A Cruise in the Pacific: From the Log of a Naval Officer, Volume 1

Front Cover
Fenton Aylmer
Hurst and Blackett, 1860
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 12 - With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled.
Page 47 - The groves of Eden, vanish'd now so long, Live in description, and look green in song: These, were my breast inspired with equal flame, Like them in beauty, should be like in fame.
Page 66 - Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in midair Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals.
Page 80 - ... a sable tuft, consisting of nine feathers edged also with blue. This bird seems to suppose that its beauty can be increased by trimming the tail, which undergoes the same operation as our hair in a barber's shop, only with this difference, that it uses its own beak, which is serrated, in lieu of a pair of scissors ; as soon as his tail is full grown, he begins about an inch from the extremity of the two largest feathers in it, and cuts away the web on both sides of the shaft, making a gap about...
Page 80 - This bird seems to suppose that its beauty can be increased by trimming the tail, which undergoes the same operation as our hair in a barber's shop, only with this difference, that it uses its own beak, which is serrated, in lieu of a pair of scissors : as soon as his tail is full grown, he begins about an inch from the extremity of the two longest feathers in it, and cuts away the -web on both sides of the shaft, making a gap about an inch long : both male and female Adonise their tails in this...
Page 216 - ... a cell, or polypidom, or polypary, into the hollow of which the animal can retire. The solid thus formed is called a coral, which represents exactly the animal itself. " These stony cells are sometimes single and cupped ; sometimes ramifying like a tree, and sometimes grouped like a cauliflower, or imitating the human brain. The calcareous cells which they build remain fixed to the rock in which they began their labours, after the animals themselves are dead.
Page 215 - ... that secrete, from the lower portion of their body, a large quantity of carbonate of lime ; which, when diffused around the body, and deposited between the folds of its abdominal coats, constitutes a cell, or polypidom, ovpolypary, into the hollow of which the animal can retire.
Page 216 - These industrious laborers act as scavengers of the lowest class ; perpetually employed in cleansing the waters of the sea from impurities which escape even the smallest Crustacea ; in the same manner as the insect tribes, in their various stages, are destined to find their food by devouring impurities caused by dead animals and vegetable matter in the land.
Page 217 - Were we to unite into one mass the immense coral reefs, three hundred miles long, and the numberless coral islands, some of which are forty and fifty miles in diameter ; and if we add to this all the coralline limestone, and the other formations, whether calcareous or silicious, that are the works of insect...
Page 82 - This was the pyrophorus noctilueus, so well known to every traveller in the Antilles and in Tropical America. It is of an obscure, blackish brown, and the body is everywhere covered with a short, lightbrown pubescence. When it walks or is at rest, the principal light it emits issues from the two yellow tubercles; but, when the wings are expanded in the act of flight, another luminous spot is disclosed in the hinder part of the thorax. These...

Bibliographic information