Hornpipe

“ Mr. FRANKLIN Dances the Hornpipe; Rides with his Toe in his Mouth; he also Leaps from the Ground to his Horse in various ways.
Mr. STEWART Dances the Hornpipe; Jumps a great height from his Horse, and with surprising [Pg 122] agility throws himself into different attitudes while his horse is in full speed.
PETER dances the Hornpipe and Jumps the Whip; also, standing erect on his toes, rides in full speed once round the Circus.
Mr. STEWART performs the picking up of four Handkerchiefs from the ground; he also stands erect on his horse, while his horse leaps a board 3 feet from the ground. ”

“ Now it leads down a stupendous waltz with full brass, sounding very much as if, in summer, a thunderstorm should play, 'Come, Haste to the Wedding,' or 'Moneymusk.' Then come marches, galops, and hornpipes. An organ playing hornpipes ought to have elephants as dancers. ”

“ The hornet, one of my first favourites, has, to our minds, nothing mysterious like our glow-worm, and nothing serpentine or supernatural about him, but he is a nobler, more powerful and splendid creature than any dragon-fly. I care not to look at a vulgar wasp nor at any diurnal insect, however fine, when he is by, or his loud, formidable buzzing hum is heard. As he comes out of the oak-tree shade and goes {129} swinging by in his shining golden-red armature, he is like a being from some other hotter, richer land, thousands of miles away from our cold, white cliffs and grey seas. ”

“ Honest, I didn’t think about Pa being under the tree, and I went into a field and got a hop pole, and put the small end up into the nest, and gouged the nest a couple of times, and when the boss hornet came out of the hole and looked sassy, and then looked back in the hole and whistled to the other hornets to come out and have a circus, and they began to come out, my chum and me run and climbed over a fence, and got behind a pile of hop poles that was stacked up. ”

“ Horns generally present in both sexes, the females of the first four species alone being without them. In the male the horns are strong, prominently [66] ribbed, and generally of medium length, about the length of the head, but occasionally considerably longer. With the exception of their tips they are curved backwards, so as to be convex forwards below, while their ends are commonly more or less recurved forwards or upwards. The degrees of curvature seem to be fairly constant within the species, and to afford very fair specific characters. ”

“ This interesting little hornet is a common summer species, known as the solitary hornet—one of them—Odynerus flavipes. The insect is about a half-inch in length, and to the careless observer might suggest a yellow-jacket, though the yellow is here confined to two triangular spots on the front of the thorax and three bands upon the abdomen.
Like the wren among birds, it is fond of building in holes, and will generally obtain them ready-made if possible. Burroughs has said of the wren that it "will build in anything that has a hole in it, from an old boot to a bombshell." ”

“ The large expanses of almost virgin bush one would almost imagine to teem with wild birds, but this is far from being the case. In the forest-country the hornbill is very common. These birds are generally seen in large flocks, and assimilate well with the solitude of their surroundings as they hover from one tree to another with their peculiar flight, uttering their weird, mournful cry. Their flight reminds one forcibly of a switchback working very slowly, as they flutter first up and then downwards, in the motion towards their goal. ”

“ Owing to the weight of the beak, the hornbill is in danger of toppling over, head foremost, as it alights on a branch, and assuredly would sometimes do so but for the long tail which serves to balance the great beak. So vigorously does the hornbill have to flap its wings during flight that the sound of the air rushing through them can be heard for nearly half a mile in the case of the largest species. ”

“ There hung the hornet's nest from the lower limb of an oak, so near the ground that it could be easily reached by one of the larger boys. It was gray in color and of enormous size. It resembled in shape an overgrown football or watermelon, pendant by one end. In some portions faint ridges were visible, like the prints left by tiny wavelets on the sand. Near the base was a circular opening about as large as an old-fashioned penny. This was the door of the hornets' residence, through which all the occupants came and went. ”

