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noun
Fertility  n.  The state or quality of being fertile or fruitful; fruitfulness; productiveness; fecundity; richness; abundance of resources; fertile invention; quickness; readiness; as, the fertility of soil, or of imagination. "fertility of resource." "And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps Corrupting in its own fertility." "Thy very weeds are beautiful; thy waste More rich than other climes' fertility."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fertility" Quotes from Famous Books



... beauty, whose emotions are fiery and sweet, but who have not just the intellectual store of words, which must drip like honey from an overflowing jar. It is a gift as definite as that of the sculptor or the musician, an exuberant fertility and swiftness of brain, that does not slowly and painfully fit a word into its place, but which breathes thought ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... exhibits Henry Rogers as the peer of Butler as a reasoner, it also shows him not inferior to Lamb as a humorist. Much as we are inclined to echo the critical decisions of prefaces, we regret being unable to indorse this confident statement. In amplitude, vigor, and fertility of thought we must think the author of the "Analogy" holds some slight advantages over the author of "The Eclipse of Faith"; and we seriously doubt if the lovers of Charles Lamb will be likely to rush into mirthful ecstasies over the humor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... the mills stood still. The grape crops, indeed, were prodigious, but the vintage was not profitable because the wine had a tendency to sour. Gentle rains in September prepared the ground for an untimely fertility. Trees blossomed and, though some fruits withered prematurely, cherries actually ripened. Thus the Rhinelands presented a pleasant appearance as Charles ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... of very little power of interpretation or illumination; they are the products of a barren, dry-as-dust industry, which has expended itself upon external characteristics and incidental references. Nevertheless, the very volume and mass of these secondary books witness to the fertility of the first-hand books with which they deal, and show beyond dispute that men have an insatiable desire to get at their interior meanings. If these great poems had been mere illustrations of individual skill and gift, this interest would have long ago exhausted itself. ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... clouds of light with which spirits are wont to signalize their presence in the seance-room. I have sat for hours on a summer night by the Mediterranean watching the phosphorescent waves throw a luminous spray over the shore, and meditating on the inexhaustible fertility of the sea. And I have watched with the same intense wonder the phenomena of the soul illuminated by the daimon of inner vision and the infinite manifestations of the power of spirit over matter. From the point of view of science there is no clearly ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... that privilege never possessed any value. I should not care to see into seventeen counties, unless the country which spread itself before my view was fair and lovely. The country which is so seen from Cleeve Hill is exquisitely fair and lovely;—very fair, with glorious fields of unsurpassed fertility, and lovely with oak woods and brown open heaths which stretch away, hill after hill, down towards the southern coast. I could greedily fill a long chapter with the well-loved glories of Cleeve Hill; but it may be that we must press its heather with our feet ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... safer entrance for large vessels, Monrovia would now be second only to Sierra Leone. Following the beautiful border of the Saint Paul's, a few miles from Monrovia the eye rests on extensive plains teeming with luxurious vegetation. The amplest proof has been given of the soil's fertility in the production of coffee, sugar, cotton and rice. I have frequently seen cane fourteen feet high, and as thick as any I ever met with in the Indies. Coffee-trees grow much larger than on this side of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... veins of those who nursed it, tending, watching its perpetual fertility, should be distilled a love so deep and subtle that they could not bear to leave it, to abandon its hills, and greenness, and bird-songs, and all the impress of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... little boys, cocking their cups at alarming angles, and looking fierce as young roosters. They are generally great consumers of Macassar oil and the Balm of Columbia; they thirst and rage after whiskers; and sometimes, applying their ointments, lay themselves out in the sun, to promote the fertility of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... present century, have produced men who have carefully set forth their history, manners and customs. These men have fully weighed the questions of isolation, mode of life, habits of thought, and wild surroundings, which developed in the Highlander firmness of decision, fertility in resource, ardor in friendship, love of country, and a generous enthusiasm, as well ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... my readers will probably be astonished to learn that the soil of Jersey, which consists of decomposed granite, with no organic matter in it, is not at all of surprising fertility, and that its climate, though more sunny than the climate of the British Isles, offers many drawbacks on account of the small amount of sun heat during the summer and of the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveller Burton says of it—"Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded. . . . In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the river from Reach Hopeless. Meet watering party. One of the men deserts. Kangaroo shooting. The writer left to complete survey of river. Silk cotton-tree. Fertility of Whirlwind Plains. Attempt of one of the crew to jump overboard. Reach the Ship. Suffer from sore eyes. Lieutenant Emery finds water. Geological specimens. Bird's Playhouse. Tides. Strange weather. Range of Barometer. Accounted ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... and form of heath-clad mountains, dark and towering. The prospect on either range is highly pleasing, and capable of being compared with any I have ever seen, in softness, variety, and that serene lustre which reposes only on the surface of a country rich in the beauty of fertility, and improved, by the hand of industry and taste. Opposite Knockmany, at a distance of about four miles, on the south-eastern side, rose the huge and dark outline of Cullimore, standing out in gigantic relief against the clear blue of a summer sky, and flinging down his frowning and haughty ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... various kinds of corn appeared to him to be wild plants; the mules walked in them with half their bodies covered by them; the ears of wheat were sown by themselves. "All travellers," says Ritter, "agree in their descriptions of the extraordinary beauty and fertility ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... may be carried on to any length, according to the fertility of the minds of the children, the excuses of Mrs. Wang at times being very ludicrous. All these, however, being met, the host carries her off on his back to partake of the dainties of a dog ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... monasteries and island nunneries. Upon that I am not competent to speak, but if I may believe the literature of the subject—unhappily a not very well criticised literature—it is not necessary to enforce this separation. [Footnote: See for example Dr. W. A. Chapple's The Fertility of the Unfit.] ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... be conducted over. In this way the whole army was after a delay of four days once more united; and after a further three days' march through the valley of the Doria, which was ever widening and displaying greater fertility, and whose inhabitants the Salassi, clients of the Insubres, hailed in the Carthaginians their allies and deliverers, the army arrived about the middle of September in the plain of Ivrea, where the exhausted troops were quartered in the villages, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... fertility can be possible in a seething world-furnace, is too far beyond our philosophy to be conceivable. Alpha Centaurus is so large a sun that although it has a population ten times greater than our globe, yet its ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... Menstruation continues from puberty to about the forty-fifth year, which usually marks the menopause, or "change of life." When it disappears a woman is no longer capable of bearing children. Her period of fertility has passed. In rare cases menstruation has stopped at 35, or lasted ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... a low price than any other tree in general use for street or ornamental purposes. The branches are easily broken by wind and ice, and the roots fill the ground for a long distance and exhaust its fertility. ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... his suavity, his insinuating style, and his easy manners, which are admirable, ought to have compensated more than it did for his lack of penetration. He always showed habitual irresolution, but I really do not know to what to attribute this irresolution; it could not, with him, have come from the fertility of his imagination, which is anything but lively. He was never a warrior, though he was very much the soldier. He was never a good partyman, though he was engaged in it all his life. That air of bashfulness ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the food supply is running short. All this is pure fancy. Let any one consider in his mind's eye the enormous untouched assets still remaining for mankind in the vast spaces filled with the tangled forests of South America, or the exuberant fertility of equatorial Africa or the huge plains of Canada, Australia, Southern Siberia and the United States, as yet only thinly dotted with human settlement. There is no need to draw up an anxious balance sheet of our assets. There is still an uncounted plenty. And every ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... demon or a divinity. Asgard, above the blue firmament, was the bright home of the gods, the Asir. Helheim, beneath the rocky earth and the frozen ocean, was the dark and foul abode of the bad spirits, the Jotuns. Everywhere in nature, fog and fire, fertility and barrenness, were in conflict; everywhere in society, law and crime were contending. In the moon followed by a drifting cloud, they saw a goddess chased by a wolf. The strife goes on waxing, and must sooner or later ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... lies New Zealand, like a strong outpost, its shores so scooped and torn by the waves that it must be a very paradise of commodious bays and safe havens for the mariner. The soil, too, is of extraordinary fertility; and the climate, though humid, deals kindly with the Englishman's constitution. Nor is this all; for, advanced from it, north and south, like picket stations, are Norfolk Island, and the Auckland group, both of which ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... Attracted by fertility of soil and advantages for cattle-raising, large numbers of Americans had long been emigrating to Texas. By 1830 they probably comprised a majority of its inhabitants. March 2, 1836, Texas declared its independence of Mexico, and on April 10th of that year fought in defence of the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... reflect upon the primitive simplicity of the business we undertook for Pignaver, and compare it with the plan we have now conceived and shall certainly execute in a few days, I cannot but congratulate myself on the fertility of my imagination, or, as I might say, upon the resemblance between my mind and that of the novelist Boccaccio. But I feel the superiority of my lot over his in the fact that I am generally the chief actor in my ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... indulgence of speculation upon the features which the unexplored land was characterized. Its mountains, plains, and streams, animals, and men, were yet to be discovered and named. It might be found the richest land under the sun, exhaustless in fertility, yielding the most valuable productions, and unfailing in its resources. It was possible it would prove a sterile desert. Imagination could not but expatiate in this unbounded field and unexplored wilderness; and there are few persons entirely secure from ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... adventurous French or Spanish trader would cross the towering mountains and penetrate the vales beyond. They vied with the Indians in their account of the salubrity of the climate, the brilliance of the skies, the grandeur of the forests, the magnificence of the rivers, the marvelous fertility of the soil ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... of the world the excessive heat burned up the ground so much that nothing would grow unless the soil was watered in that manner. "There is," said he, "a country in particular, called Egypt, which has always been famous for its fertility, and for the quantity of corn that grows in it, which is naturally watered in the following extraordinary manner:—There is a great river called the Nile, which flows through the whole extent of the country; the river, at a particular time of the year, begins to overflow its banks, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... pint the President displayed that originality and fertility uv imaginashun karacteristic uv him. The recepshun wuz grand. The masses called for Grant, and His Highness promptly responded. He asked em, ef he was Judis Iskariot who wuz the Saviour? Thad Stevens? If so, then after swingin ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... discussion on this subject which I have introduced in the second edition of the "Descent of Man," and which you can find (for I have no copy here) in the list of additions. The facts have convinced me that lessened fertility and the poor constitution of the children is one chief cause of such decrease; and that the case is strictly parallel to the sterility of many wild animals when made captive, the civilisation of savages and the captivity of wild animals leading ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... workrooms like the news of victory. We were very well used to find in these singers apt and willing learners; we were also used to note that whatsoever we had found to teach them hitherto, passed, when the performance was done, into forgetfulness: we were totally unused to find this fertility and resonance follow, as it followed upon the teaching of the Folk-songs. It was like a sowing and a full harvest in a place where, until now, we had tilled all ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp

... off; and, well as the monks knew how to choose the sites of their establishments, I think they never chose a better site than this,—in the green lap of protecting hills, beside a stream, and with peace and fertility looking down upon it on every side. The view down the valley is very fine, and, for my part, I am glad that some peaceable and comfort-loving people possessed these precincts for many hundred years, when nobody else knew how to appreciate ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... ten years and more later, Harold again fell into peril and again escaped through his fertility in resources. Having beaten his rival in a naval battle, he entered the long and narrow Lim fiord to plunder the land, fancying that Sweyn was in no condition to disturb him. He reckoned too hastily. Sweyn, learning ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... polish minutely. Over and over again we find this idea expressed, most noticeably in connection with the poet Campbell, whom Scott could scarcely forgive for making so little use of his poetical gifts. He applauded the much-criticised fertility of Byron, whose genius was in that respect akin to his own. "I never knew name or fame burn brighter by over-chary keeping of it,"[351] Scott said. The greatest writers he observed, have been the most voluminous. His position was one that could ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... these the children of the prophets? The Mussulman, Christian, Jew, are they not the elect children of God, loaded with favors and miracles? Why, then, do these privileged races no longer enjoy the same advantages? Why are these fields, sanctified by the blood of martyrs, deprived of their ancient fertility? Why have those blessings been banished hence, and transferred for so many ages to other nations ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... British provinces on the continent of America against the French and Spaniards, and Indian nations in their interests; that the ports and harbors within the said province may be a good security to the trade and navigation of this kingdom, that the said province, by reason of the fertility of the soil, the healthfulness of the climate, and the convenience of the rivers, is a proper place for establishing a settlement, and may contribute greatly to the increasing trade of this kingdom; that it is very necessary and advantageous to this nation that the colony of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... diamonds. These water-works, of the most ingenious construction, many of them invented and contrived by scientific engineers, were the weapons with which man had conquered the desert that originally surrounded this lake, forcing it into green fertility and productiveness of grain and fruit. Nay, the desert had, for many centuries, here ceased to exist. Dionysus the generous, and the kindly garden-gods had blest the toil of men, and yet, now, in many a plot—in all which belonged ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... seen the desert or felt the sun heavily on his shoulders would hardly admire the fertility of the riparian scrub. Unnourishing reeds and grasses grow rank and coarse from the water's edge. The dark, rotten soil between the tussocks is cracked and granulated by the drying up of the annual flood. ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... poetry has been cultivated in all savage nations. The warmth of the passions has been of great use in promoting this delightful art." It is not to be wondered at, then, that the Athenians, who, to use the words of the same writer, possessed a lively imagination, great fertility of genius, a rich harmonious language, and eminent abilities excited by the most ardent emulation, should be extravagantly fond of poetry, and no less partial to those who displayed a vigorous spirit of emulation in that art, and an ambition to excel in any of the employments that served to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... and in sympathy for the sufferings of others, he was deficient. His principles were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But though we cannot with truth describe him either as a righteous or as a merciful ruler, we cannot regard without admiration the amplitude and fertility of his intellect, his rare talents for command, for administration, and for controversy, his dauntless courage, his honourable poverty, his fervent zeal for the interests of the State, his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... increasing attention to conservationist practices to counter loss of soil fertility from traditional ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... purpose, will brace to strenuous effort, will subdue self, self-regard, self-importance, will subdue fear. It is the true anaesthetic. The soldier is unconscious of his wounds, while the glow of devotion is in his heart and the shout of the battle in his ears. It will give fertility ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... gigantic tract called 'Pamela'—distinctly the worst of his works—of which it is enough to say at present that it succeeds neither in being moral nor in amusing. It shows, however, a truly amazing fertility in a specially feminine art. We have all suffered from the propensity of some female minds (the causes of which we will not attempt to analyse) for pouring forth indefinite floods of correspondence. We know the heartless fashion in which some ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Milton may be placed as a statesman, yet as a poet he stands in one point of view without a rival; the sublimity of his conceptions, the elevation of his stile, the fertility of his imagination, and the conduct of his design in Paradise Lost is inimitable, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... foot-notes, can gradually put together for himself an image of that world of obsolete humors in which Jonson's comedy dwells, and can admire the dramatist's solid good {122} sense, his great learning, his skill in construction, and the astonishing fertility of his invention. His characters are not revealed from within, like Shakspere's, but built up painfully from outside by a succession of minute, laborious particulars. The difference will be plainly manifest if such a character as Slender, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, be compared with any ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... alacrity in prosecuting such researches. The new light which dawned, or seemed to dawn, upon him, in the course of these investigations, is reflected, in various treatises, evincing, at least, the honest diligence with which he studied, and the fertility with which he could produce. Of these the largest and most elaborate are the essays on Grace and Dignity; on Naive and Sentimental Poetry; and the Letters on the AEsthetic Culture of Man: the other pieces ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... was the finding of suitable names for the dramatis personae. Balzac used to look long among the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to the fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find that Hawthorne—somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of his ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... by their approach to the village, which was built at the foot of a precipitous kopje, the spot having been chosen originally for its fertility consequent upon the fact that a copious spring of fresh water rose high up among the rocks to form the little stream and gully at whose mouth the young officers had ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... quantum sufficit[Lat], Q.S.. mediocrity &c. (average) 29. fill; fullness &c. (completeness) 52; plenitude, plenty; abundance; copiousness &c. Adj.; amplitude, galore, lots, profusion; full measure; " good measure pressed down and running, over." luxuriance &c. (fertility) 168; affluence &c. (wealth) 803; fat of the land; "a land flowing with milk and honey"; cornucopia; horn of plenty, horn of Amalthaea; mine &c. (stock) 636. outpouring; flood &c. (great quantity) 31; tide &c. (river) 348; repletion &c. (redundancy) 641; satiety &c. 869. V. be sufficient ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Barbin and his companions. Among them Batoche was called to take a position. His well-known skill with the carbine, his rare knowledge of all the woods for miles in circumference, his remarkable powers of endurance, his reckless bravery and fertility of expedient in the midst of most critical danger, all fitted him for the trying events which circumstances thrust upon him and his friends. But the oddities of his mode of life, the eccentricities of his character, his generally accredited relations with the spirits of the departed, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... Rosecrans amounted to warm affection and very strong personal liking. Yet I found he had reached the same judgment of his mental qualities and his capacity as a commander which I had formed at an earlier day. Rosecrans's perceptions were acute and often intuitively clear. His fertility was great. He lacked poise, however, and the steadiness of will necessary to handle great affairs successfully. Then there was the fatal defect of the liability to be swept away by excitement and to lose all efficient control of himself and of others in the very ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... of it had regained a measure of fertility. There was life now—some of it his own meat lizards who had wandered across the river and out of his control. And he had even seen some of the escaped pseudomen slinking through the scrub growth and making their crudely ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole

... wealth and beauty to bless the most sterile soil stirred by willing and intelligent labor; while the reversing of that spell scatters squalor and poverty and misery over lands endowed by Nature with the highest fertility, spreading their leprous infection from the laborer to his lord. All this is in strict accordance with the laws of God, as expounded by man in his books ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... inventions in the space of six years are a striking testimony to the fertility of Bain's imagination at this period. But after this extraordinary outburst he seems to have relapsed into sloth and the dissipation of his powers. We have been told, and indeed it is plain that he received a considerable sum ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... had strangely abused it, their experience had not the less persuaded them of the range of his mind, of the greatness of his genius and of his views, of his singular penetration, of the sagacity and address of his policy, of the fertility of his expedients and of his resources, of the dexterity of his conduct under all changes of circumstances and events, of his clearness in considering objects and combining things; of his superiority over his ministers, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... be difficult to sum up the characteristics of such a writer as George Sand shortly, but it has to be done. There is to be allowed her—of course and at once—an extraordinary fertility, and a hardly less extraordinary escape from absolute sinking into the trivial. She is preposterous early, somewhat facile and "journalistic" later, but she is never exactly commonplace. She belongs ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... except even the country on the Crow Wing River, is the land bordering on Otter Tail Lake. For forty miles all round that lake the land is splendid. More than a dozen disinterested eye-witnesses have described that region to me in the most glowing terms. In beauty, in fertility, and in the various collateral resources which make a farming country desirable, it is not surpassed. It lies south of the picturesque highlands or hauteurs des terres, and about midway between the sources of the Crow Wing and North Red Rivers. From this town the distance ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... white houses surrounded by woods, hills yellow with vines or white with the blossoms of the cherry-tree, walls covered with honeysuckles, rose-gardens, from which pointed roofs rise suddenly. Everything reminds the traveller either of the fertility of the land or of the antiquity of its monuments; and everything interests him in the work of ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... dog fawning came out on the right side, and that of ravenous wolf on the left: a serpent was represented twining round these three animals, and laying its head on the right hand of Serapis: on the idol's head was placed a bushel, an emblem of the fertility of the earth. The statue was made of precious stones, wood, and all sorts of metal together; its color was at first blue, but the steams or moisture of the place had turned it black. A hole in the temple was contrived, to admit the sun's rays upon its mouth at the hour ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... ceaseless action, all that is subsists. Constant rotation of the unwearied wheel That Nature rides upon, maintains her health, Her beauty, her fertility. She dreads An instant's pause, and lives but while she moves. Its own revolvency upholds the world. Winds from all quarters agitate the air, And fit the limpid element for use, Else noxious: oceans, rivers, lakes, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... of years to tame a mountain, to curb its rude, savage power, to soften its outlines, and bring fertility out of the elemental crudeness and barrenness. But time and the gentle rains of heaven will do it, as they have done it in the East, and as they are fast doing it ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... growth in the north to prevent its handling with a weighted disk harrow. By this means the soil below is left firm, and the rich vines are mixed with the surface soil, where most needed. It is always a mistake to bury fertility in the bottom of the furrow when a soil is thin and small seeds are to be sown. The infertile ground lying next the subsoil is not what is needed at the surface ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... the book, the lack of restraint, the defiance of the probabilities. It is popular and acceptable all the same. But there is one test which incontestably proves its merit, and supplies its title, to be considered all but "monumental." This is its prodigious fertility ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... large body of natives, in order to thank the Admiral for his kindness and clemency; and their confidence was not misplaced, as the Admiral did not at that moment wish to do any more kidnapping. The Spaniards were more and more amazed and impressed with the beauty and fertility of these islands. The lands were more lovely than the finest land in Castile; the rivers were large and wide, the trees green and full of fruit, the grasses knee-deep and starred with flowers; the birds sang sweetly all ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... had a religion with many nature deities, especially deities of fertility. There was no systematized pantheon, different deities being revered in each locality, often under the most varied names. These various deities were, however, similar in character, and later it occurred often ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... other inhabitants of this circle to declare in his favor. Nuremberg joyfully committed itself to his protection; and the Franconian nobles were won to his cause by flattering proclamations, in which he condescended to apologize for his hostile appearance in their dominions. The fertility of Franconia, and the rigorous honesty of the Swedish soldiers in their dealings with the inhabitants, brought abundance to the camp of the king. The high esteem which the nobility of the circle felt for Gustavus, the respect and admiration with which they regarded his brilliant exploits, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... have had a walk in the sunshine, and have just come back rejoicing in a renewed communion with nature. The waters of the Rhone and the Arve, the murmur of the river, the austerity of its banks, the brilliancy of the foliage, the play of the leaves, the splendor of the July sunlight, the rich fertility of the fields, the lucidity of the distant mountains, the whiteness of the glaciers under the azure serenity of the sky, the sparkle and foam of the mingling rivers, the leafy masses of the La Batie woods,—all and everything delighted me. It seemed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... ground and die, it abideth alone;"—barren, useless, and truly dead to the rest of the world around it, because it is shut up in itself, and its hidden life, with all its wondrous powers of growth and fertility, remains undeveloped, and will remain so, till it decays away, a worthless thing, into worthless dust. But if it be buried in the earth a while, then the rich life which lay hid in it is called out by that seeming death, and it sprouts, tillers, and flowers, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... or the proper working of other pollen, are obstacles of no less magnitude in applying the test to them. And, in both animals and plants, is superadded the further difficulty, that experiments must be continued over a long time for the purpose of ascertaining the fertility of the mongrel or hybrid progeny, as well as of the first ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... The Fertility of this Province, its convenient Situation for Trade and Commerce, its Capacity for furnishing Employment and Subsistence to great Numbers, and the vast Armies that have been maintained here, make it credible that the remaining two Thirds ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... about equal to the united area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Although the third in size of the Greater Antilles, it comes at a great remove after Hayti, the second, being not more than one-fourth as large. Nor does it compare in fertility with either Hayti or Cuba. The former island is the centre of geological upheaval, and the great rounded masses, sustaining a soil of inexhaustible depth, run off from thence splintering into sharp ridges, which in Jamaica become veritable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... great contemporary authors of his time, and it was altogether owing to circumstances, and those of a peculiarly calamitous character, that this ample mind left but inadequate testimonials of its power and fertility. He is, and probably will be, chiefly known as an original and somewhat whimsical essayist, but his essays, inimitable of their kind, were but ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... the doors of her sanctuary. He must be of a reverent turn of mind also; not rashly discrediting any reports, however vague and fragmentary; giving man credit always for some germ of truth, and giving Nature credit for an inexhaustible fertility and variety, which will keep him his life long always reverent, yet never superstitious; wondering at the commonest, but not surprised by the most strange; free from the idols of size and sensuous loveliness; able to see grandeur in the minutest objects, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... with the screw, was, as has been seen, an engineer and mechanician of distinguished ability; whereas Smith, in commencing his new