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Arable   Listen
noun
Arable  n.  Arable land; plow land.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Arable" Quotes from Famous Books



... as possible and depart with some tangible gain before another revolution resulted in a new redistribution. Such suspicions could hardly beget the patience essential for the development of agriculture. And yet this was the very time when farming must be encouraged. Large parts of the arable land had been abandoned to grazing during the preceding century because of the importation of the provincial stipendiary grain, and Italy had lost the custom of raising the amount of food that her population required. As a result, the younger Pompey's control of Sicily and the trade routes had ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... fabulous amount of money; his betting losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... anything but an aggregate of miserable dwellings. The inhabitants were for the most part spared, and left to enjoy, if the term can be used for such an existence, what the conquerors did not think worth the having. These felt the fruits of their victory to lie in the rich arable lands of the surrounding plains, and here they settled down, each in his own holding, portioned out by lot to every soldier; the town being considered but as a part of the civitas or district, if I ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... Harmony after breakfast, on the ensuing day, and, crossing the Wabash, at a ferry, he proceeded to the Big Prairie, where, to his astonishment, he beheld a fertile plain of grass and arable; and some thousand acres of land covered with corn, more luxuriant than any he had before seen. The scene reminded him of some open well-cultivated vale in Europe, surrounded by wooded uplands. But the illusion vanished on his arrival ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... horses, but which they placed upon their own shoulders as they approached the bridge. Amongst them were fishermen from Eyemouth and Coldingham, shepherds from the hills with slaughtered sheep, millers, and the cultivators of the patches of arable ground beyond the moor. With them, also, were a few women carrying eggs, butter, cheese, and poultry; and at the head of the procession (for the narrowness of the drawbridge over the frightful chasm, beyond which the castle stood, caused the company to assume ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... Asbies contained fifty acres of arable land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. What may we assume to have been the value of its fee-simple? Malone, who allows the total fortune of Mary Arden to have been 110L 13s 4d., is sure ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... retarded progress but were positively injurious to both man and material, as it had to do with the introduction of rational ideas. The rapid increase of the world's population and the very general occupancy of arable lands throughout the world, presupposes that the maximum of food production will soon be reached. A liberal and general diffusion of scientific information among agriculturists alone can augment the productive power of the soil and at the same time conserve ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... Whom Pallas with unpardoning fury fired, By lordly pride and keen reproach inspired. A Samian peer, more studious than the rest Of vice, who teem'd with many a dead-born jest; And urged, for title to a consort queen, Unnumber'd acres arable and green (Otesippus named); this lord Ulysses eyed, And thus burst out the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... shortly. 'It's too late—too late. Don't let us talk any more of my marrying. Is not this the five-acre field?' And soon he was discussing the relative values of meadow, arable and pasture land with his father, as heartily as if he had never known Molly, or loved Cynthia. But the squire was not in such good spirits, and went but heavily into the discussion. At the end of it he ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... calcareous tract, sweeping round the chalk basin of Paris away to Caen on one side, and Nancy on the other, and south as far as Bourges, and the Limousin. This limestone tract, with its keen fresh air, everywhere arable surface, and quarriable banks above well-watered meadow, is the real country of the French. Here only are their arts clearly developed. Farther south they are Gascons, or Limousins, or Auvergnats, or the like. Westward, grim-granitic Bretons; eastward, Alpine-bearish Burgundians: here only, on ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... these chimney-tops, and spread into a flat canopy on high. Around the site stretched ten thousand acres of good, fat, unimpeachable soil, plentiful in glades and lawns wherever visible from the castle-windows, and merging in homely arable where screened from the too ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... English grumbled at the inquiry, called it tyranny, and expected worse to come of it, but there was no real cause for complaint. The primary object of the survey was the land-tax, the Danegeld, as it was called, because it was first raised to provide defences against the Danes, and every portion of arable land was assessed at a fair rate, according to ancient custom, but not that which lay waste. The entire record, including all England save London and the four northern counties, was preserved at Winchester, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... hard, bright, cold, lifeless metal—good enough for swords and scissors—but not for food. You think, perhaps, that your iron is wonderfully useful in a pure form, but how would you like the world, if all your meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing but iron wire—if all your arable ground, instead of being made of sand and clay, were suddenly turned into flat surfaces of steel—if the whole earth, instead of its green and glowing sphere, rich with forest and flower, showed nothing but the image of the vast furnace of a ghastly engine—a globe of black, lifeless, excoriated ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... after the French, the English began planting, and to-day nearly all arable land along the coast is cultivated. The English suffer much less from lack of labour, which is doubtless owing to their more humane and just treatment of the hands. In the first place, they usually come from better stock than the French, and, secondly, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... mind full of early British encampments, while John sat and smoked and pondered upon his future. He built no castles in the air, but a solid country house of red brick, destined to stand in its own grounds near Chagford, and to have a snug game-cover or two about it, with a few good acres of arable land bordering on forest. Roots meant cover for partridges in John Grimbal's mind; beech and oak in autumn represented desirable food for pheasants; and corn, once garnered and out of the way, left stubble for all ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... at the head of it, called the Black Hill. The glowing orb was fast descending behind it to the west, and the Black Hill was cast into deep shade, whilst the sun's rays shooting down two valleys on either side gave the grass the appearance of young wheat. The extent of arable land in the valley of the Inman is very considerable, but in point of scenery bears no comparison with the first. I do not know whether I have made it sufficiently clear that there is a high range at the back of the coast hereabouts. If not, I would observe that it ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... westward than eastward of the Rocky Mountains. The Great Basin, whereof Salt Lake is the lowest point, and the Valley of the Colorado, which skirts it on the east, are mainly sterile from drouth or other causes—not one acre in each hundred of their surface being arable without irrigation, and not one in ten capable of being made productive by irrigation. Arid, naked, or thinly shrub-covered mountains traverse and chequer those deep yet elevated valleys, wherein few savages or even wild ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a bold range of mountains. Roseberry Topping stands out in grim isolation, on its masses of alum rock, like a huge sea-worn crag, considerably over 1,000 feet high. But this strangely menacing peak raises his defiant head over nothing but broad meadows, arable land, and woodlands, and his only warfare is with the lower strata of storm-clouds, which is a convenient thing for the people who live in these parts; for long ago they used the peak as a sign of approaching storms, having reduced the warning to ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... with expressions of sympathy; but assured him that the war absorbed all the funds of the state, that the chests were empty; still he felt inclined—even if they had not failed—to sacrifice a part of his own income to preserve the endangered arable land of his faithful province of Suan, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... area