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Arable   /ˈɛrəbəl/   Listen
Arable

adjective
1.
(of farmland) capable of being farmed productively.  Synonyms: cultivable, cultivatable, tillable.






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"Arable" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Scots, granted to John Smith the hermitage in the forest of Kilgur, "which formerly belonged in heritage to Hugh Cominch the Hermit, and was resigned by him, with the croft and the green belonging to it, and three acres of arable land." ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... tea-plant, which furnish the great staples of the Chinese export trade, we saw absolutely nothing on our route through the northern provinces. Apart from the "Yellow Lands" of the Hoang-ho, which need no manure, the arable regions of China seem to have maintained their fecundity for over four thousand years, entirely through the thoughtful care of the peasantry in restoring to the soil, under another form, all that the crops have taken from it. The plowing of the Chinese is very poor. They scarcely ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... these interminable woods, than following any exact or fixed path. Here they ascended, and anon appeared to descend in the same direction, finding only boundless wildernesses, and varied combinations of tangled woodland scenery. Such part of the country as seemed arable, the knight appeared carefully to avoid; yet he could not direct his course with so much certainty but that he occasionally crossed the path of inhabitants and cultivators, who showed a consciousness of so singular a presence, but never as the lady observed evinced any symptoms of recognition. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 more or less green; the footpaths were the greenest of all, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... people, required more ground than was comprised within the fortified districts. Even the expansion of the settlement upon the upper James to other peninsulas along the "Curls of the River" could not satisfy the demand for arable land. At one time the very streets of Jamestown were planted with tobacco.[101] Soon the people, despite their dread of the savages, were deserting their palisades, and spreading out in search ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... 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 ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... cottage gardens, believe me, are the best. They are the only ones which, being small, may be allotted in some juster future to every man without dispossessing his neighbour. And they are also the only ones compatible with that fine arable or dairy country which we all long for. Stop and look over the hedges: their flowers leave no scrap of earth visible between them, like the bedded-out things of grander gardens; and their vivid crimsons, and tender rose and yellow, and ineffable blue, and the solemn white which comes ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... Admitting that it has 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 spot; and remaining, they must work on the terms of the proprietors, or perish—the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... the manufacture of commodities of debilitating superstitions that not only 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 ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst

... middle distance, as they beheld it, was a circular isolated hill, of no great elevation, which placed itself in strong chromatic contrast with a wide acreage of surrounding arable by being covered with fir-trees. The trees were all of one size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon. This pine-clad protuberance was yet further marked out from the general ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... anticipation during the slow journey on the branch line from the junction. The train crawled and burrowed into the wooded heart of the Midlands, passed a village, a hamlet, a few scattered houses, puffed and panted through endless lengths of arable and pasture land, drew up exhausted at the little wayside station of Whithorn-in-Arden, and left him in that prosaic wilderness a prey ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... (says Lord Clanricarde, owed four and a-half years' rent, at L47 8s. per annum) much below the taxation valuation of L67 19s., for a mill, with the sole use of the water-power, a valuable privilege, and 440 statute acres, a considerable part of them arable land. He had ten sub-tenants, was reported to make L500 per annum from mill and farm, and though he had removed part of his stock, there were still cattle on the land on the day of eviction enough to cover two years' arrears. If he had paid even those ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... and in place of whins and stones there were to be seen heavy crops of barley and turnips. The barren years of 1800 and 1801, however, pressed very hardly on Andrew Fairbairn as on every other farmer of arable land. About that time, Andrew's brother Peter, who acted as secretary to Lord Seaforth, and through whose influence the former had obtained the farm, left Brahan Castle for the West Indies with his Lordship, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... morass, plentifully supplied with water in the form of rivers, lakes, and marshes, and broken up by numerous patches of cultivation. The southern half is, as it were, the other side of the pattern—an immense expanse of rich, arable land, broken up by occasional patches of sand or forest. The imaginary undulating line separating those two regions starts from the western frontier about the 50th parallel of latitude, and runs in a northeasterly direction till it enters the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... form, and appearance of two chains entangled in one another:—and also with a loud noise, as of a great number of carriages rolled along. And after this a black smoke appeared; and a part of the ball seemed to fall in an arable field of one Michael Koturnass; on the fall of which to the ground a still greater noise was heard; and a shock ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King

