Pith

“ Pithys (extralimital) . [27] ee. Neither crested nor bearded; nostrils more widely separated (distance between them greater than that from either to maxillary tomia) ; wings spotted or barred. f. Bill relatively shorter (exposed culmen not more than one-fourth as long as wing) and broader (width at frontal antiæ much greater than its width at same point and equal to at least half the distance from nostril to tip of maxilla) ; back spotted or barred, or with a concealed patch of white; tail tipped with white or cinnamon
Hylophylax (p. 126) . ”

“ The Indian pitta is a bird which likes warmth, but not heat, so that it refuses to live in the Punjab, where the climate is one of extremes—a spell of cold, then a headlong rush into a period of intense heat, followed by an equally sudden return to a low temperature. The pitta seems to occur in all parts of Eastern, Central, and Southern India, undergoing local migration to the south in the autumn and back again in the spring. In places where the climate is never very hot or very cold, as, for example, Madras and the hills in Ceylon, some individuals seem to remain throughout the year. ”

“ A nest found in a clearing in a wood on the far side of the fjeld on July 8th was probably of this species; it contained five well-grown young.
Red-throated Pipit (A. cervinus) .—We were much disappointed at finding so few of these birds. On the fjeld we found them in scattered pairs along the edge of the tree limit, and in the islands of scrub in the hollows. A patch of birch and willows a square mile or so in extent would contain perhaps as many as three pairs. The cocks, often accompanied by their mates, were to be seen taking long flights, high in the air, singing all the time. ”

“ Pipits, of which over fifty species have been described, occur in almost all parts of the world, but in North America are represented by only two species—Neocorys spraguii, the prairie-lark of the north-western plains, and Anthus ludovicianus, the American titlark, which last is very nearly allied to the so-called water-pipit of Europe, A. spipoletta. To most English readers the best known species of pipit is the titlark or meadow-pipit, A. pratensis, a bird too common to need description, and abundant on pastures, moors, and uncultivated districts generally ”

“ Pitoíois was beautiful; she had a long neck, and her hair was black and so long that it touched the ground. She was the fastest worker in the world. She was always digging roots. With one dig she could bring up a whole basketful. In a day she dug over a large plain as though it had been ploughed. She piled up the roots, thought “I want them in my basket,” and they were there.
Pitoíois’ brothers were great hunters; while she was digging roots, they were hunting for deer, but they never got out of sight of their sister, for they thought Wus might come and bother her. ”

“ Pitts was wonderfully low-spirited. “Even a bird has its nest; and the poorest animal has some sort of a hole in the ground, or a roost where it can go when it is a-weary,” he said to me once, when I caught him fluttering aimlessly out of a house which, under the influence of a storm, had spit out its western wall, and dropped its upper jaw dangerously near to the back of the cow. ”

“ With an eloquent look the orphan thanked him, and, conducted by Catherine, he entered the kitchen, governed by the absolute rule of Mother Billet.
[Pg 28]
CHAPTER IV. LONG LEGS ARE GOOD FOR RUNNING
IF NOT FOR DANCING.
Mistress Billet was a fat woman who honored her husband, delighted in her daughter and fed her field hands as no other housewife did for miles around. So there was a rush to be employed at Billet's.
Pitou appreciated his luck at the full value when he saw the golden loaf placed at his elbow, the pot of cider set on his right, and the chunk of mild-cured bacon before him. ”

“ Around the pitpan were stationed a number of women with palm branches to keep off the flies. Their frizzled hair started from their heads like snakes from the brow of the fabled Gorgon, and they swayed their bodies to and fro, keeping a kind of treadmill step to the measure of the doleful tum-tum. With the exception of the men who beat the drum and blew the pipe, these women appeared to be the only persons at all interested in the proceedings. ”

