Thornbush

“ Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against such foes. ”

“ Lord Thornaby, however, was not to be amused by the elaboration of his own idea, and it was with some asperity that he called upon the butler, now solemnly superintending the removal of the cloth.
"Leggett! Just send upstairs to see if all the doors are open and the rooms in proper order. That's an awful idea of yours, Kingsmill, or of mine!" added my lord, recovering the courtesy of his order by an effort that I could follow. "We should look fools. I don't know which of us it [104] was, by the way, who seduced the rest from the main stream of blood into this burglarious backwater. ”

“ The fastened doors were at right angles on the landing which we filled between us. Lord Thornaby smiled grimly on the rest of us, when he had nodded and dismissed the author like a hound from the leash.
"It's a good thing we know something about our friend Parrington," said my lord. "He takes more kindly to all this than I do, I can tell you."
"It's grist to his mill," said Raffles charitably.
"Exactly! We shall have the whole thing in his next book."
"I hope to have it at the Old Bailey first," remarked Kingsmill, Q.C.
"Refreshing to find a man of letters such a man of action too!" ”

“ In fact, their habits are quite unlike. The former feed chiefly on the leaves and twigs of thorns, such as the Acacia horrida, or “wait-a-bits,” while the latter live upon grass. The former are of fiercer disposition—will attack man or any other animal on sight; and even sometimes seem to grow angry with the bushes, charging upon them and breaking them to pieces! ”

“ But even he either feigned or felt a proper awe.
"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em," continued Lord Thornaby. "But where would you gentlemen stable your white elephants? And these were elephants as white as snow; by Jove, I'll job them for the future!"
And he made merrier over his loss than any of us could have imagined the minute before; but the reason dawned on me a little later, when we all trooped down-stairs, leaving the police in possession of the theatre of crime. Lord Thornaby linked arms with Raffles as he led the way. His step was lighter, his gayety no longer sardonic ”

“ There were many days in the life of Buck Thornton as in the lives of other cattle men hereabouts when he was absolutely alone with his horse, when he rode far out day and night upon some range errand, when, perhaps, he went two or three days together and saw no other man. Thornton remembered suddenly that when he had first heard of the murder of Bill Varney, the stage driver, he had just returned from such a lonely ride, a three days' trip into the mountains to look for new pasture lands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Acacia tomentosa is of the same genus, with thorns so large as to be called the "jungle-nail" by Europeans. It is frequent in the woods of Jaffna and Manaar, where it bears the Tamil name of Aani mulla, or "elephant thorn." In some of these thorny plants, as in the Phoberos Goertneri, Thun., [1] the spines grow not singly, but in branching clusters, each point presenting a spike as sharp as a lancet; and where these formidable shrubs abound they render the forest absolutely impassable, even to the elephant and to animals of great size and force. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the shores of the little "Porth," as it was called, the fishermen sat about with sleepy, vacant eyes, waiting for the signal of watchmen on the moor above — the shrill Cornish cry of "Ubba!" "Ubba!" which would tell them the mackerel were in sight.
Behind the cove, running inland, were the vast, lonely moors which run between the Atlantic and the Channel. It is always grey and sad upon these rolling solitudes, sad and silent. The glory of summer gorse had not yet clothed them with a fleeting warmth and hospitality. ”

“ He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck’s back in the summer travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had grub-staked themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. ”

“ Men were holding their breaths, intensely unconscious of the fact. "Now, Mush!"
Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered tightly together in a tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half-started forward. ”

“ In Herefordshire, the burning of a Thorn-bush is supposed to act as a charm against smut or mildew in Wheat. When the crop is just springing out of the ground, the farmer’s servants rise before daybreak, and cut a branch of some particular Thorn; they then make a large fire in the field, in which they burn a portion of it, and hang up the remaining portion in the homestead.——Tradition affirms that, at Hemer, in Westphalia, a man was engaged in fencing his field on Good Friday, and had just poised a bunch of Thorns on his fork, when he was at once transported to the Moon. ”

“ Thorne's order. Mr. Thorne has been a hunting man all his life."
"But he have guv' up now, your reverence. He ain't a hunted these two years."
"I'm sure he wouldn't have the foxes trapped."
"Not if he knowed it, he wouldn't, your reverence. A gentleman of the likes of him, who's been a hunting over fifty year, wouldn't do the likes of that; but the foxes is trapped, and Mr. Henry'll be a putting it on me if I don't speak out. They is Plumstead foxes, too; and a vixen was trapped just across the field yonder, in Goshall Springs, no later than yesterday morning." ”

“ Thornburg, too, observed her rather deliberately. For an instant he seemed to forget himself, to be absent-minded. Thornburg was of that type of man who seems to surrender unconditionally when a woman employs strategies, but who resolves to do what he pleases when her back is turned.
Baron resented his mother’s attitude, her decision not to be communicative and gracious. He stood by the manager’s side and spoke of the splendid picture the garden presented. For a moment they stood in silence, looking down upon the tangle of many-colored lights which marked the course of the Midway. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That Natural Selection would tend to produce the most formidable thorns will be admitted by every one who has observed the distribution in South America and Africa (vide Livingstone) of thorn-bearing plants, for they always appear where the bushes grow isolated and are exposed to the attacks of mammals. Even in England it has been noticed that all spine-bearing and sting-bearing plants are palatable to quadrupeds, when the thorns are crushed. ”

“ The fact that the high, cold plateaus are always open grasslands free from thorn-bush, whilst the lower parts of the country are usually covered with scrubby bush and thorny thickets, has led many people to think that lions have poor manes in bush-covered countries because the thorns tear out the hair ”

“ 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 ”

“ Outside those Greshamsbury gates she and Frank Gresham, she and Lady Arabella met on equal terms; let them each fight their own battle.
The squire kissed her forehead affectionately and took his leave, feeling, somehow, that he had been excused and pitied, and made much of; whereas he had called on his young neighbour with the intention of excusing, and pitying, and making much of her. He was not quite comfortable as he left the house; but, nevertheless, he was sufficiently honest-hearted to own to himself that Mary Thorne was a fine girl. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 is a bird of prey, feeding upon all sorts of small creatures, and it seems to know that though it can catch plenty of these on warm, sunny days, they will all be hiding away in their retreats when the weather is cold and rainy. So on a fine, bright morning it will catch many more victims than it wants at the time, and put them away in its larder! Sometimes you may find a thorn-bush with four or five mice, half a dozen unfledged birds, two or three fat caterpillars, a big beetle or two, and perhaps a bumblebee, all stuck upon the thorns, like the joints of meat hung up in a butcher's shop. ”

“ Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When Thornton’s partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly ”

“ Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig, who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck was content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the hour, eager, alert, at Thornton's feet, looking up into his face, dwelling upon it, studying it, following with keenest interest each fleeting expression, every movement or change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines of the man and the occasional movements of his body. ”