Hornstone

“ There is a species of this creature in England—but to the great grief of naturalists, and to the great honor of Providence, very rarely found—infinitely larger than the common earwig, or Forfaculida auriculana. Could it have been an early hornet? It had certainly a black head and great feelers. I have a greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was on the knees of the gods, he said, when I begged him to bend lower, but for the moment I thought his tone as changed as his face had been earlier in the morning. To oblige me, however, he took more care; and, when he had done all that one comrade could for another, he did avail himself of the cover he had found for me. So there we lay together on the veldt, under blinding sun and withering fire, and I suppose it is the veldt that I should describe, as it swims and flickers before wounded eyes. ”

“ Horne was a strange figure in Victorian poetry who gets an obscure corner in the anthologies, and is otherwise forgotten save as a friend of the Brownings. But he was a poet of great ambitions, and of a good deal more achievement than we remember. His epic poem Orion, which attained much fame in its time, and some permanent notoriety as the Farthing Epic, so called because Horne, angered by public neglect when it first appeared, contemptuously had it sold at a farthing, [144] is a very readable work for any one who cares to try it and is not afraid of poetry in long measure. ”

“ You will find England far too dull and slow for you." At this point Colonel Bristo and Mr. Miles came back, chatting. "I was saying," Mrs. Parish repeated for their benefit, "that of course Mr. Richard will soon return to Australia; he will tire of England in six weeks; it is always the way. Mr. Miles is the happy exception!" with a smile upon that gentleman which strove to be arch—with doubtful success.
"I never said I meant to make 'Home' my home," said the Australian, with the drawl of his race, but in tones mellow and musical. ”

“ Cripps in his corner smacked down the Times on his knees.
"Look there!" he cried. "Did ever you see such grass as that, Jack? You've nothing like it in New South Wales. I declare it does my old heart good to see an honest green field again!"
Jack looked out for an instant only.
"Ten sheep to the acre," said he. "Wonderful, isn't it, Livingstone? And you an' me used to ten acres to the sheep! But we were talking about that last little spree; you want your Uncle Claude to hear all about it, I see you do; you're not the cat to make yourself out better than what you are; not you, Livingstone! ”

“ The big stick leant against the end of the wall, just between us, nearer to my hand than his. The man himself leant hard against the pillar, the crop grasped behind him in both hands, its lash dangling like the tail of a monster rat. Those two clasped hands were the only part of him in the moonlight, and I watched them as I would have watched his eyes if we had been face to face. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In most cases only the horn, with a small piece of skull and skin, is sold. Sometimes, instead of the skin from the part where the horn is made, a piece of skin is taken from the snout, where the long black hairs are. The horn then appears surrounded by long black bushy hairs. The Kuruvikkārans explain that, when they see a jackal with such long hairs on the top of its head, they know that it possesses a horn. A horn-vendor, whom I interviewed, assured me that the possessor of a horn is a small jackal, which comes out of its hiding place on full-moon nights to drink the dew. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You're a good sort. You've got as much pluck in one hair of your head—though they are long 'uns, mind—as that fellow Gilroy has in his whole composition. Now I must be off to the shed. I should stroll about in the air, if I were you, but keep out of the sun. If you care to smoke, you'll find a tin of cut-up on the corner bracket in my room, and Miss Pryse'll give you a new pipe out of the store if you want one. You'll see her about pretty soon, I should say. Oh, yes, she had breakfast with me. She means to keep you by main force till you're up to piano-tuning again. ”

“ And I had hardly been a minute by myself when I struck indubitable wood at the depth of three or four feet. Decayed wood it was, too, which the first thrust of the spade crushed in; and at that I must say the perspiration cooled upon my skin. But I stood up and was a little comforted by the gay blue sky and the bottle-green horse-chestnuts, if I looked rather longer at the French window through which Delavoye had disappeared. ”

“ 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." ”

“ In all other animals the horns are hollow for a certain distance, and the end alone is solid, this being the part of use in a blow. At the same time, to prevent even the hollow part from being weak, the horn, though it grows out of the skin, has a solid piece from the bones fitted into its cavity. For this arrangement is not only that which makes the horns of the greatest service in fighting, but that which causes them to be as little of an impediment as possible in the other actions of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HORN, English hero of romance. King Horn is a heroic poem or gest of 1546 lines dating from the 13th century. Murry (or Allof) , king of Sudenne [1] (Surrey and Sussex?) is slain by Saracen pirates who turn his son Horn adrift with twelve other children. The boat drifts to Westernesse [2] (Cornwall?) , where the children are received by King Aylmer (Aethelmaer) . Presently Horn is denounced by one of his companions as the lover of the king’s daughter Rymenhild (Rimel) and is banished, taking with him a ring, the gift of his bride and a talisman against danger. ”

