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Sometimes, too, the cliffs are not cleft, but the stream rushes from their summit, a white waterfall veiling the mossy rocks. Then there are the birds. In mid-air is to be seen the little fan-tail, aptly named, zig-zagging to and fro. The dark blue tui, called parson bird, from certain throat-feathers like white bands, will sing with a note that out-rivals any blackbird.
However, he got out of the carriage, and giving himself a shake, and a sort of twist, which caused the lappets of his coat to expand, like the fan-tail of a pigeon, he asked, if the place was Dymock's Moor, and if the old man he saw before him, was one called Shanty of the Moor?
It is a trifle cold when we get out at first in the morning, but as we walk briskly down to the steamer we feel warmed up. The wharf shows a busy scene; there are numbers of blue-clad Chinamen rushing backwards and forwards loading boxes on to our little steamer, which floats by the wharf, and what a comic steamer she is! She is like nothing so much as a great fan-tail pigeon sitting on the water!
"Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?" "Does he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?" said the Gay-Header deliberately. "And has he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for a parmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Ahab?"
They have taken the chance variations in form and habit and endeavored to extend these sports of nature by a careful system of mating those in which the singular features were most evident. Thus the fan-tail breed has been developed until the creatures display their unornamental tail feathers with all the dignity with which a peacock shows his marvellous decorations.
The personage who thus alarmed the lovers was a little old man, hunchbacked, nearly bald, savage in expression, and wearing a long and discolored white beard cut in a fan-tail. The cross of Saint-Michel glittered on his breast; his coarse, strong hands, covered with gray hairs, which had been clasped, had now dropped slightly apart in the slumber to which he had imprudently yielded.
Its body, they said, was of green velvet with a satin-white throat; it had a long beak at least an inch long a fan-tail of many feathers, two long plumes from its head, "the littlest feet you ever have seen," and large lustrous eyes that seemed filled with human intelligence. "It jest looked right at you, and seemed like a fairy looking at you." The wonder grew.
We got some money and two pair of fan-tail pigeons in exchange for them. When quite small they were the most vicious, untamable little varmints imaginable, and as long as we had them our hands were badly scratched by them. On the bottom land, each year, we had a large and well assorted vegetable garden. It produced much more than we could possibly use.
Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fan-tail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport?"
Better luck he had with a pair of fan-tail pigeons, his most precious treasure, which Viggo rather loftily consented to accept, for, like most genteel boys in the valley, he was an ardent pigeon-fancier, and had long vainly importuned his father to procure him some of the rarer breeds.
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