Thorn

“ A thorn-bush—what matter the precise name? there are so many in those parts, all execrable—acknowledged receipt of his carcass with a crash, and for a few seconds he hung, like a sack on a nail, spitted cleanly by at least one thorn, far thornier than anything we know here, before the thing gave way, and he fell, still limply, this way and that, hesitatingly, as it were, as each point lovingly sought to retain him, to a fork near the bottom, where he stayed. ”

“ We set the baby down alone, so fragile and small it looked, and then hid ourselves in a great thorn brake. We were as far off as we dared go, and the buck did not wander far. Sometimes it bleated in a little treble, once or twice it lay down, tucking its long legs beneath it, to rise again and wander, all lonely, among the low thorn bushes. Two hours or more we waited and then—a gentle whinny, and almost before we realised it, a perfect oryx doe cantered towards the fawn. ”

“ The differences between such a prickle and a thorn like that of the hawthorn should be carefully noticed. A thorn is really a little twig which has remained short and become pointed at the end. It has a core of wood which is continuous with the wood of the branch bearing it. That a thorn is really a little branch is shown by its origin in the axil of a leaf, and by its often giving rise to leaves and buds. ”

“ The burning bush, not particularly a thorn bush, but the ‘bush’ of our Authorized Version, is now the chosen emblem of the Church of Scotland.
There were neither thorns nor thistles in Eden. It was not till the day when Adam fell that God laid a curse upon the ground: ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.’ Therefore thorns and thistles are in general the symbols of sin and death. A little German woodcut expresses eternal death with gruesome completeness: a skull, with the apple of damnation between its bare jaws, has round its brow a wreath of twisted thorns. ”

“ If a man among you has a thorn in his foot, will it help him if he change his boots? I tell you, it is the thorn, the thorn itself, that you must get out, wrench out, cut out, if need be. We, the people, how often have we asked our rulers for bread and they have given us a stone? ”

“ For how comes it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? ”

“ CHAPTER XI THORN MEETS THE CHILDREN OF THE SHELL MOUNDS
Every day Thorn worked for a little while at the chipping of stone axes, but he had plenty of time for play. One morning he ran to the river and jumped on his raft.
"Ha!" he said, "my other self jumped the stream with me. And now it leans over a shadow raft and reaches for a shadow pole."
He looked about him. On the grass lay the long shadows of the trees. In the clear water were the pictured banks.
"Everything has another self," he thought. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX THE CHAINED VIRGIN OF SAINT THORN The Abbot Richard of Malbank Saint Thorn went hunting the deer in Morgraunt with a good company of prickers and dogs. In Spenshaw he unharboured a stag, and he followed him hard. The hart made straight for Thornyhold Brush where the great herd lay; there Mellifont, who was sentry for the time, heard him and gave the alarm. Fern brakes will hide man from man, but here were dogs. ”

“ it looks so old,
In truth you'd find it hard to say,
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two years' child
It stands erect this aged thorn;
No leaves it has, no thorny points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens it is overgrown. ”

“ The rest of the day—and of days to follow—we spent in picking a way through the thorn scrub and over loose rocks and shifting stones. A stream bed contained an occasional water hole. Tall aloes were ablaze with red flowers. The country looked arid, the air felt dry, the atmosphere was so clear that a day's journey seemed—usually—but the matter of a few hours. Only rarely did we enjoy a few moments of open travel. Most of the time the thorns caught at us. In the mountain passes were sometimes broad trails of game or of the Masai cattle. ”

“ No less esteemed, too, in the same country, is a certain kind of thorn,856 though only the black variety, its wood being imperishable, in water even, a quality which renders it particularly valuable for making the sides of ships: on the other hand, the white kinds will rot very rapidly. ”