... the Wissihiccon and Pennipack—two small picturesque streams flowing, the one into the Schuylkill, the other into the Delaware—is a prosperous farming region, with a pleasingly varied, undulating surface, the arable land diversified with stretches of pretty wild woodland, watered by numerous small water-courses, and divided by the main highroad, once the chief channel of communication between New ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... to have thought seriously of leaving the St. John river on account of the difficulties and discouragements of his situation, for on the 6th August, 1696, he made out to one Michel Chartier, of Schoodic, in Acadia, a lease of his seignioral manor of Freneuse, consisting of 30 arpents (acres) of arable land under the plough, meadow, forest and undergrowth, with houses, barns and stables thereon, a cart and plough rigged ready for work; also all the oxen, cows, bullocks, goats, pigs, poultry, furniture and household utensils ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... said my father to me, but so that he did not hear, "held land in Domesday Book—twelve virgates of land with close on forty carucates of arable, villeins and borderers and bondservants, six acres of wood, a hundred and twenty of pasture; and he makes his last stand on this heap of stones. Ballast?" He turned to the seaman. "Did I not tell Captain ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... thrown up on the inner side of the moat, on which cannons were mounted. Between the encampment and the river there remained a strip only 24 ft. wide; and behind, on the side of the mountain, there was a plot of arable land a little more than 100 ft. long and 60 ft. wide, where Champlain had corn sown and ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole

... for three days, then, the weather improving, he reached the island of Graziosa, one of the smaller of the Canary group, in five days, and then the larger island of Lancerota, which is nearly the same size as the island of Rhodes. Lancerota has excellent pasturage, and arable land, which is particularly good for the cultivation of barley; its numerous fountains and cisterns are well supplied with excellent water. The orchilla, which is so much used in dyeing, grows abundantly ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... Her protege would be much better married to a spirited woman who had seen the world, than to a mere farmer's daughter who had never looked beyond her cheese. Old Gardon would be an admirable adviser, and if he were taken into the menage she would add to the endowment another arable field, and grass for two more cows. If she liked the young woman on inspection, the marriage should take place ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 plains and gently sloping surfaces, traversed by ranges of barren hills. The remainder ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... has long been used as a manure either for arable or grassing land, no comment on its superior utility is requisite; but to those parts where its presence hitherto hath been forbidden by the rugged and steep hills, and to others at too great a distance to warrant the expense of a long land carriage, something of its superior quality as a ...
— Report of the Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee • Knaresbrough Rail-way Committee