“ If they had cared to follow the matter to the end, they would [252] doubtless have wondered still more at the strange fate which awaited the unlucky harvest-fly, whose last song had been his own requiem. The sand-hornet is also known as the "digger-wasp," the largest of its kind, the most formidable of all our hornets, and carrying within its black, yellow-spotted body a most searching and terrible poisoned sting. It was a common belief in ancient times that "seventeen pricks of a hornet" would "kill a man," to quote from Pliny ”

“ Disappointed faces met me on my next visit to the veranda. The little crowd there had dwindled to a group. I could have had the telescope now for as long as I liked: the upper part of the Matterhorn was finally and utterly effaced and swallowed up by dense white mist and cloud. My friend the mountaineer looked grave, but his disfigured face did not wear the baulked expression of others to which he drew my attention.
"It is like the curtain coming down with the man's head still in the lion's mouth," said he. ”

“ The Normanthorpe roses, famous throughout the north of England, were as yet barely budding in the kindless wind; the blaze of early bulbs was over; but there were the curious alien trees, and the ornamental waters haunted by outlandish wildfowl, bred there on the same principle of acclimatization.
"I expect you know the way quite well," said Rachel, as they followed a winding path over a bank of rhododendrons near the lake; "to me every stroll is still a voyage of exploration, and I shall be rather sorry when I begin to know exactly what I am going to see next. ”

“ The lower slope was difficult to climb, a tangle of tumbled boulders and fallen trunks, mantled in the soundless gloom of the fir-forest. Skilled woodsman though he was, Horner’s progress was so slow, and the windless heat became so oppressive to his 142 impatience, that he was beginning to think of giving up the idle venture, when suddenly he came face to face with a perpendicular and impassable wall of cliff. ”

“ Then first he took the box and put the lid on it, and stowed it away in his breastpocket; and after that he took that gold bangle, very gingerly, between finger and thumb, and spun it out into the centre of the brown river, where it made bigger, widening bangles, that took the best part of a minute to fail and die away. Then everything was stiller than before; and stillest of all were the man and the woman who stood facing each other on the bank, speckled with the steep sunlight that came down on them like rain through the leaves of the river-timber overhead. ”

“ The fisherman, Dalling, had always been a character of some suspicion at the Point; the dwarf, it turned out, was called Horne, and we learned that he had a brother in London who had "got on." He lived at the group of cottages on the cliff, to which I had once tracked Naylor. I could not doubt that this Horne, who was a practical miner from Cornwall, had made the discovery of ore in the caves, and had communicated with his brother, the commission agent. ”

“ His dry sponge fell, and bounded till it settled, rolling close beneath the horribly attractive object facing him. From the safety of the open door, with ample space for retreat behind him, he paused and stared. His entire being focused itself in his eyes. It was a hornet that he saw. It hung there, motionless and threatening, between him and the bathroom door. [156] And at first he merely exclaimed—below his breath—“Good God! It’s an Egyptian hornet!”
Being a man with a reputation for decided action, however, he soon recovered himself. He was well schooled in self-control. ”

“ No sooner had the burly pugilist obstructed his fire than Raffles was through the window at a bound; while I, for standing still and saying nothing, was scientifically felled to the floor.
I cannot have been many moments without my senses. When I recovered them there was a great to-do in the garden, but I had the drawing-room to myself. I sat up. Rosenthall and Purvis were rushing about outside, cursing the Kaffirs and nagging at each other. ”

“ The mountains themselves stood back, as it were, darkling and unobtrusive; all that was left of the Matterhorn was a towering gap in the stars; and in the faint cold light stood my friends, somewhat close together, and I thought I saw the red tips of two cigarettes. There was at least no mistaking the long loose limbs in the light overcoat. And because a woman always looks relatively taller than a man, this woman looked nearly as tall as this lad.
"Bob Evers? You may not remember me, but my name's Clephane—Duncan, you know!" ”

“ The boys were sleeping heavily: they did not hear her open the door, but one of them moved in his sleep as she struck a match and then shaded it with her hand. The tool-box was under their dressing-table. She carried it bodily to her room; there were pincers, and strong ones too. But would they answer?
She crept round the veranda once more, and was about to dart across to the pines at their nearest point when once again the spruce, straight figure in the gaiters and riding-breeches strode out into the yard. He stood there a moment whistling Chopin to himself, and looking about him smartly. ”