“ There are several species of these thorn-shrubs, which are scattered profusely over the ground, and are, in fact, the commonest growth of the place. After they die, being under the fierce sun of that climate, they dry up so completely, that if a light be set to them they blaze up in a moment, with a sharp cracking sound and a roar of flame, and in a moment or two are nothing but a heap of light ashes. No wonder was it that when Moses saw the thorn-bush burning without being consumed he was struck with awe at the miracle. ”

“ More men enrolled in Thorn’s class that afternoon than he thought would be attracted by the subject he was announced to lecture in on that day of the week. Among all the students who straggled, during the hour, into the bare recitation-room at the top of Sever, the only ones whose individualities were distinct enough to impress themselves on Thorn’s unpractised memory, were a negro, a stained ivory statuette of a creature from Japan, a middle-aged gentleman with a misplaced trust in the efficacy of a flowing sandy beard for concealing an absence of collar and necktie, Prescott, and Haydock. ”

“ Thorium, thō′ri-um, n. a rare metal resembling aluminium, but taking fire below a red heat, and burning with great brilliancy.—Also Thorī′num.
Thorn, thorn, n. a sharp, woody spine on the stem of a plant: a spine: a plant having spines or thorns: anything prickly or troublesome.—ns. Thorn′-app′le, a plant of genus Datura: a haw, a thorn-tree; Thorn′back, a species of ray or skate which has nail-like crooked spines in its back ”

“ The sacred character of the white thorn especially, appears to have become interwoven with a great variety of superstitious belief. A writer in the Quarterly Review for July, 1863, treating of "Sacred Trees and Flowers," says, "The white thorn is one of the trees most in favour with the small people" [the fairies] ; "and both in Brittany and in some parts of Ireland it is held unsafe to gather even a leaf from certain old and solitary thorns which grow in sheltered hollows of the moorland, and are the fairies' trysting places. But no 'evil ghost' dares to approach the white thorn." ”

“ Böttcher also, after Pro 24:31 and other passages, insists that the thorn which has shot up may be one that has not grown to perfection, and therefore not dangerous. But thorns grow not in the hand of any one ”

“ Finally, rising to the top, the long serpent stem opens out in a flat disc-shaped mass of close-packed branchlets and twigs densely set with small round leaves, dark dull green and tough as parchment. One could only suppose that thorn and ivy had been partners from the beginning of life, and that the union was equally advantageous to both. ”

“ Yet we see that from time to time one survives—one perhaps in a million; but how—whether by a quicker growth or a harder or more poisonous thorn, an unpalatable leaf, or some other secret agency—we cannot guess. ”

“ Painfully, agonizingly, the hot film was applied to throat and face; over the glass spheres that cupped around the eyes; over a tight leather cap covering the scientist's hair; and over a sort of football nose-guard which extended down an inch below the end of Thorn's nose in a sort of overhanging offset that would allow him to breathe and still keep his nostrils hidden. ”

“ There was also another thorny stalk growing out of the earth, the thorn on which was so strong that, piercing the clothes of some men just riding past, it pulled the horseman down from his horse rather than be itself torn off the stalk. ”

“ The illustration No. 1, on page 247, represents a still closed seed-vessel, and, formidable as it looks, its powers are more than doubled when it is open and dry, each half being covered with thorns pointing in opposite directions. The thorns are as sharp as needles, and nearly as strong as if they were made of the same material.
The reader may easily imagine the horrors of a bush which is beset with such weapons. No one who wears clothes has a chance of escape from them. If only one hooked thorn catches but his coat-sleeve, he is a prisoner at once. ”

“ Thorn heard him gibbering in Arvanian. "A hand! I touched it with mine! Something horrible is in there!"
With his heart pounding in his throat, Thorn leaned close to the swing-door to hear what happened next. Would there be a rush for the butler's pantry? An investigation? He eyed the farther door—the dining room door. But he dared not flee through that save as a last resort. In the dining room sounded voices; and again the sight of a door opening and closing of itself would lead to uproar.
"A hand?" he heard one of the guards say in the kitchen. "An unseen hand? ”

