Blue-bottle

To-morrow there is a party of purple at the “blue” Miss Berry’s. Shall I go? um!—I don’t much affect your blue-bottles;—but one ought to be civil.

What is the tane but a waefu’ bunch o’ cauldrife professors and ministers, that sate bien and warm when the persecuted remnant were warstling wi’ hunger, and cauld, and fear of death, and danger of fire and sword, upon wet brae-sides, peat-haggs, and flow-mosses, and that now creep out of their holes, like blue-bottles in a blink of sunshine, to take the pu’pits and places of better folk—of them that witnessed, and testified, and fought, and endured pit, prison-house, and transportation beyond seas—A bonny bike there’s o’ them!

There appears to be a growing disposition on the part of the literary and dramatic blue-bottles of this city to get up a national drama and to manufacture a new race of actors.

It's a precious dark set of offices, and in the room where I sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and some cards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and some desks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and a lot of cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up blue-bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.

I went to a gentleman's piper recently, to get the piob-reachd of Cill-a-Chriosd for this work, and received a specimen, which is a much better imitation of the inexpressive notes, eternally repeated, that would be made by three unfortunate bumbees or blue-bottles imprisoned in a tin snuffbox […]

Drowsy with dawn, barely asail, Buzzes the blue-bottle over the shale, Scared from the pool by the leaping trout; And the brood of turtlings clamber out On the log by their oozy house.

Lily shook her head violently and sneezed a large blue-bottle fly from where that insect had perched itself on the tip of her nose.

I listened to little oral essays on jelly blubbers, men-o'-war, sea slugs, blue-bottles, giant crabs, and even prawns.

There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead blue-bottle on the window-sill.