I could trace the outlines of large birches that had fallen long ago, collapsed and rotted and turned to soil, by faint yellowish-green lines of featherlike moss, eighteen inches wide and twenty or thirty feet long, crossed by other similar lines.
"Canoeing in the wilderness"
Henry David Thoreau
Another way to combat this upward radiation is to pour a loose, featherlike insulating material into the space between the attic flooring and the plaster of the bedroom ceilings.
"If You're Going to Live in the Country"
Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
And every one of these flat and angular slabs was fringed with hairlike needles, or with featherlike needles, and longer needles stood in between.
"Over Prairie Trails"
Frederick Philip Grove