“ A horn is a hollow sheath, growing over a bony core, and except in the case of the prong-horned antelope, is never shed. Horns are worn by both sexes of all bison, buffaloes, cattle, antelope, sheep, and goats.
An antler is of solid bone throughout, growing from the skull; it is shed every year close to the skull, and quickly renewed. Usually antlers have several branches. They are worn by nearly all male members of the Deer Family—moose, elk, caribou, deer, etc., and also by the female caribou. The prongs on an antler are no index of the wearer’s age. ”

“ The hornet, which is really a kind of big wasp, makes its nest in just the same way, but places it on a beam in an out-house, or in a hole which the sparrows have made in the thatched roof of a house, or in a hollow tree, or perhaps hangs it in the open air to the bough of a tree. ”

“ The hornbill is lively and active, leaping from bough to bough with great lightness, and appearing not to be in the least incommoded by its huge beak. Its flight is laborious, and when in the air the bird has a habit of clattering its great mandibles together, which together with the noise of the wings produces a weird sound. The food of the hornbill seems to consist of both animal and vegetable matters. We take our illustration from Wood's "Natural History."
Saw Tempering by Natural Gas. ”

“ Among household curios are drinking horns elaborately etched, and frequently turned in a lathe. They were popular in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the turned patterns then so common were copied by the silversmiths, who made silver tankards and drinking cups on the same models. The cornucopia or horn of abundance figures frequently in sculpture, paintings, and works of art. The horn is one of the early instruments of music (see Chapter XV) , and has long been associated with sports. ”

“ Its note is like the tolling of a distant church bell, and is uttered during the heat of the day, when every other bird has ceased to sing and nature is hushed in silence. The hornbill, a bird which is widely distributed in India, the Malay Archipelago, and Africa, has also a very loud note. ”

“ The hornet is certainly not an abundant insect, nor very generally distributed. One may spend years in some parts of the country and never see it. I was lately asked by friends in Kent, who have their lonely house in a wooded and perhaps the wildest spot in the county, if the hornet still existed in England, or really was an English insect, as they had not seen one in several years. Now in the woods I frequent in the Forest I see them every day, and the abundance of the hornet is indeed for me one of the attractions of the place. ”

“ In and out of this hole moved two venomous streams of black-and-white hornets.
Suddenly it seemed as if the spirit of the monstrous solitude had taken substance, and was moving among the inert shapes of root and trunk. A massive fur-clad beast, dull black in color, with high, humped haunches and heavy, shapeless limbs, its hind feet grotesquely semi-human in outline, its head swinging low on a long, clumsy neck, came picking its way with a loose-jointed gait over the [19] jumble of roots. ”

“ The hornbill is an embodiment of force that may be either beneficent or harmful, and has been appropriated by the Dayaks to serve various purposes. Wooden images of this bird are put up as guardians, and few designs in textile or basket work are as common as that of the tingang. The handsome tail feathers of the rhinoceros hornbill, with transverse bands of alternate white and black, are highly valued; the warriors attach them to their rattan caps, and from the solid casque with which the beak of the giant species is provided, are carved the large red ear ornaments. ”

“ The pied, or double-horned species, the hornray of the natives, inhabits the dense forests of the Indo-Malay countries from the Himalaya and the Indian peninsula to the south of China and Sumatra. The glossy plumage is mostly black above, with the under-parts, the neck, the tips of the flight feathers, and the tail feathers more or less white or whitish, the upper half of the huge beak, with its horn-like appendage, being reddish yellow, and the lower half yellow. The total length of the bird, which is the largest member of the whole group, exceeds a yard. ”

“ Farther on the highroad looped around a strip of young forest, and she struck into this for a short cut. Here the trees stirred faintly in the breeze, filling the place with leafy rustlings and whisperings; yet it was so still that when a saffron-barred hornet darted through with an intolerant high-keyed [Pg 57] hum, it made the air for an instant angrily vocal, and a woodpecker’s tattoo at some distance sounded with startling loudness, like a crackling series of pistol-shots. ”