“ Thorns are developed in the most diverse ways. In many of the bushes on the coast of the Mediterranean true leaves are wanting altogether, the green branches and twigs being themselves the assimilating parts, and these are so stiff and rigid, so like some kind of thorn, that they suffice to scare off any greedy herbivore. ”

“ There are cases in which a thorn might be pierced into the flesh an inch, and produce no pain or irritation; but they are cases where there is no life in the flesh. A thorn pierced into a dead body will produce no pain or irritation. A dead body has no power to resist it, and will make no effort. ”

“ By nature the thorn is sharp, and the tulasi fragrant. முள்ளுக்கு முனை சீவி விடுவார்களா? Who sharpens the point of a thorn? முள்ளுமேல் சீலை போட்டால் மெள்ள மெள்ள வாங்கவேண்டும். If a cloth be spread on a thorn bush, it must be taken off with great care. ”

“ Perhaps his favourite food, the branches of the tree called the 'wait-a-bit' thorn, which grows to the height of twenty feet, may be irritating. Unlike other animals, the two horns of the rhinoceros do not grow into the skull, but are attached to the skin, one behind the other, and when the animal is dead can easily be taken off with a knife. ”

“ This is the reason precisely that a thorn produces no irritation or pain when pierced into certain bodies. They are dead bodies. It is no indication that the body is not alive and in healthy condition, to find it resisting foreign matter, and making [54] an effort to remove obstructions; but when it can not do this, the body must die. It can not live and the obstruction remain, at least, only for a short time. But who will permit even a little thorn to remain in his flesh? We care not how little it may be ”

“ A wide prospect, whose grateful silence was only broken by the cry or song of some wild bird. Great thickets of dwarf thorn tree and brambles and gorse, aflame with yellow flowers or dark to blackness by contrast with the pale verdure of the earth. And open reaches of elastic turf, its green suffused or sprinkled with red or blue or yellow, according to the kind of flowers proper to the season and place. The sight, too, of wild creatures: fallow deer, looking yellow in the distance when seen amid the black gorse ”

“ Thorns, which grow on the acacias and mimosas, of every shape and size that can be desired, are employed as needles, and for thread the long sinews from the backbones of slaughtered animals, which are stiff enough to be pushed through the hole made by the thorn without any further aid than their own rigidity. ”

“ He informed us that it was a plant very plentiful in the bush, known by the name of uncaria procumbens, from its manner of trailing along the ground; and also called the hook thorn, being armed, as I had noticed, with strong hooks. Besides those on the branches, when the seed vessels break, each of the sides is covered with hooked thorns, which possess such strength and sharpness, that their grasp is with difficulty avoided by the natives, while when the unfortunate European once is caught, all his efforts serve but to fasten him the tighter ”

“ Here, an enraged peasant thrusts a number of pins into a wax doll, and throws the object into the spring, fully believing that his enemy will be injured in that part of the body which corresponds to the pierced portion of the image. There, a well is overhung by an immemorial thorn, which is decorated with parti-coloured rags,—offerings which are reputed to relieve the devotee of his sickness. ”

“ Thorn told him. The other man seemed impressed by the nutriment-concentrate. He said, "We could hunt together for a while, I guess. Ought to work out good—having one watching while the other sleeps." He spoke rapidly, jumbling the words together. His voice sounded disused. He studied Thorn uneasily. ”

“ CHRIST’S THORN.—Gerarde, in his Herbal, calls the Paliurus, Christ’s Thorn or Ram of Libya; and he writes: “Petrus Bellonius, who travelled over the Holy Land, saith, that this shrubby Thorne Paliurus, was the Thorne wherewith they crowned our Saviour Christ, his reason for the proofe hereof is this, That in Judea, there was not any Thorne so common, so pliant, or so fit for to make a crown or garland of, nor any so full of cruell sharpe prickles. It groweth throughout the whole countrey in such abundance, that it is there common fuell to burn ”