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Burrow   Listen
verb
Burrow  v. i.  (past & past part. burrowed; pres. part. burrowing)  
1.
To excavate a hole to lodge in, as in the earth; to lodge in a hole excavated in the earth, as conies or rabbits.
2.
To lodge, or take refuge, in any deep or concealed place; to hide. "Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when they are forced into day upon one point, are sure to burrow in another."
Burrowing owl (Zool.), a small owl of the western part of North America (Speotyto cunicularia), which lives in holes, often in company with the prairie dog.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Burrow" Quotes from Famous Books



... free made his head swim. There was, in the Count's eagerness to obtain Menko's liberty, something of the excitement of a hunter tracking his prey. He awaited Michel's departure from the fortress as if he were a rabbit in its burrow. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... material to load several wagons, in which the eggs are buried. The young birds are not helpless when hatched, like the young of most of our singing birds, but are quite strong and active, and able to burrow their way out of the mound, and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... before the doors stared hard, and at the fuller view of one of the men, most of them retreated hastily within. Then, in those houses, you might have heard a murmur of consternation and alarm. The ferret was in the burrow,—a Bow-Street officer in the court! The two men paused, looked round, and stopping before the dingy towerlike house, selected the bell which appealed to the inmates of the ground-floor, to the left. At that summons Bill the cracksman ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is lower, shorter in the legs, and thicker than the Atlantic wolf; the color, which is not affected by the seasons, is of every variety of shade, from a gray or blackish-brown to a cream-colored white. They do not burrow, nor do they bark, but howl; they frequent the woods and plains, and skulk along the skirts of the buffalo herds, in order to attack ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... been known to have continued a chase for ten hours, great part of the time being hard running. A fox was once unkennelled near Boroughbridge in Yorkshire, at twenty-seven minutes past nine, and except half-an-hour taken up in bolting him from a rabbit-burrow, the hounds had a continued run until fourteen minutes past five in the evening, when they killed the fox in good style. During this space of nearly eight hours of most severe running, several horses died in the field, and others ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... worked, both for building and manuring, and probably benefiting the agriculturist more than the architect. In spring and summer the labourers occupy themselves in their fields above ground, and not until winter approaches do they begin to burrow in the ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... America, and they feast upon the bodies of dead cattle. So hard are their coats of armour that the Gauchos sharpen their Spanish knives, which they always carry, upon them. Should the armadillo be attacked by a man on horseback, he will burrow so rapidly that only by the quickest movements of the man can he be caught; and if he is, watch out ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... before it reaches the hollow of the apse. On the opposite side is a high gallery cut in the rock in imitation of the triforium gallery. The row of piers separates the church proper from what was for centuries the cemetery of Aubeterre: a vast burrow made by the living for the reception of the dead, where they were plunged out of the sunlight teeming with earthly illusion and phantasy, to await the breaking of the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... mice, I have farther to remark, that though they hang their nests for breeding up amidst the straws of the standing corn, above the ground; yet I find that, in the winter, they burrow deep in the earth, and make warm beds of grass: but their grand rendezvous seems to be in corn-ricks, into which they are carried at harvest. A neighbour housed an oat-rick lately, under the thatch of which were assembled near an hundred, most of which were taken; and some I saw. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... where there was a swineherd, keeping a herd of swine. And through fear of the swine the queen was delivered. And the swineherd took the boy, and brought him to the palace; and he was christened, and they called him Kilhwch, because he had been found in a swine's burrow. Nevertheless the boy was of gentle lineage, and cousin unto Arthur; and they put him out ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... the noiselessness of a shadow, a smiling, sober citizen, plainly but neatly clad, with a downcast humble eye. A milder, meeker face no pastoral poet could assign to Corydon or Thyrsis,—why did the crowd shrink and hold their breath? As the ferret in a burrow crept that slight form amongst the larger and rougher creatures that huddled and pressed back on each other as he passed. A wink of his stealthy eye, and the huge Jacobins left the passage clear, without sound or question. On he went to the apartment of ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... cover, made of moss and branches, was so artistically fashioned that, although impossible on the outside to distinguish it from the surrounding turf, it was very easy to open and close from the inside. In several of these forests and woods there were not only subterranean villages grouped about the burrow of the chief, but also actual hamlets of low huts hidden under the trees. These underground belligerents were kept perfectly informed of what was going on. Nothing could be more rapid, nothing more mysterious, than their means of communication. Sometimes ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... he begged, laying a hand on the other's arm. "You can't understand how funny that was—what you said. If you gave those fellows the warmest kennels in New York City, lined with bear skins, they wouldn't sleep in them, but would come outside and burrow those little round holes in the snow. That's their nature. I've felt sorry for them, like you—when the thermometer was down to sixty. But it's no use. As for the fish—they want 'em fresh or frozen. I suppose you might educate them to eat cooked meat, but it would be like making over ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... Chinese below," he said. "Lots of these houses have five stories underground, and nearly all have either two or three. A Chinaman doesn't care about fresh air at all, and he won't waste money in fuel when he can keep warm in an underground burrow. Come on, I guess we'll ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... Cowper, who kept them for some time, and one day you shall read about them. The colour of the Hare in this country is usually brown, but white Hares are found in very cold countries. The Hare does not burrow like the rabbit, but makes a kind of nest called ...