“ Piti did nothing, and the mao took her left arm into his mouth. He closed his teeth and dragged off the flesh down to the elbow where he bit her arm in two. You know how when a shark bites, after he sinks his teeth into the meat, he twists his mouth, so as to make his teeth cut. That is the way God made him. This shark twisted and stripped off Piti’s flesh as he drew down his teeth. When he bit off her lower arm he swam off to eat it, and she rose to the top. She put her good arm over the outrigger, and those other women paddled to her and pulled her into the canoe. ”

“ Besides, leave alone his visage and his eyes, that blink at the glare of gaslight, and his horny hands dotted with dull blue scars, and with the finger nails as blunt as though they had been filed, however a pitman may be attired and wherever he may be met, he can at once be known to be the man he is the moment he opens his mouth-not by the style of language that issues there from, but by the dazzling whiteness of his teeth, scrubbed constantly by the ebon grit, and by his gums, which from the same cause, are ruddier than coral. ”

“ One class only of superstitions does exist among a few of the older and less-educated pitmen—namely, the class of omens, warnings, [127] and signs. If one of these pitmen meet or see a woman, if he catch but a glimpse of her draperies, on his way, in the middle of the night to the pit, the probability is that he returns home and goes to bed again. The appearance of woman at this untimely hour has often materially impeded the day’s winning, for the omen is held not to be personal to the individual perceiving it, but to bode general ill luck to all. ”

“ I observed a tippit woarn by Hohastillpilp, which was formed of human scalps and ornamented with the thumbs and fingers of several men which he had slain in battle. their women brade their hair in two tresses which hang in the same position of those of the men. they also wear a cap or cup on the head formed of beargrass and cedar bark. the men also frequently attatch some small ornament to a small plat of hair on the center of the crown of their heads. ”

“ The walk from home to pit mouth, always performed at dead of the night, was the period when omens were mostly to be looked for. The supernatural appearance of a little white animal like a rabbit, which was said to cross the miner’s path, was another warning not to descend. Sometimes the omens were rather mental than visual. The pitmen in the midland counties have, or had, a belief, unknown in the north, in aerial whistlings, warning them against the pit. ”

“ Pipits are boreal breeders; but inasmuch as our own superb Alps claim kinship with the Arctic, there is no more favorable spot to study the nesting of the Pipits than upon the Cascades of northern Washington. At home the Pipit is a very different creature from the straggler of the long trail. On his native heather, surrounded by dwarfed fir trees, melting snow-fields, and splendid vistas of peak and cloud, he knows exactly what he wants and is quite capable of flying in a straight line. ”

“ Heaven is infallible as well as mighty: how useful were the long legs of Pitou, so ungraceful at a ball, in streaking it over the country, as well as the knotty knees, although his heart, expanded by terror, beat three to a second. My Lord Charny, with his pretty feet and little knees, and symmetrically placed calves, could not have dashed along at this gait. ”

“ With his nose flat to the sands Pitchouné smelt to east and to west, to north and south, took a scent to the east, decided on it—for what reason will never be told—and followed it. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten as hour after hour Pitchouné ran across the Sahara. Mercifully, the sun had been clouded by the precursor of a wind-storm. The air was almost cool. Mercifully, the wind did not arise until the little terrier had pursued his course to the end.
There are occasions when an animal's intelligence surpasses the human. ”

“ The Bear stretched his terrible head, and snuffed the air towards the North Star. “Many fear me, but not all,” he said. “Come if you will, little Mit-kah.”
Then he made himself all flat in the snow, and she climbed upon his neck, and held on by the long tail of the hood. And the Bear got up, and went swiftly away, northwards; very swiftly he ran, glisading over the glittering snow, and wherever he went, there it became cold as death. But little Mit-kah was quite warm.
When Ka-leet looked for her and could not find her, he went away from the lamp, and lay in a corner, weeping. ”

“ The great moth, looking more than half as big as the aggressor, beat the pipit with his strong wings in his efforts to free himself; but the other had clutched the soft, stout body in its claws, and standing over it with wings half open and head feathers raised, struck repeatedly at it with the greatest fury until it was killed. Then, in the same savage hawk-like manner, the dead thing was torn {117} up, the pipit swallowing pieces so much too large for it that it had the greatest trouble to get them down. The gentle, timid, little bird had for the moment put on the "rage of the vulture." ”