... more than ten feet thick at the summit. Gerard backed this wall on the valley side with a cemented slope, about twelve feet wide at its base. On the side toward the commons a similar slope, covered with several feet of arable earth, still further supported this great work, which no rush of water could possibly damage. The engineer provided in case of unusual rains an overflow at a proper height. The masonry was inserted into the flank of each mountain until the granite or the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... 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 men. Sewing-machines ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... and finish an undertaking, which proves his extensive genius, and does honour to his memory: it was a general survey of all the lands in the kingdom, their extent in each district, their proprietors, tenures, value; the quantity of meadow, pasture, wood, and arable land, which they contained; and in some counties the number of tenants, cottagers, and slaves of all denominations, who lived upon them. He appointed commissioners for this purpose, who entered every particular in their register by the verdict of juries; ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... rugged kopjes with all their fantastic outlines sharply silhouetted against the glowing sky. The farms on the Karroo, and, in fact, generally throughout the more northern parts of the colony, are of surprising size. It is quite common to find a Dutchman farming some 10,000 acres. Arable land in the Karroo is of course very rare, and one would think that the "Ooms" and the "Tantas" and their young hopefuls would have their time fully occupied even in keeping their large herds and flocks within ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... States had shown how uniformity in discontent may bring forth political readjustments. The new region of the late eighties lay west of Missouri and Iowa, where the railroads had stimulated settlement along the farther edge of the arable prairies. Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and the Dakotas had passed into a boom period about 1885, and had pushed new farms into regions that could not in ordinary years produce a crop. Only blinded enthusiasts ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... Land use: arable land: 11% permanent crops : NA% permanent pastures: 66% forests and woodland : NA% other: ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... place, I claim the right to own and enclose for my own use or disuse as much of the earth's surface as I am desirous and able to procure. I and my kind have made laws confirming us in the occupancy of the entire habitable and arable area as fast as we can get it. To the objection that this must eventually here, as it has actually done elsewhere, deprive the rest of you places upon which legally to be born, and exclude you after surreptitious birth as trespassers from all chance to procure directly the fruits of the ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... of those instruments of agriculture which are called inarticulate, Saserna says that two yokes of oxen will be enough for two hundred jugera of arable land, while Cato prescribes three yokes for two hundred and forty jugera in olives: thus if Saserna is correct, one yoke of oxen is required for every hundred jugera, but if Cato is correct a yoke is needed for every eighty jugera. My opinion is that neither of these ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... Land.—A case in point is given in the 33rd vol. of the Archaeologia, p. 271. The {76} carucate frequently consisted of eight bovatae of arable land; but the number of acres appears to have varied not only according to the quality of the soil, but according to the custom of husbandry of the shire: for where a two-years' course, or crop and fallow, was adopted, more land was adjudged to the carucate than where a three-years' ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various

... 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, and called the Winchester Roll, or Domesday Book. It is ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... attentions and petty reforms to occupy me just now; what I intend to do will be done in a large way; I mean not only to repair but to restore the castle, to throw the whole of my lands to the north into a sheep-walk, to plant the higher points, and to convert the south lands into arable. But my first object is the plough, and that must be attended to, before everything else; the wood-work is all complete, but a little alteration must be made in the coulter, and after all, I apprehend I must do it myself, as old Shanty is as ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... distance of about 6 inches from the row of stakes, and the other at a further distance of 20 inches. If the land is in grass, the position of these lines may be marked with a spade, and they may be removed at once; but, if it is arable land, it will be best to leave the lines in position until the ditch is excavated to a sufficient depth to mark it clearly. Indeed, it will be well to at once remove all of the sod and surface soil, say to a depth of 6 inches, (throwing this on the same side with the stakes, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring

... from the castle is very beautiful; the country round about it pleasant and fruitful, and distinguished into meadows, pastures, and arable fields, and the river Sale passing through them, which loseth itself about half a league from thence into a great lake. The river is navigable with boats of about twenty or thirty tons, many leagues together, going ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke

... of population and communication. It connects with the valley of the Red River of the North, navigable four hundred miles for steamers of three or four feet draught, with forty-five thousand square miles of arable and timber land; and with the valley of the Minnesota, also navigable at all seasons when not obstructed by ice, one hundred miles for steamers, and occasionally a hundred miles further. The head of navigation of the Red River of the ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... 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 ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... chasms,—the fields which nourished the family lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited mountain plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save all the arable land for tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard here, but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he would fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... usurpation of lands on the part of the priests. Using the same methods so familiar in the heyday of the institution of monasticism in Europe—pious gifts, deathbed bequests, pilgrims' offerings—the friar orders gradually secured the richest of the arable lands in the more thickly settled portions of the Philippines, notably the part of Luzon occupied by the Tagalogs. Not always, however, it must in justice be recorded, were such doubtful means resorted to, for there were instances where the missionary was the pioneer, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... importance of the subject all interested in agriculture are well aware. It is no exaggeration to say that the introduction of the practice of artificial manuring has revolutionised modern husbandry. Indeed, without the aid of artificial manures, arable farming, as at present carried out, would be impossible. Fifty years ago the practice may be said to have been unknown; yet so widespread has it now become, that at the present time the capital invested in the manure trade in this country alone amounts to millions sterling. It need scarcely ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... Company's grant of land at Australind comprises 100,000 acres, among which there is a large quantity of excellent pasture and arable land. It is well watered, and generally well adapted for the site of a new settlement. The flats of the Brunswick and Collic rivers would supply the whole colony, if thoroughly peopled, with grain; and there is abundance of feed ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... denote. They inherit, likewise, their fancy for the rifle. Allied with the axe, which, like Talleyrand's supposititious frontiersman, they have not forgotten, it supplies them materially with sport and subsistence. Their land, where arable at all, being unproductive as a rule, wood-chopping is their most profitable branch of farming. A score or two of them drive into town daily, each with his four-, three- or two-horse cargo of wood. The pile is frequently topped off with a brace ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... mild and still, and the woods, like brave men, putting the best face upon falling 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 young rye or winter ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... permission of the fairies, the understanding being that all raths were to be left undisturbed. For a long time the agreement was respected, fairies and mortals living side by side, and neither class interfering with the other. But, as the necessity for more arable land became evident, it was determined by the townspeople to level several raths and mounds that interfered with certain fields and boundary lines. The dangers of such a course were plainly pointed out by the local ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... and 1773 general acts were passed encouraging the enclosure for common use of open pastures and arable fields, but not enclosing or dividing them permanently, and not ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... other industry than such as is intimately connected with the land. With the exception of a few manufacturing districts in Ulster, which is altogether another country from Connaught, there are no industries in Ireland independent of the produce of arable land and pasture. What is to be enjoyed by the people must be got out of the land, and this in a country where nobody will turn to and work hard as a cultivator so long as he can graze, "finish," or "job" cattle, sheep, or horses. I was citing to a Mayo-man this defect of the so-called ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... a maritime county in the NE. of Ulster, in Ireland; soil two-thirds arable, linen the chief manufacture, exports butter, inhabitants ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... 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 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... 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 ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... taxation, while in other less wholesome places the presence of children will be taxed; the lower passes and fore hills of these very Alps, for example, will be populous with homes, serving the vast arable levels of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... widow and her two sons consisted of between five and six acres, made up of arable land and meadow. They kept four cows, four mares for purposes of horse-breeding, and a little poultry. Milch cows here are occasionally used on the farm, an anomaly among a population ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... village there was a long, gradual ascent of about a mile, and then they entered a new country. It was a series of woods and clearings, some grass, some arable. Huge oaks, flung their arms over a road lined on either side by short turf, close-cropped by the gypsies' cattle. Some band or other of them was always encamped by the road-side, and never two bands at once. And between these giant trees, not one of which ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... Sc. i) Mr. Ombre says: "Did you not 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 ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... 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

... Ridge is nowhere more than ten miles distant from the Massanuttons, and the space between them, the Luray or the South Fork Valley, through which a single road leads northward, is clothed by continuous forest. West of the great mountain, a broad expanse of green pasture and rich arable extends to the foothills of the Alleghanies, dotted with woods and homesteads, and here, in the Valley of the North Fork, is freer air and more space ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... But it was enough for the present. The remaining acres would do for spring-sowing, or as fallows, or for pasture. On the whole estate of thirty thousand acres there were only a few hundred acres of meadow-land, all the rest was arable and of the first class. If the next year should be favorable, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... 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 ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... Of the arable land of the manor the lord reserved as much as needful for his own use. The lord's land was called his "demesne," or domain. The rest of the land he allotted to the peasants who were his tenants, They cultivated their holdings in common. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

