is a thousand fathoms.
At no time, however, is it anywhere equal to that of the hatched chicks, for the physiological function to be maintained by the unhatched chicks requires little energy and little oxidation. Upon the subject of ventilation in general, a great misunderstanding exists.
Like Sindbad in the valley of precious stones, he wants to fill his pockets with diamonds, but, lo! there is a great ruby like a setting sun in its glory, and a sapphire that, like Bryant's blue gentian, seems to have dropped from the cerulean walls of heaven, and a nest of pearls that look as if they might be unhatched angel's eggs, and so he hardly knows what to seize, and tries for too many, and comes out of the enchanted valley with more gems than he can carry, and those that he lets fall by the wayside we call his poems.
If the season were backward, at the time appointed for whitewashing or soap-making, so much the worse for the season; if the unhatched goslings were slain by thunder, she laid the blame on the thunder.
And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer me thus courteously to take of you my leave.
The felonious cuckoo drops her foundlings unawares in another bird's nest: the ostrich trusts her unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning desert sand: and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious maternal instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and fermenting leaves and rubbish, in which they deposit their eggs to be artificially incubated, as it were, by the slow heat generated in the process of putrefaction.
I hope those overhanging bushes won't catch fire and drop coals on her; for she's a silly thing, she might not want to dart out in deep water and lose her unhatched family." Adam smiled into his wife's eyes. He was quite singed, but did not know it. "Ay, burn," he spoke out exultantly, apostrophizing the island. "Burn up our first home and all. It's worth it.
If she found it hard to sit there day after day, she made no fuss about it; and probably she really wanted to do that more than anything else just then, since the quiet patience of the most active birds is natural to them when they are brooding their unhatched babies.
I dare say it seems to you, reader, that we have travelled, in our story, over a long space of time, because we have talked so much and introduced so many personages and reflections; but, in fact, it is only Wednesday week since James sailed, and the eggs which were brooded when he went are still unhatched in the nest, and the apple-tree has changed only in having now a majority of white blossoms over the pink buds.
Word Of The Day