of Deux-Sevres, which is primarily an agricultural department, consists of arable land. Wheat and oats are the main cereals. Potatoes and mangold-wurzels are the chief root-crops. Niort is a centre for the growing Of vegetables (onions, asparagus, artichokes, &c.) and of angelica. Considerable quantities of beetroot are raised to supply the distilleries ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... have in our language a very numerous class of adjectives ending in able or ible, as affable, arable, tolerable, admissible, credible, infallible, to the number of nine hundred or more. In respect to the proper form and signification of some of these, there occurs no small difficulty. Able is a common English word, the meaning of which is much better understood than its origin. Horne Tooke ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... that "over the whole course of the road barometrical observations were made by Mr. Fremont to ascertain the elevations both of the plains and of the mountains, astronomical observations were made to ascertain latitudes and longitudes, the face of the country was marked as arable or sterile, the facility of traveling and the practicability of routes noted, the grand features of nature described and some represented in drawings, military positions indicated, and a large contribution to geology and botany was made in varieties of plants, flowers, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... fable, poesy, and parable, Are false, but may he render'd also true, By those who sow them in a land that 's arable. 'T is wonderful what fable will not do! 'T is said it makes reality more bearable: But what 's reality? Who has its clue? Philosophy? No: she too much rejects. Religion? Yes; but which of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... accomplish this feat the ladies had donned homespun dresses kept for such excursions, and the gentlemen were suitably provided. Winding through an arable field they descended the narrow path that led into the thicket, and were soon pushing and cutting their way against the stout lattice of vines. When far into the interior they found themselves in a natural ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... Human use of the land surface is categorized as arable land—land cultivated for crops that are replanted after each harvest (wheat, maize, rice); permanent crops—land cultivated for crops that are not replanted after each harvest (citrus, coffee, rubber); meadows and pastures—land ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... no life was possible or visible, though there seemed to be no doubt that the D'zertanoj lived there. This must mean that though it looked unlimited—as Ijale believed it to be—there were probably arable lands on the other side. Mountains as well, if they weren't just clouds, since a line of gray peaks could just be made out on ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... liberton saw the byway to St. Catharines Well, a quarter of a mile from Liberton, Leswaid, and Drodden;[518] then came to Libberton Kirk; then came neir to Libberton burne, and turned up to Blackfurd, wheir we saw Braids merches with Libberton moore, now arable ground, bought lately by the President.[519] Also wt Grange[520] saw Sacellum Sancti Marlorati Semirogues Chappell.[521] That burne that runes throw the Brighouse goes by Blackfurd to the Calsay[522] and Powburne, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... years 1902 and 1904 the Insular Government confiscated the arable lands of many planters throughout the Islands for delinquency in taxes. The properties were put up to auction; some of them found purchasers, but the bulk of them remained in the ownership of the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... islands all together, and their combined area is nearly equal to that of Japan or California. I visited the Philippines a short time before the world war broke out and at that time there were seven million acres of arable land unoccupied and some of it could be entered and purchased for ten cents ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... Dr. Gilbert "that several square yards on his lawn were swept clean, and after two or three weeks all the worm-castings on the space were collected and dried. These were found to contain 0.35 of nitrogen. This is from two to three times as much as we find in our ordinary arable surface-soil; more than in our ordinary pasture surface-soil; but less than in rich kitchen-garden mould. Supposing a quantity of castings equal to 10 tons in the dry state were annually deposited on an acre, this would represent a manuring ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... in selecting the highest ground in this region, had a sense of this excellence of the climatic effect we do not know; but their descendants believe that such was their reason for settling the highest arable land on the Hill before the valleys or the lower ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... are three very large beeches.- BISHOP TANNER.) I have a conceit that long time ago Salisbury plaines might have woods of them, but that they cut them down as an incumbrance to the ground, which would turn to better profit by pasture and arable. The Chiltern of Buckinghamshire is much of the like soile; and there the neernesse of Bucks to London, with the benefit of the Thames, makes their woods ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... holdings and the fact that they were hemmed in by the master's land, Nekhludoff grew only more determined to put an end to his ownership, and give the land to the peasants. From the books and his conversations with the clerk he learned that, as before, two-thirds of the best arable land was cultivated by his own men, and the rest by peasants who were paid five rubles per acre—that is to say, for five rubles the peasant undertook to plow, harrow and sow an acre of land three times, then mow it, bind or press it, and carry it to the barn. In other words, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... feet. Desolation is full of rapids, some of them bad. Wonsits Valley, which succeeds Desolation, is the longest of the few valleys, being about 87 miles, with a width of 6 or 8 miles. There is a considerable amount of arable land, and along the river bank large groves of cottonwood trees. The river course is winding, the current sluggish, the width being 600 to 800 feet. At the head of this valley is Split-Mountain Canyon, 8 miles long, with ragged, craggy walls 2700 feet high. It ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... he had read thus far. The marriage was approved not for itself, it would seem, but because by means of it two stretches of earth were united into one. It was a marriage of two parks, of two estates, of two tracts of arable and forest, and that two human beings were concerned in it was apparently no more than ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... north-easterly line; so that keeping close under the shore as they were, the up view could not be had till the point was turned. First they passed the rock-bound shore which fenced in the home valley; then for a space the rocks and the heights fell back and several acres of arable ground edged the river, cut in two by a small belt of woods. These acres were not used except for grazing cattle; the first field was occupied with a grove of cylindrical cedars; in the second a soft growth of young pines sloped up towards the height; the ground there rising fast to a very bluff ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... green, and so was the rising wheat which had been sown, but which neither had nor would receive any further care. Such arable fields as had not been sown, but where the last stubble had been ploughed up, were overrun with couch-grass, and where the short stubble had not been ploughed, the weeds hid it. So that there was no place which was not ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... in the old calendar; it stands almost alone in its mystical character, and may have been taken over by the Romans from previous inhabitants of the site of Rome. Lastly, in the Terminalia, or boundary-festival of arable land in country districts, the boundary-stone was sprinkled with the blood of the victims, showing that a spirit, or numen, was believed to reside in it;[54] but I cannot find that this practice survived in the public sacrifices of the city. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... it. At a distance of six miles we ascended a small defile without any difficulty; the remainder of the march being over undulating stony ground: the valley then becomes narrow, and we again enter into the arable part, which is especially narrow. The hills present the same aspect. Joussa very abundant, and also Artemisia, and a Salsoloides flore ochroleuco. No villages are visible. We are unable to judge of the extent ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... the fishing-boat—which, as I said, in the architecture of the sea represents the cottage, more especially the pastoral or agricultural cottage, watchful over some pathless domain of moorland or arable, as the fishing-boat swims, humbly in the midst of the broad green fields and hills of ocean, out of which it has to win such fruit as they can give, and to compass with net or drag such flocks as it may find,—next to this ocean-cottage ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... coast; and then to Lusia's home in Somersetshire. I never saw her look better or happier. De Soyres pretty well; their little girl grown a pretty and strong child; their baby said to be very thriving. They live in a fine, fruitful, and picturesque country: green pastures, good arable, clothed with trees, bounded with hills that almost reach mountain dignity, and in sight of the Bristol Channel which is there all but Sea. I fancy the climate is moist, and I should think the trees are too many for health: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... earland is still a living expression; and a Yorkshireman, who has more Saxon than Latin in him, will not write "arable land," but "earable land." A Yorkshire clergyman tells me that this orthography has been perpetuated in a local act of parliament of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... valley down which the South Branch flows is similar on its scale, as are many other arable strips and patches of the upper Basin that remember Shawnee days and Civil War guerillas. Near Washington, farms are waging a losing rearguard action against speculation and sprawl, but in the ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... characteristic of the Southern agriculture. Very few farmers thought it worth while to rotate their crops when fresh lands were to be had at a few dollars an acre. The area of the United States seemed limitless, and hardly a tenth of its arable land had ever been brought under cultivation. The inventions of 1840-50 enabled the Western farmer to grow larger crops, and harvest time was not so burdensome; corn-shellers and grain-fans shortened the hours of labor for the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... your best legal advice, having no professional friend besides but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom at present I am on the best terms. My brother's widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother, in which I am named sole Executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, which it seems she held under Covert Baron, unknown to my Brother, to the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married daughter by her first husband, in fee simple, recoverable by fine—invested ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... our journey, pleased with our reception at Slanes Castle, of which we had now leisure to recount the grandeur and the elegance; for our way afforded us few topics of conversation. The ground was neither uncultivated nor unfruitful; but it was still all arable. Of flocks or herds there was no appearance. I had now travelled two hundred miles in Scotland, and seen only one tree not younger ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... unnoticed nooks, it is extinct. Salzburg Country is one of those nooks; an extensive Crypto-Protestantism lodging, under the simple slouch-hats, in the remote valleys there. Protestantism peaceably kept concealed, hurting nobody; wholesomely forwarding the wooden-clock manufacture, and arable or grazier husbandries, of those poor people. More harmless sons of Adam, probably, did not breathe the vital air, than those dissentient Salzburgers; generation after generation of them giving offence ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... flame, thrust their strong clumps from the rocky soil to stretch in a level sea, inset with tracts of heath and bracken, for miles around. The whole arc of the sky, the whole circle of the world's rim, lay bare to the eye, infinitely varied by clouds and cloud-shadows, by pasture and arable, dark patches of woods and pallor of pools, by the lambent burnish of the west and the soft purpling of the east, even by differing weathers—here great shafts of sunlight, there the blurred column of a distant shower, or the faint smear, like a bruise ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... visible; yet, as by day, to anybody whose thoughts have been engaged with it and its barbarous grandeurs of past time the form asserts its existence behind the night gauzes as persistently as if it had a voice. Moreover, the south-west wind continues to feed the intervening arable flats with vapours ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... of Sumeria appear to have been tribal in origin. Each city was presided over by a deity who was the nominal owner of the surrounding arable land, farms were rented or purchased from the priesthood, and pasture was held in common. As in Egypt, where we find, for instance, the artisan god Ptah supreme at Memphis, the sun god Ra at Heliopolis, and the cat goddess Bast at Bubastis, the various local Sumerian and Akkadian ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... part of a more general proposition, namely, that the general distribution of population in a country must always be directly dependent on transport facilities. To illustrate this point roughly we may build up an imaginary simple community by considering its needs. Over an arable country-side, for example, inhabited by a people who had attained to a level of agricultural civilization in which war was no longer constantly imminent, the population would be diffused primarily by families and groups in farmsteads. It might, if it were a very simple ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... Plain of Jezreel at the point where the road from Samaria and the south divided into two—its main stem still climbing due north towards Nazareth, while the branch bent back eastward and by south across the flat, arable country to join the Carmel road ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Besides the tax upon arable lands, of which we have hitherto spoken, Chosroes introduced into into Persia various other imposts. The fruit trees were everywhere counted, and a small payment required for each. The personality of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... be observed plying their aged limbs through the single street of the village at Middlemas towards the honoured door, which, fenced off from the vulgar causeway, was defended by a broken paling, enclosing two slips of ground, half arable, half overrun with an abortive attempt at shrubbery. The door itself was blazoned with the name of Gideon Gray, M. A. Surgeon, &c. &c. Some of the idle young fellows, who had been a minute or two before loitering at the other end of the street before the door of the alehouse, (for the pretended ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... become more peaceful and orderly, and by the abandonment of its more repulsive customs is passing from savagery to a state of semi-civilization. Still the situation has its anxieties. The very prosperity of the country has drawn into it a larger population than the arable and pastoral land may prove able to support. The Free State people are not friendly to it, and many politicians in Cape Colony would like to recover it for the Colony, while many white adventurers would ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... and common centre not only for the roads, but for steam navigation around the coasts extending in each direction about 900 miles. The coast country affords the best prospects for the agriculturist, but the arable spots therein, being of difficult access by land, his success would depend much on immediate means of communication with Sydney by water and, on the facility his position would thus afford of shipping his produce to ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... of an English maegth (or kindred) consisted first of the large arable fields divided up into narrow strips, of which each household possessed several, next of the almost equally prized meadow, which was hedged off into appropriated lots in summer, but thrown back into common in winter, and lastly of the undistributed waste, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... and ambushes upon either side, and it was certain that it would soon dissolve again into open war. Money must be raised, and it was no light matter to raise it, now that the Commons had once already voted the tenth lamb and the tenth sheaf. Besides, the Black Death had ruined the country, the arable land was all turned to pasture, the laborer, laughing at statutes, would not work under fourpence a day, and all society was chaos. In addition, the Scotch were growling over the border, there was ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... into fine angels, curious ducats, substantial ridders, spankers, and rose-nobles; then with them purchases a good number of farms, barns, houses, out-houses, thatched houses, stables, meadows, orchards, fields, vineyards, woods, arable lands, pastures, ponds, mills, gardens, nurseries, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, swine, hogs, asses, horses, hens, cocks, capons, chickens, geese, ganders, ducks, drakes, and a world of all other necessaries, and in a short time became the richest