vocation, had all to acquire but his first conception. Ericsson could rely upon the fertility of his own genius, was his own draughtsman, and designed his own engines, accommodating them to the new propeller by dispensing with gearing, and adapting them to a speed of from thirty to forty revolutions,—a great and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... had looked for word from Martin Leland, had counted on receiving from him an offer for the water to be employed in bringing fertility to Dry Valley. He told her of Ruf Ettinger and his counter scheme, how close he had come to being drawn into it; he wondered if something had happened to cause Leland and Hume to give ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... about so gradually, that we are not relieved from much of our difficulty, as to whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earlier fruits of the daughter's fertility. It is a proof of this difficulty that the best masters of our ancient language have lately introduced the word Semi-Saxon, which is to cover everything from A.D. 1150 ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... of unreserved gratitude to the indefatigable sage, I took my leave. "Can the astonishing fertility of his genius ever be ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... improvements, such as ditches, drains, and buildings. Everything done on the land to increase its value would be counted as an improvement, and would thus be exempt from taxation. This would leave only location value and fertility to be taxed. By location value is meant that value which is due to the situation of the land. For example, land in a wilderness has little or no location value, but if, later, schools, stores, railroads, and other elements of community life develop in ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... the difficulty is great, and might be made much of by a mere advocate. Will you oblige me by reading again slowly from pages 267 to 272. (92/2. The reference is to the "Origin," Edition I.: the section on "The Fertility of Varieties when crossed, and of their Mongrel Offspring" occupies pages 267-72.) I may add to what is there said, that it seems to me quite hopeless to attempt to explain why varieties are not sterile, until we know the precise ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... they put on a solemn face in jest. 'And what will they say?' They will say that human things are fated to decay, and even the perfect State will not escape from this law of destiny, when 'the wheel comes full circle' in a period short or long. Plants or animals have times of fertility and sterility, which the intelligence of rulers because alloyed by sense will not enable them to ascertain, and children will be born out of season. For whereas divine creations are in a perfect cycle or ...
— The Republic • Plato

... The beginning of curiosity, in the philosophic sense," Mr. Blood again writes, "is the stare [Transcriber's note: state?] of being at itself, in the wonder why anything is at all, and what this being signifies. Naturally we first assume the void, and then wonder how, with no ground and no fertility, anything should come into it." We treat it as a positive nihility, "a barrier from which all our ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... abodes. These dwellings are smaller still, with flat roofs formed of beams on which was laid a coating of rushes and clay. Every generation appears to have been poorer than the last, alike in material wealth and in fertility of resource. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... without negativing design in the theists view. He believes that the earths surface has been very gradually prepared for man and the existing animal races, that vegetable matter has through a long series of generations imparted fertility to the soil in order that it may support its present occupants, that even beds of coal have been stored up for mans benefit Yet what is more accidental, and more simply the consequence of physical agencies than the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... like others in the neighbourhood, is not inhabited." The thought then occurred to him that the volcano had either driven the natives away, or prevented them from occupying it, although the fertility of the valley through which he was walking showed that it was capable of supporting a tolerably ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... on the extreme point of a pinnacle more than four thousand feet above the vast plain of rich fertility embosomed among the snow-clad mountains. The lake was a spot of beautiful blue, a gem in the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... are pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... other hand, if Houdon's felicitous harmony of style and individual force are forgotten, there is hardly any recognized succession to the imaginative freedom, the verve, the triumphant personal fertility of Rude and Carpeaux. At least, such as there is has not preserved the dignity and in many instances scarcely the decorum of those splendid artists. Much of the sculpture which figures at the yearly Salons is, to ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... deportment, and proves conclusively that if he chose to seem ridiculous he did so not unwittingly but with a complete apprehension of the effect he designed and the means he adopted. In the Tour, says he, from his 'eagerness to display the wonderful fertility and readiness of Johnson's wit,' he 'freely showed to the world its dexterity, even when I was myself the object of it.' He was under the impression that he would be 'liberally understood,' as 'knowing very well what I was about.' But, he adds, 'it seems I judged too well of the world'; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... from water for the remainder of the day. It is believed that afterward it would be possible for the man to have offspring only by marrying a new wife. There are also several specifics to prevent conception, but none for producing fertility. The kapala gave as reasons for this practice scarcity of food and woman's fear of dying. Both seem incongruous to fact and primitive ideas, and perhaps his view would better be accepted only as an indication of his ignorance ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... treasurer's report. His concern was almost comic: the idea of saying to the Governor-General that a great deal could be done locally by work, when there was a central Government at Manila! Mr. Forbes, as usual, made in his turn a very sound speech, based on his observation in the province, on its fertility, its possibilities, the necessity of improving communications and of diversifying crops. I noticed here, as elsewhere in the province, the excellence of the Spanish used in speeches. As for the treasurer, we were informed that he had been taken in hand at an early ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... wrote to Sir Guy Carleton, commending in such warm terms the advantages of Shelburne, he took occasion at the same time to disparage the country about the river St John. 'I greatly fear,' he wrote, 'the soil and fertility of that part of this province is overrated by people who have explored it partially. I wish it may turn out otherwise, but have my fears that there is scarce good land enough for them already ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... was priestess of a 'thiasos' or voluntary association of worshippers of Dionysus-Sabazios, among whose ceremonies was doubtless one symbolizing a marriage or mystical union between the god and his worshippers. (Whether the form of 'sacred marriage' which was originally intended to promote the fertility of the ground by 'sympathetic magic' entered into the ritual of Sabazios is doubtful.) Such a rite, though probably in fact quite innocent, gave rise to suspicions, of which Demosthenes takes full advantage; and the fact that well-known ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... truth, an evidence of life in the school of builders, and of their making a due distinction between work which is to be used for architectural effect, and work which is to possess an abstract perfection; and it commonly shows also that the exertion of design is so easy to them, and their fertility so inexhaustible, that they feel no remorse in using somewhat injuriously what they can replace with so ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... be laid on mathematics, nor should proficiency therein be held to establish the right of entry to a corps d'elite. The typical American officer of the best kind need not be a good mathematician; but he must be able to master himself, to control others, and to show boldness and fertility of resource ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... edition is a work of genius and was called by Von Bulow "the only model edition." In a few sections others, such as Kullak, Dr. Hugo Riemann and Hans von Bulow, may have outstripped him, but as a whole his editing is amazing for its exactitude, scholarship, fertility in novel fingerings and sympathetic insight in phrasing. This edition appeared at ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... entitled "The Book of Wonders," ascribed to Aristotle, contains the following: "When the Carthagenians, who were masters of the western ocean, observed that many traders and other men, attracted by the fertility of the soil and the pleasant climate, had fixed there their homes, they feared that the knowledge of this land should reach other nations, a great concourse to it of men from the various lands of the earth would follow, that the conditions of life, then so happy ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend

... exaggerating pencil of the most eccentric and gloomy imagination; surpassing whatever has been heard, read, or thought; and admitting no similitude but to the feverish visions of delirium! so marvellous in fertility of incident, so improbable in excess of calamity, so monstrous in impunity of guilt! the witches of Shakespeare are less wanton in absurdity, and the demons of Milton less ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney

... after the thunder and lightning, and had saturated the thirsty earth and penetrated into it, filling all its pores with fertility. It rained and rained uninterruptedly, came down in torrents as if ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... indicate that in the early ages the fear of contamination by woman predominated. Later emphasis fell on her mystic and uncanny power. Ancient fertility cults. Temple prostitution, dedication of virgins, etc. Ancient priestesses and prophetesses. Medicine early developed by woman added to belief in her power. Woman's psychic quality of intuition: its origin—theories—conclusion ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... and Florence; in Rome, it lay on the slope of the Capitol. The beasts sometimes served as executioners of political judgements, and no doubt, apart from this, they kept alive a certain terror in the popular mind. Their condition was also held to be ominous of good or evil. Their fertility, especially, was considered a sign of public prosperity, and no less a man than Giovanni Villani thought it worth recording that he was present at the delivery of a lioness. The cubs were often given to allied States and ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... beings to maintain a community of feeling in hostility to something else, than in benevolence toward another; for here no sacrifice is required of anyone's self-interest. And it is certain, that the subordinate portions of society have come to regard the occupants of the tracts of fertility and sunshine, the possessors of opulence, splendor, and luxury, with a deep, settled, systematic aversion; with a disposition to contemplate in any other light than that of a calamity an extensive downfall of the favorites of fortune, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... amazing wish to read. Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work. Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he wanted to write twenty novels at once. All this period is strangely full of his own sense at once of fertility and of futility; he did work which no one else could have done, and yet he could not be certain as yet that ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... once asked, "Are not the Pyrenees very bare mountains, without any trees or herbage?" We could only repeat, what we have so often asserted in this book, that the foliage on the mountain slopes is magnificent, and their fertility and wealth of flora are ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... Greece celebrated this festival for five days in honor of Demeter; and no man was allowed to be present. It was similarly in old Rome with a festival in honor of Ceres. Both Demeter and Ceres were considered goddesses of fertility. In Germany also such festivals, once customary in the heathen days of Frigga, were held, deep into the Middle Ages, Frigga being considered the goddess of fertility among the old Germans. According to the narratives, women gave a free reign to their frolicsomeness on ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... and various maladies, all of which are attributed to the maleficent arts of witches, 344 sq.; the burning wheels rolled down hill and the burning discs thrown into the air may be intended to burn the invisible witches, 345 sq.; on this view the fertility supposed to follow the use of fire results indirectly from breaking the spells of witches, 346; on the whole the theory of the purificatory or destructive intention of the fire-festivals ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... to Ovid in readiness and fertility, he ranks far below the earlier writer in all poetic essentials. Ovid's gifts are similar but more natural; his vision is clearer, his imagination more penetrating. 'The paces of Statius are those of the manege, not of nature';[545] he loses himself in the trammels ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... their teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's milk. The peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities seem to be easy, extemporaneous liars, having a natural gift for tergiversation, an undeniable gift for mendacity, an inexhaustible fertility of invention. Such liars, like poets, are born, not made, though doubtless their natural gifts have been improved and developed by constant practice. Like Parolles, they "lie with such volubility that you would think Truth were a fool." ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... nineteen years of age, when he commenced Regent and Professor of Philosophy,(96) and though he had not time to prepare a system of any part of his profession, being instantly after his election to take up his class, yet such was the quickness and fertility of his invention, the tenaciousness of his memory, and the solidity of his judgment, that his dictates(97) to the scholars had a great depth of learning of that kind, and perspicuity of expression. And I am assured, that he was among the first in Scotland that began to reform Philosophy from ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... circumstances which would give them a palpable advantage in the contest of the sea. No nation will have it more in its power to repay what it borrows than this. Our debts are hitherto small. The vast and valuable tracts of unlocated lands, the variety and fertility of climates and soils, the advantages of every kind, which we possess for commerce, insure to this country a rapid advancement in population and prosperity, and a certainty (its independence being established) of redeeming ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... as an eagle: the later prophet neither mounts nor runs, he walks, xl. 31. He has not the older prophet's majesty; he has a quiet dignity, and his tone is more tender. Nor has he Isaiah's exuberance and fertility of resource: the same thoughts are repeated, though with pleasing and ingenious variations, over and over again. All his characteristic thoughts already appear in the first two chapters: the certainty and joy of Israel's ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... the fruits of his plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe. But though the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been warned to mend his ways,[566] yet such was his energy, his executive power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it was hard to dispense with him. Neither his abilities, however, nor his strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer; and the letters from Versailles became ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the desire of the frontiersmen for "elbow room"; second the demand of King Cotton for unused land from which the extravagant plantation system might draw virgin fertility and third, the necessity that was pressing the South to add territory in order to hold its power. All three forces impelled towards the Southwest, and it was thither that population pressed in the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... unusual charm over the landscape; I, for the first time, beheld signs of national old age, and empire's decay, and proofs of the transient and perishing glories of art, amidst the ever-springing and reviving fertility of nature. ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... devastation that was caused there, as well as in the valley of the Rhone, by the great floods of 1868, and that ten years of labor, even if the peasantry had still the heart for labor, cannot redeem those districts into fertility. What you have there seen on a vast scale takes place to a certain extent during every summer thunderstorm, and from the ruin of some portion of fruitful land the dust descends to increase the marshes of the Po. But ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Regicide France, that can exhibit such a prodigy. Yet even she, the mother of monsters, more prolific than the country of old called ferax monstrorum, shows symptoms of being almost effete already; and she will be so, unless the fallow of a peace comes to recruit her fertility. But whatever may be represented concerning the meanness of the popular spirit, I, for one, do not think so desperately of the British nation. Our minds, as I said, are light, but they are not depraved. We are dreadfully open to delusion and to dejection; but we are capable of being ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... who, immersed in gross sensuality, are insensible to the so delicate charms of VIRTUE, than which even PLEASURE has not a greater friend, nor VICE a greater enemy. Thus temperance makes men lords over those pleasures that intemperance enslaves them to: the one, parent of health, vigour fertility cheerfulness, and every other desirable good of life; the other, of diseases, debility, barrenness, self-loathing, with only every ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... return up the river. They retraced their way, slowly ascending the stream, until, in about the thirty-eighth degree of latitude, they turned into another river (Illinois), which abridged their route and brought them directly to Lake Illinois (Michigan). They were struck with the fertility of the country through which that river flowed, the beauty of the forests and prairies, the variety of the game, and the numerous small lakes and streams which they saw. The river was broad and deep, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... man when he can, is as much in fault as the striker"; and he quotes the example of Moses. Again we may reply with Augustine (QQ. Exod. qu. 2) [*Cf. Contra Faust. xxii, 70] that just as "the soil gives proof of its fertility by producing useless herbs before the useful seeds have grown, so this deed of Moses was sinful although it gave a sign of great fertility," in so far, to wit, as it was a sign of the power whereby he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... as the purest image of the Creator, was the first object of it. It is not probable that men would choose beings like themselves for the first objects of their adoration. Nothing could be more capable of seducing than the beauty and usefulness of the sun, dispensing light and fertility all around. But, to conclude, we must not imagine that all idolatry sprang from the same country. It came by slow degrees, and those who made the first advances towards this impiety, did by no means carry it to that extravagant height to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... the average annual number of births during a year per 1,000 population at midyear; also known as crude birth rate. The birth rate is usually the dominant factor in determining the rate of population growth. It depends on both the level of fertility and the age ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Development Hypothesis" in which he argued powerfully for the thesis that the whole animate world is the result of an age-long process of natural transformation, he wrote for The Westminster Review another important essay, "A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility," towards the close of which he came within an ace of recognising that the struggle for existence was a factor in organic evolution. At a time when pressure of population was practically interesting men's minds, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... be left behind and harrowed in or plowed under. If proper regard is paid to intermittent application, no danger from odors need be feared, and the repeated plowing in will increase immensely the fertility of the soil. Nor need one be afraid that all of the manurial elements will be left behind on this plowed ground. About two thirds of the organic matter in sewage is in solution, and this will be carried onto the beds just as if passage over the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... under safe control, and, to this end, to prevent any outsiders, or any injudicious or intermeddling people, from holding intimacy with them. Parris saw this, and, with his characteristic boldness of action and fertility of resources, at once put a stop to all trouble, and closed the door against ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... obsolete expression, or a poetical turn. As yet we are not favorably received by the auditors, their attention is not entirely held, but when once they conceive an esteem and are warmly inclined toward us, then is the time to hazard this liberty, especially when we enter upon parts the natural fertility of which does not allow the liberty of expression to be noticed amidst the ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... full moon of the Hindoo month Phalgun. The day of the bonfire does not always fall on the 16th of March. It is not considered lucky to begin harvest till the Holi has been burnt. Mr. Crooke holds that 'on the whole, there seems to be some reason to believe that the intention to promote the fertility of men, animals, and crops, supplies the basis of the rites' ('The Holi, a Vernal Festival of the Hindus', Folklore, vol. xxv (1914), ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Seine, when it turns south-west and climbs the hills toward Nemours, the next post-town. These hills slope off westward to the desert or waste of La Pontoise, one of those blister-scars, still to be seen in France, left by the feudal system, which stripped the soil of the last grain of fertility and gave nothing in return. La Pontoise was aforetime a grand estate, possessed by a branch of the Foix family, the great ducal house of Nemours. Its farms wasted by the improvidence of the ancien regime, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... time will have to be spent keeping their numerous ingenuities in good working order—their elaborate bell-ringing arrangements, their locks and their clocks. In the field of science to be sure, this fertility in invention will lead to a long list of important and beautiful discoveries: telescopes and the calculus, radiographs, and the spectrum. Discoveries great enough, almost, to make angels of them. But here again their simian-ness ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... of description displayed to better advantage. The rusty wooden house in Pyncheon-street, with its seven sharp-pointed gables, and its huge clustered chimney—the old elm tree before the door—the grassy yard seen through the lattice-fence, with its enormous fertility of burdocks—and the green moss on the slopes of the roof, with the flowers growing aloft in the air in the nook between two of the gables—present a picture to the eye as distinct as if our childhood had been ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... the living force to the book, and a persuasion—irresistible almost—that it is all about some living person. I have often wondered how it is that this book of Boz's has such an astounding power of development, such a fertility in engendering other books, and what is the secret of it. Scott's astonishing Waverley series, Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," Boz's own "Nicholas Nickleby," "Oliver Twist," in fact, not one of the whole series save "the immortal 'Pickwick'" has produced anything in ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... eternal mistress, the mistress whom his forefathers loved too much. Remembering that, in spite of all their efforts to fertilize the soil, it had never made them rich or happy, he had ended by hating it. All his faith in its powers had departed; he accused it of having lost its fertility, of being used up and decrepit, like some old cow which one sends to the slaughter-house. And, according to him, everything went wrong: the soil simply devoured the seed sown in it, the weather was never such as it should be, the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... heard of the