The Cambridge Natural History, Volume 9Sidney Frederic Harmer, Sir Arthur Everett Shipley Macmillan and Company, limited, 1899 - Zoology |
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Common terms and phrases
abdomen Argentina Asia Australia band bars beak bill and feet birds black and white blackish blotches blue bluish Bolivia Brazil breast breeds Britain brown brownish buff cheeks chestnut chiefly China colour commonly crest crimson crown dark dusky elongated Ethiopian Region Europe extends Family feathers female flight food consists fore-neck forms frequently furcula genus grass green greenish grey greyish ground habits hallux head and neck holes India inhabits insects Islands latter lower surface Madagascar male mandible markings maxilla median metatarsus Miocene molluscs mottled naked nape NEORNITHES nest North America occasionally occurs orange orbits Patagonia patch Peru plumage primaries purple purplish ranging rectrices reddish remiges resemble rufous rump scutellated secondaries sexes shews short similar South Africa species spots sternum streaks Sub-fam Sub-families tail-coverts throat toes trees twigs upper usually utter varied West Africa white eggs whitish wing-coverts wings and tail winter yellow yellowish young Zealand
Popular passages
Page 64 - ... into the water. Here he is at home again, breasting the waves like a cork. Presently he stretches out his neck, and with great exertion of his wings runs along the top of the water for seventy or eighty yards, until, at last, having got sufficient impetus, he tucks up his legs, and is once more fairly launched in the air.
Page 596 - The Cambridge Natural History. Edited by SF HARMER, MA, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, Superintendent of the University Museum of Zoology; and AE SHIPLEY, MA, Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, University Lecturer on the Morphology of Invertebrates.
Page 418 - I never saw any other bird, where the force of its wings appeared (as in a butterfly) so powerful in proportion to the weight of its body. When hovering by a flower, its tail is constantly expanded and shut like a fan, the body being kept in a nearly vertical position. This action appears to steady...
Page 63 - With outstretched, motionless wings he sails over the surface of the sea, now rising high in the air, now with a bold sweep, and wings inclined at an angle with the horizon, descending until the tip of the lower one all but touches the crests of the waves as he skims over them. Suddenly he sees something floating on the water and prepares to alight; but how changed he now is from the noble bird but a moment before all grace and symmetry. He raises his wings, his head goes back, and his back goes...
Page 266 - The wings are moderate, broad, and rounded, the tail rather long and broad. The head is black with a white stripe over and another under each eye, the chin and throat being also white. The rest of the plumage is not to be described in a limited space otherwise than generally, being variegated with black, brown, chestnut, bay, buff, grey and white — so mottled, speckled and belted either in wave like or zigzag forms as somewhat to resemble certain moths.
Page 417 - One is admiring some brilliant and beautiful flower, when between the blossom and one's eye suddenly appears a small dark object, suspended as it were between four short black threads meeting each other in a cross. For an instant it shows in front of the flower ; again another instant, and emitting a momentary flash of emerald and sapphire light, it is vanishing, lessening in the distance, as it shoots away, to a speck that the eye cannot take note of.
Page 599 - Citizen Bird" is in every way a remarkable book. It is the story of the BirdPeople told for the House-People, especially the young House-People, being dedicated " To all Boys and Girls who Love Birds and Wish to Protect Them.
Page v - Classification, he has essayed the difficult and apparently unattempted task of including in some six hundred pages a short description of the majority of the forms in many of the Families, and of the most typical or important of the innumerable species included in the large Passerine Order.
Page 596 - Price 17s. net each. Intended in all respects to be a Standard Natural History accurate enough to be of use to the Student, and at the same time popular enough for the general reader who desires trustworthy information as to the structure and habits of all members of the Animal Kingdom, from the Protozoa to the Mammals. The Volumes are fully illustrated by original figures drawn where possible from nature. When complete the Series is one which should be indispensable in all Libraries, whether public...
Page 13 - ... semi-rings) being closely attached to the trachea, and the spaces between the second and third and the third and fourth...