man in the country, nay, even richer than ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... in a much less interesting country. One single walk over the undulatory turf plain shows everything which is to be seen. It is not at all unlike Cambridgeshire, only that every hedge, tree and hill must be leveled, and arable land turned into pasture. All South America is in such an unsettled state that we have not entered one port without some sort of disturbance. At Buenos Ayres a shot came whistling over our heads; it is a noise I had never before heard, but I found I had an instinctive knowledge of what ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... fondness herein arrived at that pitch, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of knight-errantry, and carried home all he could lay hands on ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... seat by the gate and gazing at the field and the forest. Books on agriculture and the hints in almanacs were his joy, his favourite spiritual food; and he liked reading newspapers, but only the advertisements of land to be sold, so many acres of arable and grass land, with a farmhouse, river, garden, mill, and mill-pond. And he would dream of garden-walls, flowers, fruits, nests, carp in the pond, don't you know, and all the rest of it. These fantasies of his used to vary according to the advertisements he found, but somehow ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... obsequious swain has been rewarded for his attentions though they have been continued through so many weary months; but we shall never be able entirely to solve these mysteries till we become possessed of the rare ring sent to the King of Sarra by the King of Arable, 'by the vertue whereof' his daughter understood 'the language of all foules,' unless ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... village where the lame tailor lived, in the Zemliansk district of the Voronesh province, five rich peasants hired from the landowner a hundred and five acres of rich arable land, black as tar, and let it out on lease to the rest of the peasants at fifteen to eighteen roubles an acre. Not one acre was given under twelve roubles. They got a very profitable return, and the five acres which were left to each of their company practically ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... would see in the wheat-fields patches of the crop sickly, weak, feeble, and altogether poor; that was where the water had stood and destroyed the natural power of the seed. The same cause gave origin to that mass of weeds which was the standing disgrace of arable districts. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... properly a wood-bird; the Swedish blue-throated one lives in marshes and arable fields. I have never seen a robin in ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... tree-trunks had been placed against the rocks to aid the climbers. Some of our party trusted themselves to these ancient ladders, and with the aid of a rope also, reached the summit." These Indians had tilled a small piece of arable land ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... covering at least four hundred acres of low bottom-land; while near three thousand acres of higher river-flat, covered with beach and maple, spread around it for a considerable distance. The adjacent mountains too, were arable, though bold, and promised, in time, to become a fertile and manageable district. Calculating his distances with judgment, the surveyor laid out his metes and bounds in such a manner as to include the pond, all the low-land, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... vineyard, vinery; orangery[obs3]; farm &c. (abode) 189. V. cultivate; till the soil; farm, garden; sow, plant; reap, mow, cut; manure, dress the ground, dig, delve, dibble, hoe, plough, plow, harrow, rake, weed, lop and top; backset [obs3][U.S.]. Adj. agricultural, agrarian, agrestic[obs3]. arable, predial[obs3], rural, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the buildings he needed, and bought cattle. Of the Communal land alone he had three times as much as at his former home, and the land was good corn-land. He was ten times better off than he had been. He had plenty of arable land and pasturage, and could keep as many head of cattle as ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy

... no villages, and not even a ring of nomad tents is visible in the distance on the wide stretches of arable land. At infrequent intervals our motor passed a train of laden mules, or a group of peasants about a well, and sometimes, far off, a fortified farm profiled its thick-set angle-towers against the sky, or a white koubba floated like a mirage above the brush, but these rare signs of life ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... an obscure individual, usually very honest, very intelligent, very active, and very rich. He undertakes to farm several thousand acres of land, pasture or arable as may be, which the prince would never be able to farm himself, because he neither knows how, nor has the means to do so. Upon this princely territory the farmer lets loose, in the most disrespectful manner, droves of bullocks, and cows, and horses, and ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... New York has every physical advantage over her in site, together with an agricultural constituency of which she can never dream, and every opportunity for eventually surpassing her as a depot of domestic manufactures. London can never add arable acres to her suite, while only the destruction of the American people can prevent us from building ten up-country mills to every one which manufactures for her market. She has merely the start of us in time; she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... men. Land held in severalty was found more profitable than land held in common, large estates than small holdings, and wool-growing than corn-growing. Small tenants were evicted, small holdings consolidated, commons enclosed, and arable land converted to pasture. The mass of the agricultural population became mere labourers without rights of property on the soil they tilled; thousands lost employment and swelled the ranks of sturdy beggars; and sporadic disorder came to a head in Kett's rebellion ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... is more remarkable still how a great part of these Downs comes, by a new method of husbandry, to be not only made arable (which they never were in former days), but to bear excellent wheat, and great crops, too, though otherwise poor barren land, and never known to our ancestors to be capable of any such thing—nay, they would perhaps have laughed at any one that ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... frequently rented from the communes by manufacturing establishments. A citizen not using his share of the communal land may lease it to the commune, which in turn will let it to a tenant. The communes of Glarus are watchful that enough arable land is preserved for distribution among the members. If a plot is sold to manufacturers, or for private building purposes, a piece of equal or greater extent is bought elsewhere. Glarus has relatively as many people engaged in industries aside from ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan

... article" from which he had gathered this information, "it appears to us—I mean, to me— that our agricultural friends would be well advised, at this juncture, in considering the advisability, as well as the feasibility, of restoring a quantity of their pasture-land to an arable condition, and cultivating it as such. The Board of Agriculture, it is understood, will shortly issue a circular—er—on these lines. Now you cannot effect the change ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... was afterwards called Spittle, and some of the stones are still remaining in Spittle-field. It was left by Agnes Pudding, with eight acres of arable ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... Through Noord-Holland thus describes Laren, which lies a few miles from Hilversum and is reached by tram: "Surrounded by arable land and hilly heathery it is richly provided with picturesque spots; country-seats, villas, ordinary houses and farms are following one another. For those who are searching for rest and calmness is this village very recommendable." But to say ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... discovered the law of rent. Suddenly it struck them that all manufactured products of human industry must necessarily obey one law; whilst the products of land obey another and opposite law. Let us for a moment consider arable land as a natural machine for manufacturing bread. Now, in all manufactures depending upon machinery of human invention, the natural progress is from the worse machines to the better. No man lays aside a glove-making machine ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... "Arable land in all this territory is less than 1,200 square miles, and three-fourths of that is given over to pasturage. The richer grazing land supports Holmagor cattle, a breed said to date back to the time of Peter the Great, who crossed native herds with ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... hundred acres, principally lying in small tracts at the heads of bays and inlets, mouths of streams, and on small benches at the base of the mountains. Most of the richest spots appear to have been cultivated at some time by the Indians for raising potatoes. The largest bodies of cleared arable land seen, contained not exceeding twenty acres. There are several thousand acres of lightly timbered spruce and alder lands, bordering the bays, inlets and streams, which might be cleared and brought under profitable cultivation for dairying and the raising of root crops, should the development ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... by law allowed the use of that land for one year. If the dung was carried out in a cart in great abundance, he was to have the use of the land for three years. Whoever cut down a wood, and converted the ground into arable, with the consent of the owner, was to have the use of it for five years. If any one folded his cattle for one year, upon a piece of ground belonging to another, with the owner's consent, he was allowed the use of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various

