United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Bree describes the Scarabaeus horticola as "exceedingly destructive in gardens. In the same garden my attention was also called to the ravages committed by this depredator on the apples, by gnawing holes in the young fruit; which consequently dies and falls of, or at least becomes much blemished.

Doggedly and wrathfully the boys toiled all day. At tea they told their mother what had occurred. Mrs. Carter was furious. But when Will declared their intention of watching that night for the depredator, her anger vanished in fear. At first she forbid positively all thought of such a thing. Will declared that he must do it it simply had to be done. Thereupon she said she would forbid Ted going.

True, the depredator was endowed with powers of eloquence worthy of the great masters whose sermons he had the good taste to prefer to his own delivering their breathing thoughts and burning words, with a deep-toned solemnity, and a splendor of elocution, which thrilled the bosoms, and alternately charmed the minds, and melted the hearts, of his devotional hearers.

If the source of it was base, it was too much to hope that a little removal, a little dilution, would ennoble it. She had lived there all her life the associate of thieves and rascals; her way of looking on men and property must naturally be that of the depredator, the pillager, and thief. "And yet," thought he, thumb in the pocket of his hairy vest where the little handkerchief lay, "and yet "

It is a great depredator in gardens, which it has been known to plunder of carrots, turnips, and maize the stalks of which it cuts close down to the ground. It is sought-for on account of its fur, which is very valuable. The traps are set close to a tree, and when one of the creatures is caught, its companions will instantly attack it and tear it to pieces.

It was not, strictly speaking, as a professed depredator that Rob Roy now conducted his operations, but as a sort of contractor for the police; in Scottish phrase, a lifter of black-mail. The nature of this contract has been described in the Novel of Waverley, and in the notes on that work. Mr. Grahame of Gartmore's description of the character may be here transcribed:

And young Lord Cressett, her husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him on the grounds of Cressett: 'like vermin, he said, and it was considered that he had the right, and no jury would have convicted him.

The worst depredator in this direction I know of is the fish crow, and I warn him to keep off my premises, and charge every gunner to spare him not. He is a small sneak-thief, and will rob the nest of every robin, wood thrush, and oriole he can come at. I believe he fishes only when he is unable to find birds' eggs or young birds.

Frightened by his outcry, and unable to retreat, the shadowy depredator had fallen back on his slinking haunches with a snarl, and bared teeth that glittered in the moonlight. In an instant the expression of terror on the old man's ashen face turned into a fixed look of insane exaltation. His white lips moved; he advanced a step further, and held out both hands towards the crouching animal. "So!

"By the way," said I; "did n't you blame Thompson and Cunningham for duffing in your horse-paddock, ten or twelve months ago?" "I didn't make any song about it," replied the boundary rider half-resentfully. "Of course not. Still you owe them an apology which I shall be happy to convey, if you wish it. Alf Morris was the depredator.