“ To that emotional hour I owe all my learning about hornets. The brute so heavily barred with black stripes that he looks a wicked brown, is the male, who has no sting, and may be trodden on with impunity; the bright yellow beasts are females, with a barbed sting nearly as long as their bodies. ”

“ The horns, which are singularly broad at the base, rise quite in front and from the top of the forehead, so that this is here reduced to merely a very narrow hollow; they curve downwards at the side of the head, and seem to bend more forwards than backwards. The neck is ornamented with many lines, formed of a series of small strokes. It is difficult to say what animal this sculpture is intended to represent. Our list of horned animals comprises five species, viz.: the ibex, the chamois, the wisent, the urus, and this animal now under consideration—either the domestic ox or the musk-sheep. ”

“ The stars blinked high overhead, and the stars deep down in the tranquil water answered them. The voice of the weir seemed nearer and louder. A gentle breeze stirred the line of poplars by the river's brink in the meadow, and fanned the temples of the motionless man at their feet. A bat passed close over him, lightly touching his hair with its wing. Miles did not stir. ”

“ IV. In the great majority of “Hollow-horned Ruminants,” such as oxen, sheep, goats and antelopes (fig. 2) , the horny sheath (or true “horn”) forms a simple unbranched cone, which may be compressed, spirally twisted, or curved in one or more directions, but is permanently retained and continues to grow throughout life from the base, while it becomes worn away at the tip. Rarely, as in the four-horned antelope, there are two pairs of horns. In many cases these horns are present in both sexes. ”

“ We can very easily imagine the astonishment which the appearance of horns so large, and of such strange form, must have excited in the minds of those who discovered them for the first time, and how readily they obtained a place in the hall of some adjoining mansion, where they were deposited as an ornament of great curiosity, from the contrast which they formed with the horns of the species of deer known at present. ”

“ Already the disturbed hornets were coming out of the cells in the nest, angrily fluttering about to learn what the matter was. Frank gave the fishing-pole a swing. He slammed its end and the hornets' nest right down on the head of the tramp.
Instantly a swarming myriad of the little insects made the air black about the man. The fellow gave a spring and a yell of pain. Then, his hands wildly beating the air, he darted down the river shore like a shot. ”

“ The queerest-looking bird of all, perhaps, was the ground hornbill, which is as common about African villages as a crow. This bird looks as if it had been trying to imitate the rhinoceros, for it has a great horny bill with a thick lump on what might be called the bridge of the nose. It is useful to the villager, for it is a sort of street cleaner in feathers, and eats garbage, rats, snakes, lizards, and other small creatures, with great relish. ”

“ His horns grow and form their prongs, when growing we call them in their velvet; feel of them and they are soft, through the summer and fall, and they keep growing until they form a perfect horn, hard as a bone. By the prongs we are able to tell the number of years old they are.
In the fall of the year when an old buck has his horns fully grown to see him running in his native forest is a beautiful sight. ”

“ Both males and females carry heavy horns for animals of their size. The female’s horns are quite as long as, and perhaps slightly longer in proportion to their age than, the male’s, but they are weaker and less regular, though almost as deeply notched and annulated as in the buck. In general form they may be described as lyrate in a front view; the tips often point exactly towards each other, being separated sometimes two inches, sometimes even more than six. Sometimes the tips point backwards, and sometimes distinctly forwards. ”

“ During the summer the horns remain soft and tender to the touch. They are covered at this time with a soft membrane that looks like greyish velvet, and they are then said to be ‘in the velvet,’ There are nerves and blood-vessels running through this membrane, and a blow upon the horns at this season gives great pain to the animal. When the autumn arrives the velvet peels off, and they become as hard as bone. They would need to be, for this is the ‘rutting’ season, and the bucks fight furious battles with each other, clashing their horns together, as if they would break them to pieces. ”