... years of age, whom before marriage the husbands have never seen, men of thirty-five and forty and forty-eight. Does Canada desire the system of the child wife embodied in her national life? Suppose one hundred thousand Hindu colonists came to the vacant arable lands of British Columbia. As the inalienable right of a British subject, the colonist must be allowed to bring in his wife. What if she is a child to whom he was married in her infancy? The colonist being a British subject is to be given a vote. How would Canada abolish ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... waves of colonization passed into the remoter prairies. Iowa's pioneers, after Indian cessions had been secured, spread well toward her western limits. Minnesota, also, was recruited by a column of pioneers. The treaty of Traverse de Sioux, in 1851, opened over twenty million acres of arable land in that State, and Minnesota increased her population 2730.7 per cent in the decade from ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... millions—the millions of Russia—look at the grand simple life they lead in the fields, a life of toil indeed, but of toil sweet and infinitely varied; Russia is their country, not merely because they live there but because they—the peasants—now actually possess by far the greater part of the arable land; God is their God, not because they have heard of Him as some remote Being in the Sunday School, but because He is very near to them—in their homes, in their sacraments, and in their hearts; and so contentment ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... last Monday week. A young farmer, a splendid fellow, surprised his fellows by taking a very rosy view of things at a time when the whole country-side was grumbling. He was going to give up wheat, give up arable land, too, if it didn't pay, plant two thousand acres of rhododendrons and get a monopoly of the supply for Covent Garden—there was no end to his schemes, all sane enough but just a bit inflated. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the flying countryside, noted that it had changed character, pine yielding to scrub-oak and second-growth—the ragged vestments of an area some years since denuded by fire. This, too, presently swung away, giving place to cleared land—arable acres golden with the stubble of garnered harvests or sentinelled with unkempt ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... limpid lakes and thousand springs of this region, the numerous sources of the Susquehanna meander through the valleys, until, uniting their streams, they form one of the proudest rivers of the United States. The mountains are generally arable to the tops, altho instances are not wanting where the sides are jutted with rocks, that aid greatly in giving to the country that romantic and picturesque character which it so ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... Friedrichen Siel, near Carolinen Siel, in which neighborhood, on the border of the North Sea, lie Friedrichgroden, New Augustengroden, and New Friedrichgroden. It is a tract of land gained from the sea of about ten or twelve hundred acres, banked round in three divisions, and made arable, on which are built about twenty farmhouses, which form almost a new world. This land is the property of the government; a small sum is paid on entering, and a yearly ground-rent, and then it is the property of the ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... fortunes. Some trees were already dropping their leaves; the greater part standing in all the varied splendour which the late frosts had given them. The road, an excellent one, sloped gently up and down across a wide arable country, in a state of high cultivation and now shewing all the rich variety of autumn. The redish buckwheat patches, and fine wood tints of the fields where other grain had been; the bright green of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... saying to one another, It is well, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops forever,—find it now in a too questionable state; peremptorily requiring real labor and agriculture again. Real "agriculture" is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... were enabled last winter to keep 1,500 sheep on about 650 acres of arable, and 350 acres of dry upland pasture—chiefly park surrounding a mansion. The arable land does not very well bear folding in winter, as a preparation for spring corn. Neither climate nor soil are ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... taking flight at those words, he went on in a voice calculated to reach the great assembly of farmers which he now saw before him with their backs turned—"and never shall we take it away till we have reduced every acre in the country to an arable condition. In the future not only must we feed ourselves, but our dogs, our horses, and our children, and restore the land to its pristine glory in the front rank of the world's premier industry. But me no buts," ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Majesty arrived about 3 in the afternoon; and there dined, and passed the night.—Next morning, about 6, his Majesty continued his drive into the Magdeburg region; inspected various reclaimed moors (BRUCHE), which in part are already made arable, and in part are being made so; came, in the afternoon, about 4, over Ziesar and Brandenburg, back to Potsdam,—and did not dine till about 4, when he arrived there, and had finished the Journey." His usual dinner-hour is 12; the STATE ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle

... conditions of soil and climate are essentially everywhere the same, and capital is finding out how to store in and bring from the fastnesses of the mountains rivers of clear water taken at such elevations that the whole arable surface can be irrigated. The development of the country ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... Tao i chi lio: "This country [Ts'eng yao lo] is to the south-west of the Ta Shih (Arabs). There are no trees on the coast; most of the land is saline. The arable ground is poor, so there is but little grain of any kind, and they mostly raise yams to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Councils, and of the old church laws as a whole. At least half of the confiscated church property was to be given back, two abbeys at least were to remain in each county. But this movement owed its peculiar character to yet another motive. The enclosures of the arable land for purposes of pasture, of which the peasantry had been long complaining, did not merely continue; the nobility, which took part in the secularisation of the church-lands in an increasing degree, extended its grasp also to the newly-gained estates. So it came to pass that a rising of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... time, began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived) ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher

... records the lease of a farm near Sippara, which belonged to the temple of the Sun-god, and was let to a private individual by the chief priest and the civil governor of the temple. The farm contained 60 gur of arable land, and the lease of it included "12 oxen, 8 peasants, 3 iron plough-shares, 4 axes, and sufficient grain for sowing and for the support of the peasants and the cattle." Here the peasants are let ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... a little upon the landscape, and said certain of the pleasant fields below us be longed to him; but he preferred his hill-top, and if he could have his way those arable fields should be grown up to pines too. He smoked fitfully, and slowly, and in the hour that we spent together, his whiffs were of the desultory and unfinal character of his words. When we went down, he asked me into ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... peasant, and because it was constantly farmed out to men who made their bargains profitable by oppressing the needy with unfair exactions. Chief among the causes of the misery of the peasants was the extent to which arable land was converted into pasture. Commons were unjustly enclosed, villages were depopulated, the starving peasants were forced to flee to the mountains, and black cattle roamed at will round the ruins of ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... to Hungary for a supply of cattle at present. This gentleman did not, I believe, visit Transylvania, and I am inclined to think the supply from that part of the kingdom is greatly on the increase; there the pastures are not in process of being turned into arable land, and the rise in prices has given an impetus to the profitable employment of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... kine, sheep, and goats; a few cat-fish from the river, plenty of a vegetable called meholakea; some limes, a few melons, cucumbers, dried barmea, a vegetable common in Egypt; beans, durra, duchan, tobacco of the country, plenty of gum arable, with which, by the way, Sennaar abounds, (the natives use it in their cookery;) drugs and spices brought from Gidda, among which I observed ginger, pepper, and cloves; and great quantities of dried odoriferous ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... the clearing, were treated as "commons," that is to say, each villager, as well as the lord of the manor, might freely gather fire-wood, or he might turn his swine loose to feed on the acorns in the forest and his cattle to graze over the entire pasture. The cultivable or arable land was divided into several—usually three—great grain fields. Ridges or "balks" of unplowed turf divided each field into long parallel strips, which were usually forty rods or a furlong (furrow-long) in length, and from one to four ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... observe an old decay'd rake that stood next the box-keeper yonder ... they call him Sir Timothy Deuxace; that wretch has play'd off one of the best families in Europe—he has thrown away all his posterity, and reduced 20,000 acres of wood-land, arable, meadow, and pasture within the narrow circumference of an oaken table of eight foot." The Masquerade as the title of the play is a misnomer, for it does not conduce at all to the plot. We give the greater part of the Prologue ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... farinaceous wood, ligneous wood, sylvan cloud, nebulous glass, vitreous milk, lacteal water, aquatic stone, lapidary gold, aureous silver, argent iron, ferric honey, mellifluous loving, amatory loving, erotic loving, amiable wedded, hymeneal plow, arable priestly, sacerdotal arrow, sagittal wholesome, salubrious warlike, bellicose timely, temporary fiery, igneous ring, annular soap, saponaceous nestling, nidulant snore, stertorous window, fenestral twilight, crepuscular ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of the difficulties that are met with in the conversion of untilled land into arable and productive land. These difficulties are so great, that usually an isolated man would perish before he could put the soil in a condition to yield him even the most meagre living. To that end are needed the united and combined efforts of society, and all the resources ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... benefited the labouring classes is a moot question. It would seem on the whole that the process of converting arable land into pasture which had been going on all through the century was already becoming less active even in the first years of the reign, and had reached its limit some while before the Armada. As the displacement of labour diminished, fixity and regularity ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... ledges of rock, and drifting sands. Along the course of the Green, however, from the foot of Split Mountain Canyon to a point some distance below the mouth of the Uinta, there are many groves of cottonwood, natural meadows, and rich lands. This arable belt extends some distance up the White River on the east and the Uinta on the west, and the time must soon come when settlers will penetrate this ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... of arable land in this part of Servia, and the pasture is neither good nor abundant; but the Ybar is the most celebrated of all the streams of Servia for large quantities ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... endowed with lands by the liberality of its first founder, as appears in the deeds preserved in our great muniment chest. We have ten hides of woodland, wherein none may cut wood save for our use in the winter; five hides of arable land, and the same extent of pasturage for cattle. Now for the care of the culture thereof we have a hundred serfs attached to the glebe, who, we trust, do ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... upon their backs. One-half was covered with vegetation, varying from the luxuriant prairie grass to the sage-brush of the shadeless plains, plains roamed by beasts clothed with valuable robes. Two-thirds of this domain was arable, with only the irrigation of the clouds, and all of it was destined some day to be cultivated, the clouds having the assistance of man-made irrigation ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... always at home on his farm thirty slaves or thralls, besides other serving people, and about two hundred house-carles. He used to give his thralls a certain day's work; but after it was done he gave them leave and leisure to work in the twilight and at night for themselves. He gave them arable land to sow corn in, and let them apply their crops to their own use. He fixed a certain quantity of work, by the doing of which his slaves might work themselves free; and this put so much heart into them that many of them worked themselves ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... healthful living standard, that the destructive and disrupting impact of the massacre brought a period of severe famine and sickness. After the raid the surviving colonists had to abandon many of the outlying plantations with their arable fields, livestock, and supplies. And having had the routine of life interrupted, the settlers—their numbers unfortunately increased by a large supply of new immigrants, sent by ambitious planners in England—came to the ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... a happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands were to be increased, it would not be the agriculturist, but the consumer, who would profit by this phenomenon; for the result of it would be abundance and cheapness. There would be less labor incorporated into an acre ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... days a week over a north-east strip of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire—a wide, wild, thinly-populated district, with some fine woodlands; country that was almost all grass, until deep draining turned some cold clay pastures into arable. It holds a rare scent, and the woodland country can be hunted, when a hot sun does not bake the ground too hard, up to the first week in May, when, in most other countries, horns are silenced. The country is wide enough, with foxes enough, to bear hunting six days a week. ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... fenced in on each side by a wall of stones or turf. Near the house stood the "town" or home fields where meadow hay was grown, and in favoured positions where corn would grow, there were also enclosures of arable land near the house. On the uplands and marshes more hay was grown. Hay was the great crop in Iceland; for the large studs of horses and great herds of cattle that roamed upon the hills and fells in summer needed fodder in the stable and byre in winter, when they were brought home. As for ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... cottagers, all of whom had varying degrees of possession in the common lands which were administered by a manorial court of the village. These common lands were not mere stretches of heath and gorse but consisted partly of arable cultivated in strips with strict rules of rotation, partly of grazing land and partly of wood and heath. Most people in the village had a right to a strip of arable, to cut firing of brushwood and turf, and rushes for thatch, and to pasture one or more ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... running parallel with this, known as the Arable Steppes, which nearly resembles the American prairies, is almost as remarkable as the Black Lands. Its soil, although fertile, has to be renewed. But an amazing vegetation covers this great area in summer with an ocean of verdure six or eight feet high, in which men and cattle ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... similar fortress-cities which were captured by Narmer. These were the seats of the royal residence in various parts of the country. Behind their walls was the king's house, and no doubt also a town of nobles and retainers, while the peasants lived on the arable land without. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... formidable partisans of the patriot cause, the marine outlaws. Cheated of half their birthright by nature, and now driven forth from their narrow isthmus by tyranny, the exiled Hollanders took to the ocean. Its boundless fields, long arable to their industry, became fatally fruitful now that oppression was transforming a peaceful seafaring people into a nation of corsairs. Driven to outlawry and poverty, no doubt many Netherlanders plunged into crime. The patriot party had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... spare no fertile or sheltered spot, even for the burial-ground, but economically laid it out in the sand, or on the bleak hill-side; while they threw away no fencing on the house of God, but jealously preserved that costly distinction for their arable lands and orchards. They were farmers; and it was no unmeaning thing for them to keep the harvest feast. They had prayed in drought, with all faith and fervor, for the blessing of rain; in seed-time, for the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... green-sward, but the Rosewarnes had since converted the lawn into a farmyard and the shrine into a cow-byre. Above it ran a line of tall elms screening a lane used by the farm-carts, and above this again a great field of arable rounded itself ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... our field is scarcely arable, and our soil harsh, where shall we now find the labourer who sows and harrows it, who prepares not even a mystical harvest, but even any spiritual fruit, capable of assuaging the hunger of the few who stray and are lost, and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... alert gray eyes increased rather than lessened as he swung away down slope after his burro. The trail he was following was very old. Above almost every arable valley bottom the heights were crested with the stone ruins of ancient pueblos. Not improbably, Coronado or others of the early Spanish explorers had ridden this trail, west and north around the great bend, into the territory of the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... in that some have taken to themselves meadows and arable land that belong to the community. Such land we would take once more into the hands of our communities wheresoever they have not been honestly purchased. But where they have been purchased, then shall the case be agreed ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... times with a mountain torrent. At first, the task was too heavy, and the fitful-tempered brook, and the swamp-like region it encompassed, were left for years to their old wild instincts. At last the increasing demands of my business made it necessary to have more arable land, and I saw that, if I could keep it from being overwhelmed with water and gravel, the alluvial meadow was just the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... Henley Street houses till her death (she was buried September 9, 1608), and he derived a modest rent from the other. On May 1, 1602, he purchased for 320 pounds of the rich landowners William and John Combe of Stratford 107 acres of arable land near the town. The conveyance was delivered, in the poet's absence, to his brother Gilbert, 'to the use of the within named William Shakespere.' {204b} A third purchase quickly followed. On September 28, 1602, at a court baron of the manor of Rowington, one Walter Getley ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... what a market originally was, you must try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by village-communities, self-acting and as yet autonomous, each cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neighbour. But at several points, points probably where the domains of two or three villages converged, there appear to have been spaces of what we should now ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... end of the century Adadnirari had extended Assyria's sphere of influence (as distinct from her territorial holding) somewhat farther south to include not only Phoenicia but also northern Philistia and Palestine with the arable districts east of Jordan. ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... narrows off to the right, leaving a space of firm ground, varying, from three to one mile in, width, between it and the river. At the back of this swamp, again, which may be about six or eight miles across, come up the waters of Lake Pontchartrain, and thus a neck of arable land is formed, stretching for some way above the city. The whole of these morasses are covered as far as the Detour with tall reeds; a little wood now succeeds, skirting the open country, but the wood measures no more than one mile in depth, when it again gives place to reeds. Such is ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepulchral, and ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... going on at the present moment, and to which owners of land should see without delay. Hilary has been looked on somewhat coldly by other tenants for openly calling the lord of the manor's attention to it. He sturdily maintains that arable land if laid down for pasture should be laid down properly—a thing that requires labour and expenditure just the same as other farming operations. So the silver tankard, won when 'cups' were not so common as now, is a memorial of the old times before the plough turned up the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... long, long while ago. King Christian VII. then sat on the Danish throne, and he was still a young man. Much has happened since that time, much has changed or has been changed. Sea and moorland have been converted into green meadows, heath has become arable land, and in the shelter of the West Jute huts grow apple trees and rose bushes, though they certainly require to be sought for, as they bend beneath the sharp west wind. In Western Jutland one may go back in thought to the old times, farther back than the days when Christian VII. bore rule. ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... in the King's Court at Westminster (20 Jan., 1353-4), "between Thomas, son of Nicholas de Thymelby, plaintiff, and Henry Colvile, knt., and Margaret his wife, deforciants," whereby, among other property, the latter acknowledge that certain "messuages, one mill, ten acres of land (i.e. arable), two pastures, and 7 pounds of rent, with appurtenances, in Horncastre, Thimilby, and Bokeland (i.e. Woodhall), are of the right of the said Thomas; and for this the said Thomas gives to the said Henry and Margaret 200 ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... Parable, Are false, but may be rendered also true, By those who sow them in a land that's arable: 'Tis wonderful what Fable will not do! 'Tis said it makes Reality more bearable: But what's Reality? Who has its clue? Philosophy? No; she too much rejects. Religion? Yes; but which of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... hired for a season, was a large comfortable mansion, snugly situated beneath a hill covered with wood, which shrouded the house upon the north and east; the front looked upon a little lawn bordered by a grove of old trees; beyond were some arable fields, extending down to the river, which was seen from the windows of the house. A tolerable, though old-fashioned garden, a well-stocked dovecot, and the possession of any quantity of ground which the convenience of the family might require, rendered the place in every respect suitable, as the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... at home on his farm thirty slaves, besides other serving-people. He gave his slaves a certain day's work; but after it he gave them leisure, and leave that each should work in the twilight and at night for himself, and as he pleased. He gave them arable land to sow corn in, and let them apply their crops to their own use. He laid upon each a certain quantity of labour to work themselves free by doing it; and there were many who bought their freedom in this way in one year, or in the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... feet—represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village, Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... again agreeably disappointed in the abundance of Trees. Wood seems to be the peasants' sole reliance for fuel, and trees are planted beside the roads, the streams, the ditches, and often in rows or patches on some arable portion of the peasants' narrow domain. This planting is mainly confined to two varieties—the Lombardy Poplar and what I took to be the Pollard, a species of Willow which displays very little foliage, and is usually trimmed up so as to have but a mere armful of leaves and branches at ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... arable land which these pious shepherds of souls have appropriated to themselves, and which is cultivated by their flocks, is for the most part sown with wheat and pulse. The harvest is laid up in store; and what is not necessary for immediate consumption ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... and sons were talking indirectly at each other, through Mr. Jago and through me. When old Mr. Meadowcroft spoke disparagingly to his overlooker of some past mistake made in the cultivation of the arable land of the farm, old Mr. Meadowcroft's eyes pointed the application of his hostile criticism straight in the direction of his two sons When the two sons seized a stray remark of mine about animals in general, and applied ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins

... of clearing the soil, tilling the arable land, raising corn, rye, wheat, oats, and flax, of gathering iron ore from bogs and turpentine from pine trees, and in other ways of providing the means of existence, rendered life essentially stationary and isolated, and the mind was but slightly quickened by association with ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... country, among those kinds of soil which are favorable to the cultivation of tobacco; but I do not recollect one single instance where I have met with tobacco growing wild in the woods, although I have often found a few spontaneous plants about the arable and trodden grounds of deserted habitations. This circumstance, as well as that of its being now, and having been, cultivated by the natives at the period of European discoveries, inclines towards a supposition that this plant is not a native of North America, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... stood, near the centre of a rather extensive hamlet, not many miles distant from a northern seaport town, a large, substantially-built, but somewhat straggling building, known as Craig Farm (popularly Crook Farm) House. The farm consisted of about one hundred acres of tolerable arable and meadow land; and at the time I have indicated, belonged to a farmer of the name of Armstrong. He had purchased it about three years previously, at a sale held, in pursuance of a decree of the High Court of Chancery, for the purpose of liquidating ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... looks down, it reached to the Mediterranean Sea, from 24 deg. 3' N. to 31 deg. 37' N. The river runs in a valley, bounded on one side by the eastern and on the other by the Libyan chain of mountains, and of which the average breadth is about seven miles, the arable land, however, not averaging more than five and a half. At the widest place it is ten and three-quarters, at the narrowest two. The entire surface of irrigated and fertile land in the Delta is 4500 square miles; the arable land of Egypt, 2255 square miles; and in the Fyoom, 340 square miles, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... Michael in the Mount Tumba, formerly called the Hore-rock in the wodd; and there were a forest and meadows and arable land between the said mount and the Syllye Isles, and there were 140 parochial churches swallowed by the sea ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... to be procured, a pig of thirty-five stone may be fattened in ten days on something less than two hundred weight of carrots. We intend to try if this is the case, and have half an acre of our orchard (which is arable) sown with carrot-seed, and feed our "stock" in the winter with the produce. With the surplus milk of two cows we find we can always keep three pigs with very little expense. Of course, if we did not plant plenty of potatoes, we must purchase more ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton

... mieno. appetite : apetito. applaud : aplauxdi. apply : almeti; sin turni al. appoint : nomi, difini. appreciate : sxati. approach : alproksimigxi. approve : aprobi. apricot : abrikoto. apron : antauxtuko. arable : plugebla, semotauxga. arbitrary : arbitra. arbitration : arbitracio. arbour : lauxbo. arch : arko; arkefleksi. argue : argumenti. arithmetic : aritmetiko. arm : brako, "-pit," akselo; armi. arms : armiloj, bataliloj. aroma : aromo. arouse : veki. arrange : arangxi. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... land that will make a profit year after year, whether the tree pays or not. If this is not feasible, there should be something else which can be quickly converted into a crop if the main hope suddenly disappears. For the man who is growing nuts on level, arable land, I believe I cannot emphasize too strongly the pastured pig. Pigs below trees (and nuts maybe above). This is merely the two-story farming that Europe was practising when Columbus was a boy. Upon all good ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various

... without kindred or acquaintance in our woods. They had survived their master,—no one could tell how long,—but had not abandoned the haunts of his exile. They still for many a year saw the wilderness beneath their daily flight giving place to arable fields, and learned to exchange their wary guard against the Indian's arrow for a sharper watch of the Anglo-Saxon rifle. Up to the last of their appearance the country-people spoke of them as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... understand, I don't want a big farm. Anybody else can have the arable. Just a comfortable house and some meadows; about twenty acres or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... outside world I presume the Russian names are most likely to endure with geographers. The upper part of the defile of the Buryea Mountains is wider and has more meadows than the lower portion. On one of these meadows, where there is a considerable extent of arable land, we found the village of Raddevski, named in honor of the naturalist Raddy, who explored this region. The resources here were excellent, if I may judge by the quantity and quality of edibles offered to our steward. The people of both sexes ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... has been officially estimated that the arable lands of Chile comprise about twenty-five millions of acres (slightly over 39,000 sq. m.), or very nearly one-eighth of its total area. The desert regions of the north include comparatively large areas of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... of the Bharatas, by giving away a shed for the shelter of kine that can keep out cold and rain and that is substantial in structure, the giver rescues seven generations of his race (from hell). By giving away a piece of arable earth the giver attains to excellent prosperity. By giving a piece of earth containing mineral wealth, the giver aggrandises his family and race. One should never give away any earth that is barren or that is burnt (arid); ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... cliff face from which an avalanche has removed the supersoil and herbage without thinking in pity of the crowded sections of China, where tearing up even the roots of trees for fuel has permitted so much arable land to be denuded by rains that the food supply gets smaller ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... country rises too suddenly into stony hills to be in general so good as in most other places. It would, however, afford tolerable pasturage; and a few patches of eighty or one hundred acres each were excellent arable land. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... may quell: And 'tis his fault to love those sons too well, Or, in reward of thy victorious hand, Has Troy proposed some spacious tract of land An ample forest, or a fair domain, Of hills for vines, and arable for grain? Even this, perhaps, will hardly prove thy lot. But can Achilles be so soon forgot? Once (as I think) you saw this brandish'd spear And then the great AEneas seem'd to fear: With hearty haste from Ida's mount he fled, Nor, till he reach'd Lyrnessus, turn'd his head. Her lofty walls ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... surface of the land. "A house, with its stables and farm-buildings," says Mr. Hallam, "surrounded by a hedge or inclosure, was called a court, or as we find it in our law-books, a curtilage: the toft or homestead of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with the adjacent arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa or manse. Several manses composed a march; and several marches formed a Pagus, or district." There was indeed little temptation or need to move from place to place, when nearly ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... succeeded there—which I will do for the sake of the argument—do you know the reason of it? The true and only causes of whatever success has attended it in Antigua are, that the population was before crowded, and all or nearly all the arable land in cultivation. The emancipated negroes could not, many of them, get away if they desired; and knew not where to go, in case they did. They had, practically, no alternative but to remain on the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... it is generally milder than that of Galicia, the mean annual temperature at Czernowitz being 46.9 deg. F. No less than 43.17% of the total area is occupied by woodland, and the very name of the country is derived from the abundance of beech trees. Of the remainder 27.59% is occupied by arable land, 12.68% by meadows, 10.09% by pastures and 0.78% by gardens. The soil of Bukovina is fertile, and agriculture has made great progress, the principal products being wheat, maize, rye, oats, barley, potatoes, flax and hemp. Cattle-rearing constitutes another important source of revenue. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various



Words linked to "Arable" :   productive, arability, cultivatable, tillable, cultivable



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