“ It strikes me that you have the makings in you of something better than a scholard, and that it is a deused lucky thing that you try something else—mainly at the present time. As a farmer I know which way the wind blows, and it is rough for priests. So then, as you are an honest lad and larned," here Pitou bowed at being so styled for the first time—"you can get along without the black gown."
Catherine, who was setting the chickens and pigeons on the ground, was listening with interest to the dialogue.
"It looks hard to win a livelihood," said the lad. ”

“ But I had a letter this morning from Sebastian Gilbert, at Paris, who sends his love to his foster-brother—I forgot that—and he has been three days without his father meeting him there."
"She is right," said Pitou: "this delay is alarming."
"Hold your tongue, you timid creature; and let us read the doctor's treatise?" said the farmer: "It will not only make you larned, but manly."
Pitou stuck the book under his arm with so solemn a movement that it completed the winning of his protector's heart. ”

“ Madame Piot settles down in a chair; she crosses her arms, lowers her head, and the time goes by.
At long intervals people take shape in the darkness by the door; people who come in on tiptoe whisper to us and go away.
The moribund moves her hands and feet and contorts her face. A gurgling comes from her throat, which we can hardly see in the cavity that is like a nest of shadow under her chin. She has blenched, and the skin that is drawn over the bones of her face like a shroud grows whiter every moment. ”

“ No impassioned personage wishes he had been born in the age of Pitt, that his ardent youth might have eaten the dearest bread, dressed itself with the longest coat-tails and the shortest waist, or heard the loudest grumbling at the heaviest war-taxes ”

“ The disease in which the region of the Drishti (pupil) assumes a yellowish colour, and all external objects appear yellow to the sight owing to the presence of the vitaited (and augmented) Pitta in the region of the Drishti is called Pitta- Vidagdha-Drishti. It is due to an accumulation of the deranged Dosha (Pitta) in the third Patala (coat) of the eye, and the patient cannot see anything in the day, but can see only in the night. ”

“ Some Indian birds are adepts at self-advertisement. To use an expressive vulgarism, they continually “hit you in the eye”; they obtrude themselves upon you in season and out of season. Others are so retiring that you may live among them for years without observing them. To this class, to the class that hide their light under a bushel, the beautiful Indian pitta (Pitta brachyura) belongs. There is at least one favoured compound in Madras where a pitta, or possibly a pair of them, spends the cool-weather season. ”

“ In the love season the male pipit occasionally takes his stand on a weed or low bush; but on moors, hills, and stony waste-lands he prefers a stone or mound of earth for a perch. From such an elevation he is able to keep watch on the movements of his mate, and, when the singing spirit takes him, to launch himself easily on the air. To sing he soars up to a height of forty feet or more, then glides gracefully down, with tail spread and wings half-closed and motionless, presenting the figure of a barbed arrow-head. ”

“ I will do it if you both go down."
"Thank you," said Billet, giving his hand to the clerk who grasped it with more power than one might accredit to the meager frame.
"So I may rely on you?"
"As on Marat, and Gonchon."
"Such triplets are not born everyday," thought Pitou, who only said: "Be prudent, Father Billet!"
"Do not forget that the most prudent thing in France is courage," said the farmer with his blunt eloquence, sometimes startling in his rough body.
He passed the first line of sentinels, while Pitou backed out. ”

“ The whole Pipit race seems to be struggling under a strange inhibitory spell, cast upon some ancestor, perhaps, by one knows not what art of nodding heather bells or potency of subtly distilled Arctic moonshine. As the flock comes straggling down from the northland they utter unceasing yips of mild astonishment and self-reproach at their apparent inability to decide what to do next. Their indecision is especially exasperating as one rides along a trail which is closely flanked by a primitive rail fence, as I have often done in Okanogan County. ”