— Tame Animals • Anonymous

... because what is new among you is not patched artificially on to the old, but grows organically out of it, with a growth like that of your own English oak, whose every new-year's leaf-crop is fed by roots which burrow deep in many a buried generation, and the rich soil of full a ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... itching mind. Isn't it myself that knows, that was a wild and wilful girl, and went out into the world for more nor twenty years, and came back the like of an old bitch fox, harried by hunting, and looking for and mindful of the burrow where she was thrown?... As we're made, we're made, wee fellow; you're either a salmon that hungers for the sea, or a cunning old trout that kens its own pool and is ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... the hunters of the west, for they bear not the slightest resemblance to dogs, either in formation or habits. They are, in fact, the marmot, and in size are little larger than squirrels, which animals they resemble in some degree. They burrow under the light soil and throw it ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... over the sphere of human fear; He has come into touch with things supernal. At each man's gate death stands await; And dying flying were better than lying In sick beds crying for life eternal. Better to fly halfway to God Than to burrow too long like a ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... may occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely a bear. One might camp on the rugged shores of these bright fountains for weeks, without meeting any animal larger than the marmots that burrow beneath glacier boulders along the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... and skin. In the common mole the eye is extraordinarily small but perfect, though many anatomists doubt whether it is connected with the true optic nerve; its vision must certainly be imperfect, though probably useful to the animal when it leaves its burrow. In the tucutuco, which I believe never comes to the surface of the ground, the eye is rather larger, but often rendered blind and useless, though without apparently causing any inconvenience to the animal; no doubt Lamarck would have said that the tucutuco ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... his more warlike son, Alexander, are names familiar to the learned and illiterate, alike; while those who adorned the walks of civil life with virtues, and godlike abilities, are only known to those who burrow in musty old books, and search out the root of civilization enjoyed by modern nations. They who fought at Cannae and Marathon, at Troy and at Carthage, are household names; while those who invented the plough and the spade, and first taught the cultivation of the earth, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... the moment, sitting covered up snugly with her hands warmed by the little dog; but the cold was beginning to penetrate the robes. I could leave her for the moment while I investigated the burrow with the shovel. As I gained a little advantage over the snow which was drifted in almost as fast as I could shovel it out, my heart leaped as I found the hole opening out into the middle of the stack; and I plunged in on my hands and knees, found it dry and free from snow within ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... of animal life the ravens pay no attention whatever. It is beneath their notice; their aims are of a higher order than those of beings who live upon roots and who burrow for their abode. They live on prey that is far above the simple products of animal industry. Carrion is what they aspire to. Therefore they aspire with a lofty mien, prying and peering in every direction for something fallen. They are not far from the eastern ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... often on a hill-side, and may be either shallow or deep. In the mountains it is generally a natural cave in the rock, but among the foothills and on the plains the bear usually has to take some hollow or opening, and then fashion it into a burrow to his liking with his big ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... BREVE}nayezgani then entered one from the east, and coming to the centre looked up and saw Elk's heart beating. Drawing his flint-pointed arrow to the head, he shot the monster through the heart, then quickly dropped down into Gopher's burrow beneath four stones which, one below the other, stopped the vertical channel. But first he made with his fire-stick a dense white smoke at the end of the burrow that ran to the east. Elk leaped down into the opening and rushed in the direction of the smoke, seeking his enemy. Then in his rage ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... or brown, could never creep upon the unwary hare without previous detection, which would defeat his purpose. For this reason, the ptarmigan and the willow grouse become as white in winter as the vast snow-fields under which they burrow; the ermine changes his dusky summer coat for the expensive wintry suit beloved of British Themis; the snow-bunting acquires his milk-white plumage; and even the weasel assimilates himself more or less in hue to the unvarying garb of ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... peak the rattling crags among;" half a dozen chamois whisk around the next rock-buttress, and "one more unfortunate" tumbles from the verge into vacancy. The labor of days is rewarded. Securing the scanty venison if he can, the hunter is off for his hillside burrow, advertising his approach by an exultant jodel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... good fortune lift you up with vanity. Stand erect and keep your balance, if you step on ice or walk on wire. Be a man always. Keep from castle-building. Insist on the honor of your calling; and don't burrow up in the soil like a woodchuck, but range abroad like a deer, and soar on high ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... but who wouldn't want to drive a car forever— We burrow our way through high-stemmed woods, We pass by spaces that seem endless. We pass through the wind and attack the towns, which speed up. But the odors of the sluggish cities are hateful to us— Ah, we are flying! Always alongside death... How we despise ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... old, you know, and stomped hard under the snow. Well, I follers along this path with my feet until it come to a hole in the rocks; and when I come to that hole I went right in, fer I was desprit; and I crawled in and crawled in until I come to a big nest of leaves, and then I begin to burrow down into them leaves. And as soon as I had made a hole I pulled them leaves over me and fell to sleep, I ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... as though we had been watching by a burrow with all precaution that some little hunted creature should not escape, and that, while we watched and devised, it had slipped off by some other outlet the very existence of ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Dick"; and he tells you moreover that he is a better butcher, a better wall-layer, and cuts a broader "swathe," than any man upon the farm. Beside all which he has an immense deal of information. He knows in the spring where all the crows'-nests are to be found; he tells Frank where the