immense area beyond or surrounding the few cities and hamlets of the American colonies, flew to coherence, and he had a sudden appreciation of the stupendousness of this new untravelled world, understood that with its climate, fertility, and beauty, its large nucleus of civilization, its destiny must be as great as Europe's, nor much dissimilar, no matter what the variance of detail. The noblest river in the world seemed to lift its voice like a prophet, and the time came—after his visit to Boston—when ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... labor will hasten from all parts of the civilized world to assist in developing various and immeasurable resources which have hitherto lain dormant. The eight or nine States nearest the Gulf of Mexico have a soil of exuberant fertility, a climate friendly to long life, and can sustain a denser population than is found as yet in any part of our country. And the future influx of population to them will be mainly from the North or from the most cultivated nations ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... groves along the bases of low hills, fringing the rich lands along creeks or scattered by hundreds or thousands over the fertile valley floors, the eyes of the early Spanish explorers dwelt on the thick foliage of the swelling crowns and read the fertility of the land in these evergreen oaks which they called Encina. The chain of Franciscan Missions corresponded closely to the general range of the Live Oak although uniformly well within the margin of its geographical limits both eastward and northward. The vast assemblage of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility? Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from the wastes of Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt. It roars no longer. But still the masses of the rocks, and still the amber and the yellow sands, and still the iron-colored hills, keep guard round Philae. And still, despite the vulgar desecration that has turned Shellal into ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... sea, the valley is wedged in between Bhutan and Sikkim, and does not belong geographically but only politically to Tibet. This was the route by which the British mission of 1904 advanced. Before the date of that expedition the valley had acquired a reputation for beauty and fertility, which was subsequently found to be only comparative in relation to the barrenness of the rest of the Tibetan frontier. The summer months, though not hot, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... he thought, walking away from the beech clump, with Blink at his heels; "how wonderful to see it being restored to its former fertility under pressure of the war! The farmer must be a happy man, indeed, working so nobly for his country, without thought of his own prosperity. How flowery those beans look already!" he mused, glancing at a field of potatoes. "Now that I am ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... a small one—so small that the break-van of his own "Flyin' Dutchman" could have contained it easily—but it was not too small to present a luxuriance, fertility, and brilliance of colour that was absolutely magnificent! Surrounded as that garden was by "ballast" from the embankment, broken wheels and rail, bricks and stones, and other miscellaneous refuse and debris of the line, it could only be compared to an oasis in the desert, or a ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... enlistments went on slowly. After a month's exertions, only five thousand names were enrolled; and Washington, lamenting the dearth of public spirit, almost despaired. Alluding to the selfishness exhibited in camp, he says: "Such stock-jobbing and fertility in all low arts, to obtain advantages of one kind and another, I never saw before, and pray God I may never ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson

... lands, since the deluge, have used their best exertions to improve the cereals, the fruit trees, the vines, and root crops, and vegetables, and the result has been some valuable modifications of size, shape, flavor, and fertility; but in no case whatever has any change of species been effected. All the efforts of breeders have not succeeded in making the horse specifically different from the noble animal described in the Book ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... many opinions given of Grotius, assures us, that all who read his poems approved of them; that those of fine taste, and who could judge of epigrams, found many of his admirable, some discovering the subtilty of his genius, and the fertility of his imagination; others, the happy turn which he could give to ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... its purpose. However, the proper restoration of bacterial life in soils to keep the soil fungi in check proved effective. This was a matter not of the presence or absence of any one inorganic nutrient, but of restoring to soils the balance of fertility, an abundance of organic matter as food for bacteriae. Dr. George D. Scarseth, West Lafayette, Ind.[4], is one of those largely responsible for correcting this epidemic. His experience may prove useful to nut growers, so that they may not live in constant fear ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... treatment than his confederates, the Bishops of Wurtzburg and Bamberg, had already experienced. The situation of his territories upon the Rhine made it necessary for the enemy to secure them, while the fertility afforded an irresistible temptation to a necessitous army. Miscalculating his own strength and that of his adversaries, the Elector flattered himself that he was able to repel force by force, and weary out the valour of the Swedes by the strength of his fortresses. He ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... I am aware of its close resemblance to the term exploiter. The word itself points to exploitation of land. The land farmer has used the raw materials of the country. He has tilled the soil until its fertility was exhausted and then moved on to the newer regions of the West, again to farm and to exploit the virgin riches of a plenteous land. The planter in the South, possessing frequently more than a thousand acres, ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... shade, his courage failed him, and, with all his preconceived ideas overthrown by the burning experience of one day, despair seized on him, and his expressions of horror and astonishment were coupled with lamentations over the green fertility of Jersey. The colonel was obliged to report himself at head-quarters in his full uniform, which was evidently tight and hot; and after changing his apparel three times in the day, apparently without being a gainer, he went out to make certain meteorological inquiries, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... unworthy of being members of this British Parliament were we to give way to despair." To prove that the miseries of Ireland could be neither attributed to the soil or the people, the Premier said, at the close of his singularly able and lucid speech: "There is no doubt of the fertility of the land; that fertility has been the theme of admiration with writers and travellers of all nations. There is no doubt either, I must say, of the strength and industry of its inhabitants. The man who is loitering idly by the mountain-side, in Tipperary or in Derry, whose potato plot has furnished ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... wintry night, "Give me wine, meat; dark wine and brown meat!"—come back to the rude door of his old home in the cliff-side. Till that time the great vine-dresser himself drank only water; he had lived on spring-water and fruit. A lover of fertility in all its forms, in what did but suggest it, he was curious and penetrative concerning the habits of water, and had the secret of the divining-rod. Long before it came he could detect the scent of rain from afar, and would climb ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... three miles to westward. In time he came to a sloping hillside and looking beyond he saw a splendid stream of swiftly flowing water. At the foot of the hill was a narrow tract of about four acres almost bare of trees, though deep grass spoke of the soil's fertility. Rising above the river was a large knoll sloping down to the ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden



Words linked to "Fertility" :   birthrate, physiological state, prolificacy, infertile, natality, fertile, physiological condition, fertility rate, richness, fruitfulness, rate, physical condition, birth rate



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