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

... primitive nobility of all those great persons who are too proud now not only to till the ground, but almost to tread upon it. We may talk what we please of lilies and lions rampant, and spread eagles in fields d'or or d'argent; but if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... extent is the zone of arable steppes, or prairies, once the home of the Cossack, the nomad who led here the life of a shepherd king, moving about as the condition of pasture and flock required. Most of this land is now under cultivation, and ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... 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 ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... on to the numbers and power of the inhabitants; then harking back again, in verse 19, to the fertility of the land, and passing again to the capacity of the cities to resist attack; and finishing up, in verse 20, with the land once more, both arable and forest. The same double thought colours the parting exhortation to 'be bold,' and to 'bring of the produce of the land.' Now the people knew already both points which the spies were despatched to find out. Over and over again, in Egypt, in the march, and at Sinai, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... and laughed; and Norah was sweet with the children, taking them away before they had gorged themselves. Outside the shadow of the wall one had the vivid beauty of flowers, the perfume of fruit, and the lively play of the sunlight; with glimpses through the foliage of smooth meadow, sloped arable, and distant heath; the firm ground beneath them, the open sky above them, and all around them the contented atmosphere of home. All these things together confirmed Mavis in the feeling that she had reached the apotheosis of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... great tides, rocks and shoals outside as well as within. But it has a good channel, if it were well marked out. The land, so far as I have seen it along the shores of the river, is very poor, for there are only rocks on all sides. There are a great many small oaks, and very little arable land. Fish abound here, as in the other rivers which I have mentioned. The people live like those in the neighborhood of our settlement; and they told us that the savages, who plant the Indian corn, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... to be found in his "Flores Paradise." Another work, entitled "Dyuers Soyles for manuring pasture & arable land," enumerates, in addition to the usual odorous galaxy, such extraordinarily new matters (in that day) as "salt, street-dirt, clay, Fullers earth, moorish earth, fern, hair, calcination of all vegetables, malt dust, soap-boilers ashes, and marle." But what I think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... that haste kills strong men, and often repeats a Moorish proverb which tells us that walking is better than running, and that of all things sitting still is best. If Salam and I, reaching a piece of level sward by the side of some orchard or arable land when the heat of the day has passed, venture to indulge in a brisk canter, the Maalem's face grows black ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... 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 flocks of sheep. Should his lease ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... the verb to 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

... ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, 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 (with ballot-box ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... 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 ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... both companies proceeded to procure emigrants; and they had not much difficulty, as at this time there were many unemployed people in England. The wool culture had converted great tracts of arable land in England into mere pastures for sheep,[8] and the closure of the monasteries and religious houses removed the support from thousands of English families. Since 1585 this surplus humanity had found employment in the war with Spain, but the return of peace in 1605 had again ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... woods of Streatley: hanging copses clothe the sides of the hills, and pretty villages nestle amid the trees. But soon the scene changes: the glorious valley Father Thames has scooped out for himself is left behind; we are crossing the chalk uplands. On all sides are vast stretches of unfenced arable land, though here and there a tiny village with its square-towered Norman church peeps out from an oasis of green fields and stately elm trees. On the right the Chiltern Hills are seen in the background, and Wittenham ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... and primitive people, they had little by little been left a prey to their own faults in order that their unworthy mistress might plead their disorders as an excuse for her tyranny. Agriculture languished, and the minute subdivision of arable land finally rendered its ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... 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 long sine laid aside the respectful deportment ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... patches the children, under the guidance of teachers, parents, and appointed guardians, began to sow flower seeds, plant shrubs, vines, and trees, or raise kitchen vegetables, each group or family according to its own desires and needs. Since the "arbors" are small they do not decrease the arable land of the allotments much, and there is still room left for swings, gymnastic apparatus, and similar contrivances, as well as bare sandy spots for little tots to play in. The various allotments are mostly uniform in size and are reached by narrow three- or four-foot lanes, on which ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... divided into three portions. There was the village itself, in which the people lived in houses built of wood or rude stonework. Around the village were a few small inclosures, or grass yards, for rearing calves and baiting farm stock; this was the common farmstead. Around this was the arable land, where the villagers grew their corn and other vegetables; and around this lay the common meadows, or pasture land, held by the whole community, so that each family could turn their cattle into ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... the deeper pools. The plain is skirted by a country road, bordered with majestic trees, and with farm-houses standing all along its winding course. Beyond, the land rises, and the slope is checkered, to the foot of the hills, with arable fields. The view is bounded by the craggy sides of the great hills which separate this quiet vale from the broad valley of the Connecticut. Here, all is soft and tranquil beauty. But just beyond the rugged barrier of those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... settlement 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, from which the whole community would draw ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... 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 ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin

... "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 ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... C. F. Williams has gone down to finish surveying my land, and will cut up and sell for me to the negroes about as much land as they have been in the habit of using,—good, arable land, at $5 per acre, where they are not ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... 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

... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... This lake of course is artificial, and the park was only made out of arable land a hundred years ago. I always imagine these trees mark some dwelling-house, which has disappeared. They used to be my chief haunt when I was a boy. There are four of them, extraordinarily interwoven. I made a seat in one of them. I could see everything ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... into with such perfect knowledge of the intentions and designs of the whites by the Indians, and such profound ignorance of the qualities of the Indians by the whites. It need scarcely be said that the treaty was an unquestionable Indian success. They did not give up their arable lands; what they did sell to the agent they refused to exchange for extravagant-priced shoddy blankets, worthless guns, damp powder, and mouldy meal. They took pay in dollars, and were thus enabled to open more profitable commerce with the traders at the settlements ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze country like their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass showed the lightest of fuel—straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from arable land. The most enduring of all—steady unaltering eyes like Planets—signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and stout billets. Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... silence. Thick among the tree-trunks on one side grew cornel bushes and sloes, making a solid mass of underbrush, while on the other side there was an opening through which one might catch sight of a long meadow, and arable fields beyond, and even of blue hills along ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... greater part of Britain and the continent in the Neolithic Age. Clearings necessary for pasture and agriculture must unquestionably, then, have been produced principally by the aid of fire. Under the edge of the bronze ax clearings would be rapidly produced, pasture and arable land would begin to spread over the surface of the country; with the disappearance of the forests the wild animals would become scarce, hunting would cease to be so important, agriculture would improve, and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... the refrigeration resulting from radiation, we must take into the account the conducting power of those particles also. Other things being equal, siliceous and calcareous sands, compared in equal volumes with different argillaceous earths, with calcareous powder or dust, with humus, with arable and with garden earth, are the soils which least conduct heat. It is for this reason that sandy ground, in summer, maintains a high temperature even during the night. We may hence conclude that when ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... this climate. When weeds so common with us can not be reared here, we cease to wonder at the dissimilarity of the native Flora of the New World. Yet, wherever the aboriginal forests are cleared, we see orchards, gardens, and arable lands filled with the same fruit-trees, the same grain and vegetables, as in Europe, so bountifully has Nature provided that the plants most useful to man should be capable, like himself, of becoming cosmopolites."—Lyell's Travels ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... 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, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... notice of an association for the purpose of enabling persons of all ranks to enjoy the pleasures of the chase. A park of great extent is to be taken on lease near Paris; its extent is about six thousand acres, partly arable, and partly forest ground. The plan is, to open it to subscribers during six months—viz. from September 1 to March 1, an ample stock of game ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... of Ireland, and some of the islands beyond Ireland, as Aran, the land of the Saints, Innisbuffen, Innisturk, Innismain, and Innisclare. These islands, he added, were under the rule of O'Neill, and they were 'very pleasant and fertile, plenty of wood, water, and arable ground, pastures, and fish, and a very temperate air.' On this description Mr. Froude remarks in a note—'At present they are barren heaps of treeless moors and mountains. They yield nothing but scanty oat crops and potatoes, and though the seas are full of fish as ever, there are no hands ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... reservations, viz., the Lac de Flambeau and Lac Court D'Oreille in Wisconsin, and the Fond du Lac in Minnesota; and for the removal of the Indians located thereon to the Bad River reservation, where there is plenty of good, arable land, and where they can be properly cared for, and instructed ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker

... surviving in connexion with Burns's daily life that is not heart-depressing. Travelled through the vale of Nith, here little like a vale, it is so broad, with irregular hills rising up on each side, in outline resembling the old-fashioned valances of a bed. There is a great deal of arable land; the corn ripe; trees here and there—plantations, clumps, coppices, and a newness in everything. So much of the gorse and broom rooted out that you wonder why it is not all gone, and yet there seems to be almost as much gorse and broom as corn; ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... 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 ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... advice he could have given had he been taken into council; and one of Kaiser Wilhelm's predecessors on the throne of Prussia intimating that he, in like case, would have proved conclusively that pounded quartz and silex may easily be in excess in arable soil. The creature, then, has intelligence of which the Creator has always been destitute. Yet the creature can have nothing save what, either directly or indirectly, he derives from a creator. Wherefore that, in becoming ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... orchards or artificial meadows was unknown to the Germans; nor can we expect any improvements in agriculture from a people, whose prosperity every year experienced a general change by a new division of the arable lands, and who, in that strange operation, avoided disputes, by suffering a great part of their territory to lie waste and without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... Valleys of the James and the Appomattox, down which our way lay, broadened into an expanse of arable acres, and the faces of those streams were frequently ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... the rest, the narrow slips of level ground which lay by the side of the brook exhibited a scanty crop of barley, liable to constant depredations from the herds of wild ponies and black cattle that grazed upon the adjacent hills. These ever and anon made an incursion upon the arable ground, which was repelled by the loud, uncouth, and dissonant shouts of half a dozen Highland swains, all running as if they had been mad, and every one hallooing a half-starved dog to the rescue of the forage. At a little distance up the glen was ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... labourers to work ploughing a field and then said that he would go and have a look at the jungle which his master wanted cleared. So he went off alone with only a stick in his hand. When he reached the place, he walked all round it, and saw how much could be made into good arable land, and then he began to clear it. He pulled up the trees by the roots and piled them into a heap and he took the rocks and threw them to one side and made the ground quite clear and smooth, and then went back to the house. On being asked ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... highly dogmatic. She devoted her last words to the Marsh as a grain-bearing district—on one or two farms, where pasture had been broken, the yield in wheat had been found excellent. Since that was so, why had so few farms hitherto shown enterprise in this direction? There was no denying that arable paid better than pasture, and the only excuse for neglecting it was poverty of soil. It was obvious that no such poverty existed here—on the contrary, the soil was rich, and yet no crops were grown in it except roots and here and there a few acres of beans ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... entered that evening on the hour of Vespers, he called Saint Nicholas, as it was the feast of that saint. Once more his description flounders among superlatives: he thought Cuba was perfect; but he finds the new island more perfect still. The climate is like May in Cordova; the tracts of arable land and fertile valleys and high mountains are like those in Castile; he finds mullet like those of Castile; soles and other fish like those in Castile; nightingales and other small birds like those in Castile; myrtle and other trees and grasses like ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... curiosity and extravagant 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 of that ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... ceased to be 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 brought directly from ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... The arable soil of Jaffna is generally of a deep red colour, from the admixture of iron, and, being largely composed of lime from the comminuted coral, it is susceptible of the highest cultivation, and produces crops of great luxuriance. This tillage is carried on exclusively ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... bought, till the value rose from their original price of one penny an acre to half-a-crown, and then five shillings. Subsequently, in many cases, as much as ten, and even twenty shillings an acre was offered for ordinary raw arable land. But of that time too much has to be ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... young and ardent when ruin fell upon Cuckoo Valley. Its head rested on the slope of a high and sombre moorland, scattered with granite and china-clay; and by the small town of Ponteglos, where it widened out into arable and grey pasture-land, the Cuckoo river grew deep enough to float up vessels of small tonnage from the coast at the spring tides. I have seen there the boom of a trading schooner brush the grasses on the river-bank as she came ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and as depicted by the representative character of the Sixteens, and in its place find that "there are some tenants who have rights in the common field and not in the pasture, and vice versa several occupiers have the right of pasture who do not possess any portion of arable land in the common field," so that both yard-lands and hides have now disappeared, and absolute ownership of land has taken their place. Mr. Horde's MS. enables us to proceed back from modern tenancy-holding to the holding by yard-lands; the rights of election in the yard-lands ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... astonishing a proposition to make than this, which he enunciated with much mouthing of the honour and sense of duty of Mr. Grafton Carvel. His client offered to Mr. Richard Carvel the estate lying in Kent County, embracing thirty-three hundred acres more or less of arable land and woodland, with a fine new house, together with the indented servants and negroes and other chattels thereon. Mr. Richard Carvel would observe that in making this generous offer for the welfare of his nephew, Mr. Tucker's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Poesy, and 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... 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 of grain, and the agriculturist would be ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat

... which the Navaho call Tsegi, contains several small streams and numerous patches of arable land on the bottoms. The conditions here are exceptionally favorable for horticulture; indeed, the numerous remains of cliff dwellings which are found in the canyon would show this if other evidence were lacking. It has long been famous among the Navaho as the ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... continue Climate: arid to semiarid; cold winters and hot summers Terrain: mostly rugged mountains; plains in north and southwest Natural resources: natural gas, crude oil, coal, copper, talc, barites, sulphur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones Land use: arable land 12%; permanent crops NEGL%; meadows and pastures 46%; forest and woodland 3%; other 39%; includes irrigated NEGL% Environment: damaging earthquakes occur in Hindu Kush mountains; soil degradation, desertification, overgrazing, deforestation, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... 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

... rain to subside, we got under way and made straight for Fuga. The first half of the journey led us by well-beaten footpaths through flat cultivated fields of sugar-cane and bananas, tamarind-trees, papaws, and various jungle shrubs, filling up the non-arable surface; and then began a steep ascent by rudely-beaten zigzags, to ease the abruptness of the hill, on which the capital is situated. The whole face of this hill was clothed with large timber trees, around which, here and there, entwining their trunks, clung the delicate sarsaparilla vine; ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... appeared to be free from disease, and the pumpkin crop was evidently abundant and in good condition. Sussex Valley, along which we passed for thirty miles, is green, wooded, and smilingly fertile, being watered by a clear rapid river. The numerous hay-meadows, and the neat appearance of the arable land, reminded me of England. It is surprising, considering the advantages possessed by New Brunswick, that it has not been a more favourite resort of emigrants. It seems to me that one great reason of this must be the difficulty and expense of land-travelling, as ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... by the park of Saint Cloud. When we turn up the pages in the estate book dealing with Villaris, we find that there was a man called Bodo living there.[1] He had a wife called Ermentrude and three children called Wido and Gerbert and Hildegard; and he owned a little farm of arable and meadow land, with a few vines. And we know very nearly as much about Bodo's work as we know about that of a smallholder in France today. Let us try and imagine a day in his life. On a fine spring morning towards the end of Charlemagne's ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... 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 not ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... been said, it may be seen how impossible it was to detach a body of convicts to any distance, if there had been any necessity for it. The land at Rose-Hill is very good, and in every respect well calculated for arable and pasture ground, though it be loaded with timber, the removal of which requires great labour and time; but this is the case with the whole country, as far as had been seen, particular spots excepted. As the good land ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... 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 ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden

... bad, owing to the inhabitants having tried to flood 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 of cultivation, because the country, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... dead tree; the river dashes over its ledge of rock in a foaming flood, runs shallow and rapid between green woods, and all about the town there are breezy pastures where the stumps are still standing, and arable lands well cleared. The little town itself has a thriving look. Its public buildings and its villas have risen, as by the sweep of an enchanter's wand, in these backwoods to the south of the ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall



Words linked to "Arable" :   productive, arability



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