foxes burrow; he has even shot two or three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding of bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership of every stray heifer that appears upon ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... worked himself out of his burrow, but he was unable to stand. Every time he tried to stand, he got faint and seemed to burst again. Something was the matter with his right ankle, too—he couldn't bear his weight on it. Perhaps he had been too near the shell ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... hand, avoiding the road to Polperro where her present owner dwelt; and so, fetching a circuit by a second lane—this time to the left— clattered downhill past the sleeping hamlet of Crumplehorn, and breasted the steep coombe and the road that winds up beside it past the two Kellows to Mabel Burrow. Here on the upland she pulled herself together, and reaching out into a gallant stride, started on the long descent towards Troy at a pace that sent the night air whizzing by Gunner Sobey's ears. Past Carneggan ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... all unnatural, my dear. Rabbits are out of place in such luxury. When I was young I lived in a burrow in the forest. I was surrounded by enemies and often had to run for my life. It was hard getting enough to eat, at times, and when I found a bunch of clover I had to listen and look for danger while I ate ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when one of her exclamations caught ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... in this condition may remain confined to the coronet and break through the skin as an ordinary abscess, or it may, before so doing, burrow beneath the wall, and invade the sensitive laminae. In this case, whenever portions of the secreting layer of the keratogenous membrane are destroyed, or perhaps only temporarily prevented from fulfilling their horn-producing functions, then corresponding ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... marmot, one of Le Claire's friends, was getting ready for winter. The entrance to his burrow was a little to one side of the cabin door. A well-worn trail led to it through the grass and another to that of his companion, fifty feet away. He was a most amusing pet, always on hand at meal times for bread-crumbs and bits of bacon-rind, came ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... with several others. They had cut so high up in a slanting direction that they appeared to be in another chamber, which was brilliantly lighted with their candles. Jim, stripped naked to the waist, stood on the end of a plank, hammering violently. Looking up into his curious burrow, Captain Jan shouted—"Hallo! Jim!" ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... necessary to secure the harness within the snow-house over night, lest, by devouring it, they should render it impossible to proceed in the morning. When the travellers arrive at their night quarters, and the dogs are unharnessed, they are left to burrow on the snow, where they please, and in the morning are sure to come at their driver's call, when they receive some food. Their strength and speed; even with a hungry stomach, is astonishing. In fastening ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... by any papers we signed!" protested one of the men forward. "We are willing to do our duty, Captain Folkner, but we did not ship to burrow through the sand, and run the risk of being captured by the Yankees. We shipped to run the blockade, and that risk ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... predictions. It would not have been "human natur'" if they had not. When we got to the camp, I called out to Masooku, my Zulu servant, to come and take the horses. Next moment I heard a rush and a scuttle in the tent like the scrimmage in a rabbit-burrow when one puts in the ferrets, and Masooku shouted out in Zulu, "He has come back! by Chaka's head, I swear it! It is his voice, his own voice, that calls me; my ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... know where that fox is going," remarked Addison. "I was in those woods, gunning, one day last fall, and I came to a fox burrow, in the side of a knoll, among trees. There was no end of yellow dirt, dug out, and there seemed to be two or three holes, leading back into the side-hill. I told the Old Squire about it. He said it was a fox-hole, and that ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... growled Larry, as he folded his sweater over a gold sack to get at least a semblance of softness for his ear to burrow into. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... birds. One sort, called pardelas by the Spaniards, burrow in the ground like rabbits, and are said to be good eating. There are also humming-birds, not much larger than bumble bees, their bills no thicker than a pin, their legs proportional to their bodies, and their minute feathers of most beautiful colours. These are seldom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... as fast as my sore feet would let me. I was gaining on the creature, but was afraid that, after all, it might get into some hole and escape me. This made me exert myself still more, when I caught sight of a burrow ahead, for which I suspected it was making. I sprang on, hunger giving an impetus to my feet, and not a yard from the spot I threw myself forward and caught it, as it was about to spring ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... day when his father was ill and lay abed, staring at the flies on the ceiling, the boy came to the solar, and slipped in behind the dusty arras that hung round the room, making believe that he was a rabbit in its burrow; he went round with his face to the wall, feeling with his hands; and when he came to the corner of the room, the wall was colder to his touch, like iron; and feeling at the place, he seemed to discover hinges and a door. So he dived ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and the hounds. There came to him a wild idea of getting to the lake, and swimming, unperceived, to the island in the centre of it. That, he madly thought, would be a safe retreat, where he might burrow and hide himself without possibility of discovery. And so he still ran on. But once again the sight of some guards made him retrace his steps, and he was compelled to go back and back in the direction of Paris, chased, forced towards the very fortifications whence he had started that morning. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... dragon, who lived by the pillar and fed himself from the bun trees, but by-and-by he began to wander. He would creep into the burrows made by the great rabbits; and excursionists, sporting on the downs, would see his long, tight, whiplike tail wriggling down a burrow and out of sight, and before they had time to say, "There he goes," his ugly purple head would come poking out from another rabbit-hole—perhaps just behind them—or laugh softly to itself just in their ears. And the dragon's laugh was not a merry one. ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit

... at her wet clothes. Then she snatched her hand away, and covered her face with both hands, and began to rock and moan, and finally turned round and hid her face against the very floor as if she would grovel and burrow into it. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... rabbit into its burrow," said Beatrice indignantly on one occasion; "and if you're caught, you behave in such a silly, awkward way that I'm ashamed of you. People will think you haven't been properly brought up, and blame me. It's not my fault that you've ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... Moqui Indian?" went on Eugene. "He climbed up, but he did not come down. We guarded that stairway closely every minute of the time. We have searched every room in this rabbit burrow that we could discover; but still he does not show up. Have you put him away in some place, the entrance to which ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... a burrow close by or a change of clothes ready, they can hardly miss him. And yet they have missed him up to now!" Holmes had gone to the window and was examining with his lens the blood mark on the sill. "It is clearly the tread of a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you out of your burrow,' said Baltic, grimly, as he strode towards her; 'in with you again, old Witch of Endor, and let ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... which discussion the whole body have remained profoundly attentive, except when some unusual noise at the Theatre over the way has induced some gentleman to glance inquiringly towards the window in that direction, behind his next neighbour's back - we burrow for information on such points as the following. Whether there really are any highway robberies in London, or whether some circumstances not convenient to be mentioned by the aggrieved party, usually precede the robberies complained of, under that head, which quite change ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... looked more like the burrow of some wild animal. It was little more than a hole dug in the side of the clay bank. Some boughs and palm-leaves were wattled together to form a rustic porch, and under this porch three people ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... to warm up your nerves like a lion at close quarters, unless it is a wounded buffalo; and I got still more so when I made out through the smoke that the lions were all moving about on the extreme edge of the reeds. Occasionally they would pop their heads out like rabbits from a burrow, and then, catching sight of me standing about fifty yards out, draw them back again. I knew that it must be getting pretty warm behind them, and that they could not keep the game up for long; and I was not mistaken, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... destroyed. Our illustration shows the natural size of the fly and maggot, with magnified representations of both. The fly lays six to eight eggs on an Onion plant, generally just above the ground. These eggs hatch in from five to seven days, according to the temperature, and the maggots at once burrow into the Onion. The result is soon visible in the discoloration of the leaves which turn yellow and begin to decay. Several generations of the insect, the scientific name of which is Phorbia cepetorum, appear in the course of a single season. A close ally is the Cabbage Root ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... million years—the little Hawks were not hungry just then. The Shrew wasn't gobbled up at once, and though wounded, it set to work to escape as soon as it was free of the old one's claws. First it hid under the little ones, then it began to burrow down through the feather-bed of the Sparrow-hawk's nest, then through the Blue Jay's nest, then through the soft stuff of the Blackbird's nest and among the old truck left by the Chickadees till it struck the hard mud floor of the Blackbird's nest, and through that it could not dig. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the larvae of insects which burrow in the soil eat soil particles which pass through their bodies and are partially dissolved. These particles are generally cast out on the surface of the soil. Thus these little animals help to move soil, to dissolve soil, and to open up passages for the entrance ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... is it, that, even under these circumstances, Ree, by the middle of the afternoon, had secured a deer and three turkeys besides a big rabbit which he caught in his hands as it sprang from its burrow beneath a fallen tree-top. And John had also shot a deer and had killed their first bear—a half-grown cub which, late in finding quarters for its long winter's sleep, rose on its hind legs, growling savagely, as the boys came suddenly upon it, in passing around ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden

... He groped toward the farther window to shut it. His foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled and crushed into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want his consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How leave her there? At last he touched her hair, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of the northern summer Bobby woke with the birds, a long time before the reveille was sounded from the Castle. He scampered down to the circling street of tombs at once, and not until the last prowler had been dispatched, or frightened into his burrow, did he return for a brief nap on ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... bear so completely that nothing less might be expected than to behold him broken in four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder. Mistaken spectators! Although, by his momentary rolling and plunging, he was evidently aroused, yet neither Bruin nor his burrow was at all the worse for all ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... corn and beans and "iskooter-squashes" said the same things about the woodchuck that I do, in his own language; and I believe that the woodchuck then, as he does now, just wrinkled his stubby black nose and retired to his burrow to sleep upon it while ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... Turkey-lurkey, and Foxy-woxy all went to tell the King the sky was a-falling. So they went along, and they went along, and they went along, till they came to a narrow and dark hole. Now this was the door of Foxy-woxy's burrow. But Foxy-woxy said to Henny-penny, Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey, "This is the short cut to the King's palace: you'll soon get there if you follow me. I will go first and you ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... peat smoke in a Highland village. Round every house are great stacks and piles of cow-dung cakes. Before every house is a huge pile of ashes, and the villagers cower round this as the evening falls, or before the sun has dissipated the mist of the mornings. During the day the village dogs burrow in the ashes. Hovering in a dense cloud about the roofs and eaves, and along the lower branches of the trees in filmy layers, the smoke almost chokes one to ride through it. I have seen a native sit till half-choked in a dense column of this smoke. He is too lazy ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... a family of young rabbits huddled round their parents in a burrow, and the mother telling a story: "And so then he went a little farther and found a dandelion, and stopped and sat up and began to eat it. And when he had eaten two large leaves and one little one, he saw a fly on it—no, two flies; and ...
— The Five Jars • Montague Rhodes James

... win anie part thereof. This towne of Vernueil was in those daies diuided into three portions, beside the castell, euerie of them apart from other with mightie wals and depe ditches full of water. One of these parts was called the great Burrow without the wals, where the French king had pitcht his field & planted his engins. About a moneth after whose coming thither, vittels began to faile them within, so that at length they required a truce onelie ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (5 of 12) - Henrie the Second • Raphael Holinshed

... fragmentary, however ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always the real thing; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... psychology, will detail the steps Cabell has taken, as a result of early associative disappointments, to repress or at least to disguise, the poet in himself—and it will disclose how he has failed. It will burrow through the latest of his works and exhume his half-buried experiments in rhyme, assonance and polyphony. This part of the paper will examine Jurgen and call attention to the distorted sonnet printed as a prose soliloquy on page 97 of that exquisite and ironic volume. It will pass to ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... Instead iv venturin' into th' wilds an' p'raps bein' et up be wan iv his fav'rite charackters, he calls f'r some tea an' toast, jabs his pen into th' inkwell, an' writes: 'Vichtry was not long in th' grasp iv th' whale. Befure he cud return to his burrow Tusky Bicuspid had seized him be th' tail an' dashed his brains out agin a rock. With a leap in th' air th' bold wolf put to rout a covey iv muskrats, those evil sojers iv fortune that ar-re seen hoverin' over ivry animile battlefield. Wan blow iv his paw broke th' back iv th' buffalo. With another ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... familiar with this society, and who has been kind enough to send me its constitution, and to give me the following particulars: "It is now three years since the founders of the society settled in this domain, coming here entirely destitute, and building first as a residence a covered burrow in a hillside. Two of them had left affluence and position in Russia, and subjected themselves to this poverty for the sake of their principles. Of course they suffered here from fever, from insufficient food, and cold, and were not ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... taken at once to his burrow in the ruin. It was a very ancient feudal castle, only just enough of it remaining to give an idea of the shape it once had been, for regardless of the respect that is due to antiquity the keepers had carted away loads of the solid masonry to build their houses, ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... easily killed when you catch him, in the same proportion is he hard to catch. He is shy and wary, scarce ever comes out of his burrow but at night; and even then skulks so silently along, and watches around him so sharply, that no enemy can approach without his knowing it. His eyes are very small, and, like most nocturnal animals, he sees but indifferently; ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... the barrister boldly, for he guessed that Mrs. Bensusan would scuttle back into the house like a rabbit to its burrow, did he speak too plainly at the outset, "that is—I wish to inquire about a friend ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... of moles came scampering along, and began to burrow down through the earth, making many holes for air to go in; for they know how to build galleries through the ground better than men can. Every one was so surprised they stopped to look on; for the dirt flew like rain as the ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... only should we be obliged to eat our food uncooked; we should enjoy none of the blessings and comforts bestowed upon us by science, which absolutely depends on fire. Nay, our houses would be too cold to shelter us in the winter, and we should be compelled to burrow in the ground. The whole human race would have to live in tropical countries; all the temperate regions would be deserted; and as it is in the temperate regions that civilisation reaches its highest and most permanent developments, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... partially coated with plaster, muddy grey in colour, adds to the comfort and security of existence by lining its tunnel with a smooth material, a distinction which cannot fail to impress the observer. In each case the mollusc is a loose fit in its burrow, having ample room for rotation, but the aperture of the latter is what is known as a cassinian oval, and generally projects slightly above ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... a supply of water, such as it was—so mixed with slime as to hang in strings between the fingers; and, after a hasty breakfast, we proceeded on our journey, mostly through a barren sandy scrub that was a perfect burrow from the number of wombats in it, to within a mile of the hill group, where the country appeared like one continuous meadow to the very base of them. I never saw anything like the luxuriance of ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... in the upper part of a block of buildings on Ludgate Hill, looking down on the Circus, above the rookery of passages which burrow tortuously under the railway arches to Water Lane, Printing House Square, and Blackfriars. It was a strange locality to live in, but it suited Colwyn. It was in the thick of things. From his windows, high up ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... bore four, weighing together 186-1/4 pounds. Who would have believed that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which unearthed it. A little mysterious hoeing and manuring was all the abra cadabra presto-change, that I used, and lo! true to the label, they found for me 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse there, where it never ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... places. An examination of such a broken stem shows "that its woody part, with the exception of a few fibers and the bark, has been cut across as if with a saw by a soft, yellowish-white grub, which can often be found in a burrow in the severed part. Since the uncut bark is the chief support left for the branch, any stiff wind or even its own weight will break it off as soon as it has become deadened. * * ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... whereof was this:—'That, understanding Prince Rupert was marching against them with 20,000 men, horse and foot, the whole army arose from the siege, and marched to Long Marston Moor, four or five miles from York; and the prince, having notice of it, passed with his army the byway of Burrow Bridge; that they could not hinder his passage to York, whereupon our army marched to Todcaster, to prevent his going southward; but before the van was within a mile of Todcaster, it was advertised ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... of it; and yet busy as he had been in the hospital, he had not sought to place himself strongly. He had gone in and out, here and there, for amusement, but he had returned to the hospital. Now the city was to be his home: somewhere in it he must dig his own little burrow. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... little hole is seen, now hit the ground near it a few times with a stick or stamp on it with your foot and the worm, if he is near the top, comes up. When he is safely out of the way dig carefully down with a knife or trowel so as to examine the hole or "burrow." At the top you generally find it lined with pieces of grass or leaves that the worm has pulled in; lower down the lining comes to an end, but the colour of the burrow is redder than that of the rest of the soil wherever the soil has a greenish ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... Maplestone," she said dreamily. "She is stiff and conventional, and it has never even occurred to her that anyone can disagree with her views, and still have a glimmering of right, but, at least, she is sincere. If one could burrow deep enough beneath the ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... miserable days that were now the rule, when Laura would have liked best to be a rabbit, hid deep in its burrow; as she was going upstairs one afternoon, she met Jacob, the man-of-all-work, coming down. He had a trunk on his shoulder. Throughout the day she had been aware of a subdued excitement among the boarders; they had stood about ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... contemplation of his own skill, sees little else. By night and by day the river leans heavily against the dam. Tiny, sharp currents, like fingers, tear constantly at the structure, working always underneath. Hidden and undreamed-of eddies burrow beneath the dam; little river animals undermine it, ever so ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... down from the White Linen Nurse's lap till she could nick her toe against the shiniest woodwork in sight. Altogether aimlessly her small chin began to burrow deeper and deeper into ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... frae Selkirk town, Who have been buying, selling, Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own, Each maiden to her dwelling! On Yarrow's banks let herons feed, Hares couch, and rabbits burrow, But we will downward with the Tweed, Nor turn ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... escape from danger, and mentally vowing that the canoe should cross all other treacherous inlets in a fisherman's sloop. I went into camp in a hollow of the beach, where the sand-hills protected me from the piercing wind. All that afternoon I watched from my burrow in the ground the raging of the elements, and towards evening was pleased to note a general subsidence ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... present) 186; domesticate, colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher[Fr], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; put up at, put up one's horses at; keep house. endenizen[obs3], naturalize, adopt. put back, replace &c. (restore) 660. Adj. placed &c. v.; situate, posited, ensconced, imbedded, embosomed[obs3], rooted; domesticated; vested in, unremoved[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... moths, cut the fabric of life with invisible teeth; if landlords sack their tenements and pinch the tenant—all these results are against the spirit of our law, against public feeling, and they that do such things must slink and burrow. They are vermin that run in the walls, and peep from hiding-holes, and we set traps for them as we do for rats or weazels. But, in the South, the subordination of man, to man, in his earnings, his skill, his time and labor—in his ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... the prairie fire, producing erysipelas. In the first of these he behaves like the famous burrowing owl of our Western plains, who forms, with the prairie-dog, the so-called "happy family." He never makes his own burrow, he simply uses one which is already provided for him by nature, and that is the little close-fitting pouch surrounding the root of a hair. Whether the criminal is a harmless native white coccus which has suddenly developed anti-social tendencies, or a ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... garden and lighted his cigar, confessing to himself that for once he could not understand Helen.—Was it then only that he was ignorant of the awful fact that lay burrowing in her heart, or was he not ignorant also of the nature of that heart in which such a fact must so burrow? Was there anything in his system to wipe off that burning, torturing red? "Such things must be: men who wrong society must suffer for the sake of that society." But the red lay burning on the conscience ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... stopped and laughed out. A lively snarling came from a burrow not far away, where two ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... was final. As if to emphasize it he turned and entered his burrow. My guard conducted me farther into the mesa, where we came presently to a tiny depression or valley, at one end of which ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... "Ah!" said she with a snort, "and why does a miller wear a white 'at, Miss Grant, that being your name I take it. Don't you ask no questions but if you must know, Miss Loach have weak eyes and don't like glare. She lives like a rabbit in a burrow, and though the rooms on the ground floor are sich as the King might in'abit, she don't come up often save to eat. She lives in the basement room where you saw her, Miss Grant, and she sleeps in the room orf. When she eats, the dining-room above is at her service. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... the next step began to ascend. Up and up she went, cheered by a welcome shaft of light. Finally she, Nan, and the dog found themselves emerging into the open air, through a hole which might have been taken for a large rabbit burrow. ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... firelight was playing over the face and hair. The lips were parted, and the head hung limply to the breast. The clothes were torn to rags, and one shoulder was bare. Through the upper flesh of it and close to the neck was an ugly burrow clotted with blood. The boy ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... front stretched the sea, smooth as glass, with a few small, white sails gleaming in the distance. Innumerable rabbits kept scuttling past. One small one came so near that she almost caught it with her hands, but it dived away into its burrow in a moment. She brought out her sandwiches and biscuits, and began to eat them. She was hungry already, and thought wistfully of breakfast. The bread had gone rather dry and the biscuits a little stale, but she enjoyed them, sitting on the hillside, especially ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... strongest—generally not without a little robbery and murder. They have no right save that of possession; the same by which the puffin turns out the old rabbits, eats the young ones, and then lays her eggs in the rabbit burrow—simply because she can. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... others as gently as he could. Their dew-draggled bodies felt cold and limp and the wire had bitten deep into the swollen flesh. Two, however, feebly crawled away and he carried another to the mouth of a burrow, after which he wiped the dew and blood from his hands, while his lips set in a firm line. He hoped he was not a sentimentalist, and admitted that man must kill to eat; moreover he had used the rifle in the Northern ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... addressed him: "Hie e there, Long-legs, or we'll roast thee, Hie there, Big-eye, or we'll stew thee, Roast thee for our lady's breakfast, Stew thee for our master's dinner, Make of thee a meal for Aino, And her brother, Youkahainen! Better therefore thou shouldst gallop To thy burrow in the mountains, Than be roasted for our dinners." Then the haughty hare made answer, Chanting thus the fate of Aino: "Think ye not I journey hither, To be roasted in the skillet, To be stewed in yonder kettle ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... halted with an exclamation, and stooped on one knee. A little heap of fresh earth from the surface-burrow of a mole had been thrown up over the dead leaves; and fairly planted on it was the clean and sharp impression of a diminutive foot, with a rubber heel showing a central star. Thorndyke drew from his pocket ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... himself by a course of study and practice in composition. As in the old Woodbridge days, he made some congenial acquaintances at a little club that met at a neighbouring coffee-house, which included a Mr. Bonnycastle and a Mr. Reuben Burrow, both mathematicians of repute, who rose to fill important positions in their day. These recreations he diversified with country excursions, during which he read Horace and Ovid, or searched the woods around London for plants ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... anything, missie. All you've got to do is to put a bit of cheese inside. They'll smell it directly, and come running home, and then you shut the door on them. They'll do anything for cheese. Give them plenty of sawdust to burrow in, and some cotton-wool to make a nest, and they're perfectly happy. Shall I wrap the cage up in brown paper ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... wanted for meat, they felt the privation of the tread to which they had teen accustomed very sensibly. One day, while Hector and Louis were busily engaged with their assistant, Wolfe, in unearthing a woodchuck, that had taken refuge in his burrow, on one of the gravelly hills above the lake, Catharine amused herself by looking for flowers; she had filled her lap with ripe May-apples, [FN: Podophyllum peltatum-May-apple, or Mandrake. The fruit of the May-apple, in rich moist soil, will attain ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we, And when the troop of Tarleton rides, We burrow in the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... little she-demon. Injects the poison from her sting into the caterpillar's central nerve cord. That not only paralyzes but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They're alive, but they're completely helpless to resist while their guts are gnawed away. ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... was thumping on my ribs as I thrust and wriggled my body down the hole. I did not think how I was to get back again; it never once occurred to me that I might stick in the burrow, and die stifled there, like a rat in a trap. My one thought was, "I shall save the coastguards," and that thought nerved me to push on, careless of everything else. It was not at all easy at first, for the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... fierce heat soon roused them to the sense of their plight. Ashbel began to curse, Etta to weep. Susan's mind was staring, without hope but also without despair, at the walls of the trap in which they were all caught—was seeking the spot where they could begin to burrow through and escape. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... the sand silvers whitely to the moon, one sees them whisking to and fro on innumerable errands of seed gathering, but the chief witnesses of their presence near the spring are the elf owls. Those burrow-haunting, speckled fluffs of greediness begin a twilight flitting toward the spring, feeding as they go on grasshoppers, lizards, and small, swift creatures, diving into burrows to catch field mice asleep, battling with chipmunks at their own ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... errands, sometimes carrying tiny scraps of straw or feather or food, or climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country. A mole throwing up its mound at the end of its burrow and making its way out at last with the long-nailed paws which looked so like elfish hands, had absorbed him one whole morning. Ants' ways, beetles' ways, bees' ways, frogs' ways, birds' ways, plants' ways, gave him a new world to explore ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... me, Over brake and under tree, Thro' the bosky tanglery, Brushwood and bramble! Follow me, follow me, Laugh and leap and scramble! Follow, follow, Hill and hollow, Fosse and burrow, Fen and furrow, Down into the bulrush beds, 'Midst the reeds and osier heads, In the rushy soaking damps, Where the vapours pitch their camps, Follow me, follow me, For a midnight ramble! O! what a mighty fog, What a merry night O ho! Follow, follow, nigher, nigher - Over bank, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... "'Why do they burrow under the coal in that way?' I asked. 'Couldn't they get it out in some manner less dangerous ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... at the Foley Arms I can see the tower of the fine old abbey church of Malvern, which would be a centre of pilgrimages if it were in our country. But England is full of such monumental structures, into the history of which the local antiquarians burrow, and pass their peaceful lives in studying and writing about them with the same innocent enthusiasm that White of Selborne manifested in studying nature as his village showed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... large ichneumon-fly, Thalessa, making a loop over her back with her long ovipositor and drilling a hole in the trunk of a tree, I do not fully appreciate the spectacle till I know she is feeling for the burrow of a tree-borer, Tremex, upon the larvae of which her own young feed. She must survey her territory like an oil-digger and calculate where she is likely to strike oil, which in her case is the burrow of her host Tremex. There is a vast series of facts ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... Chugwater shows a milky though rapid current, while the North Platte brings a considerable amount of earthy sediment from the heart of that Alpine region. After fairly entering upon the Plains, every stream begins to burrow and to wash, growing more and more turbid, until it is lost in 'Big Muddy,' the most opaque and sedimentary of all great rivers. I suspect that all the other rivers of this continent convey in the aggregate ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... considerable danger, and it was not until towards the close of the eighteenth century that the military guard ceased to attend executions. A vast multitude of persons had degenerated into a robber caste. They lodged under the arches of bridges, or nestled in nooks or corners, wherever they could burrow. The districts of the city occupied by the better class of society, seemed but a small portion of the metropolis—like islands in a sea of vice and destitution. There were numerous places of savage amusement and small gambling houses; and young men of family, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... canal boats—"queer travelling houses" Mousie called them; for it was evident that each one had a family on board, and the little entrance to the hidden cabin resembled a hole from which men, women, and children came like rabbits out of a burrow. Tough, hardy, barefooted children were everywhere. While we were looking, one frowsy-headed little girl popped up from her burrow in the boat, and, with legs and feet as red as a boiled lobster, ran along the guards like a squirrel along ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... in almost any position; by means of its large delicate ears it listens for the sound of the insect gnawing within the branch, and is thus able to fix its exact position; with its powerful curved gnawing teeth it rapidly cuts away the bark and wood till it exposes the burrow of the insect, most probably the soft larva of some beetle, and then comes into play the extraordinary long wire-like finger, which enters the small cylindrical burrow, and with the sharp bent claw hooks out the grub. Here we have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... where a bird cannot pass over one's head, where a fish cannot leap out of the water, where a rabbit cannot come out of its burrow, and I believe that bird, fish, and rabbit each becomes a spy of the cardinal. Better, then, pursue our enterprise; from which, besides, we cannot retreat without shame. We have made a wager—a wager which could not have been foreseen, and of which I defy anyone ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... plants. On the sixth day, seven Actinias were disposed upon the rock-work. On the seventh, a Horsefoot (or, as our Southern neighbors call it, a King-Crab, though of most unregal aspect) was allowed to make his burrow in the sand. On the eighth day, four Hermit and Soldier Crabs and two Sand-Crabs were invited to choose their several retreats. On the ninth, three fine Sticklebacks and three Minnows were made free of the mimic ocean; and on the tenth, an Eel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... drags himself painfully along, falls again and picks himself up in the desperate hope of reaching the chapel. The chapel contains a crypt, the existence of which he has discovered by accident. If he can burrow there, he may be saved. By dint of an effort, he approaches it, he is but a few yards away, when a sound of footsteps approaches. Harassed and lost, he lets himself go. The enemy arrives. It is Mlle. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... conclusion that his chance of spending the night in Libby Prison was better than his chance of being made a first lieutenant. The rifle-pits had a chilling effect upon the fine dreams in which his fancy had indulged. He was not a grub, and could not burrow through the earth to the rebel lines; he had no wings, and could not fly over them. The obstacles which are so easily overcome in one's dreams appear mountain-high in real life. He looked troubled and anxious; ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... like a rabbit into its burrow. The rigid woman, without words, restored the tousled pillow to the head of the bed, extracted Miss Sara from her hiding-place with one hand, smoothed out the rebellious legs with the other, covered the child firmly over, and tucked ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins



Words linked to "Burrow" :   cut into, hole, rabbit burrow, hollow, rabbit warren, tunnel, warren



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