Old book illustrations wordshop

HAMSTER s. (german word). Mamm. genus of rodent, close to the rat, and characterized by a short and hairy tail and by elongated fur lined pouches, that these animals use for the transport of grain they store in their underground dwellings. There are various species of hamsters, in Europe as well as in the north of Asia. The common species, known as the Black-bellied Hamster (cricetus vulgaris, Cuv.), includes rodents a bit larger than the rat, with …Read more »

Two fellows, needing funds, and bold,
A bearskin to a furrier sold,
Of which the bear was living still,
But which they presently would kill–
At least they said they would.
And, if their word was good,
It was a king of bears–an Ursa Major–
The biggest bear beneath the sun.
Its skin, the chaps would wager,
Was cheap at double cost;
‘Twould make one laugh at frost–
And make two robes as well as one.
Old Dindenaut, in sheep who dealt,
Less prized his sheep, than they their pelt–
(In their account ’twas theirs,
But in his own, the bears.)
By bargain struck upon the skin, …Read more »

GYNERIUM s. (greek gune, pistil; erion, wool; woolly pistil) Bot. Genus of arundinaceae⁽¹⁾ in the family gramineae, whose main species is the pampas grass (gynerium argenteum⁽²⁾) or Uruguayan pampas grass, a big herbaceous perennial plant native to the plains of South America: This plant flowers at the end of summer or at the beginning of fall and produces a lot of stems, sometimes as many as 40 or 50, which can be from …Read more »

They had hardly closed the gate before I sprang from the window and ran to the well. Then, just as my governor had leaned over, so leaned I. Something white and luminous glistened in the green and quivering ripples of the water. The brilliant disk fascinated and allured me; my eyes became fixed, and I could hardly breathe. The well seemed to draw me in with its large mouth and icy breath; and I thought I read, at the bottom of the water, characters of fire traced upon the letter the queen had touched. Then, scarcely knowing what I was about, and urged on by one of those instinctive impulses which drive men upon their destruction, I lowered the cord …Read more »

The latest news from Australia let us know of the loss, with all hands, of the english ship Dunbar, which ran aground one mile away from Port Jackson, in the night of 20th to 21st of August 1857, during a hurricane that had been lasting since the 18th.
Here are some details about this shipwreck, from which only one crew member of the Dunbar escaped, out of one hundred and twenty people, including both crew and passengers, who were on board at the time of the disaster.
The Dunbar, 1,321 tons, had left Plymouth under Captain …Read more »

HALLE, city in prussian Saxony, on the Saale, 28 km (17.4 miles) N.W. of Leipzig; population 60,120. It comprises Halle itself, with five suburbs and the former cities of Glaucha and Neumarkt. The university, founded in 1694 and merged in 1815 with that of Wittenberg, had 90 teachers and 888 students in 1876. A seminar, many medical institutions, an academy of natural sciences, a botanical garden, an observatory and a library with 100 000 volumes. The Francke institutions, in the Glaucha suburb, include an orphan asylum, several …Read more »