When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or els...e a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Never would it occur to a child that a sheep, a pig, a cow or a chicken was good to eat, while, like Milton's Adam, he would eager...ly make a meal off fruits, nuts, thyme, mint, peas and broad beans which penetrate further and stimulate not only the appetite but other vague and deep nostalgias. We are closer to the Vegetable Kingdom than we know; is it not for man alone that mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary exhale "crush me and eat me!"Mfor us that opium poppy, coffee-berry, teaplant and vine perfect themselves? Their aim is to be absorbed by us, even if it can only be achieved by attaching themselves to roast mutton.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O ruddier than the cherry, O sweeter than the berry,... O Nymph more bright Than moonshine night, Like kidlings blithe and merry. Ripe as the melting cluster, No lily has such lustre, Yet hard to tame, As raging flame, And fierce as storms that bluster.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When thou once Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st... Hirtius and Pasa, consuls, at thy heel Did famine follow, whom thou fought'st against, Thou daintily brought up, with patience more Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink The stale of horses and the gilded puddle Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign The roughest berry on the rudest hedge. Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsed. On the Alps It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh, Which some did die to look on.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It appears that in a forest like this the great majority of flowers, shrubs, and grasses are confined to the banks of the rivers a...nd lakes, and to the meadows, more open swamps, burnt lands, and mountain-tops; comparatively very few indeed penetrate the woods. There is no such dispersion even of wild-flowers as is commonly supposed, or as exists in a cleared and settled country. Most of our wild-flowers, so called, may be considered as naturalized in the localities where they grow. Rivers and lakes are the great protectors of such plants against the aggressions of the forest, by their annual rise and fall keeping open a narrow strip where these more delicate plants have light and space in which to grow. They are the protégés of the rivers. These narrow and straggling bands and isolated groups are, in a sense, the pioneers of civilization. Birds, quadrupeds, insects, and man also, in the main, follow the flowers, and the latter in his turn makes more room for them and for berry-bearing shrubs, birds, and small quadrupeds. One settler told me that not only blackberries and raspberries but mountain maples came in, in the clearing and burning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never... did;" and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »