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Fertile   /fˈərtəl/  /fərtˈaɪl/   Listen
Fertile

adjective
1.
Capable of reproducing.
2.
Intellectually productive.  Synonyms: fecund, prolific.  "A fecund imagination"
3.
Bearing in abundance especially offspring.  Synonym: prolific.  "A prolific pear tree"
4.
Marked by great fruitfulness.  Synonyms: fat, productive, rich.  "A fat land" , "A productive vineyard" , "Rich soil"



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"Fertile" Quotes from Famous Books



... belief than over the hue of his skin or the height of his stature, still it is a simple fact of Jamie's experience, that it is mighty hard to convince a man who does not wish to be convinced; and that, when anybody first resolves to continue to drink, he is then marvellously fertile in ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... conception of between two and three hundred children born during the war. He finds that the likelihood of fertilisation increases from the first day of menstruation, reaching the highest point six days later, the fertile period remains almost at the same height till the 12th or 13th day, and then declines gradually until the 22nd day, after ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett

... now call reprints; but the edition of 1588, of which "L'Exemplaire de Bordeaux" is a copy, represents so thorough an overhauling and so generous an enlarging of the old book that some have been tempted to reckon it a new one. Yet, though it garners the fruit of eight fertile years of travel and public service, it reveals no startling change in the outlook, nor in what is more important, the insight, of its author. We need feel no surprise. Had Montaigne been the sort of man whose views and sentiments are profoundly affected by travel or office, he ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... a proverb. But it is not difficult, even without being imaginative, to see how beautiful for situation was once the spot where the Abbey rose in all its unimpaired and stately grace. It stood on a fertile and perfectly level piece of ground, close by the Cart, then a pure mountain stream, which, after falling over some bold and picturesque rocks in the middle of its channel, moved quietly by the Abbey walls on ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... and he understood clearly now the history of his country without prejudices of race. The foreign historians showed him the sad fate of Spain, arrested in the most critical period of her development, when she was emerging young and strong during the most fertile period of the Middle Ages, by the fanaticism of priests and inquisitors, and the folly of some of her kings, who, with utterly inadequate means, wished to revive the empire of the Caesars, draining the country for this mad enterprise. Those people who had broken with the Papacy, turning ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... views of all employers in the industrial world, and his fanatical ideas of class loyalty, were impressed with weird exaggeration upon the fertile minds of his children. From their father's conversation with his workmen neighbors, and from the suggestive expressions and epithets which Sam had gleaned from the literature upon which he fed his mind and which he used with such gusto, Bobby and Maggie had gathered ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... domestic games continually remind us of the obstinate tenacity with which the Anglo-Saxon race has preserved, and still preserves, the vestiges of its ancient subjection to a foreign yoke. The crier of a country town, in any of England's fertile provinces, never proclaims the loss of a yeoman's sporting-dog, the auction of a bankrupt dealer's stock-in-trade, or the impounding of a strayed cow, until he has commanded, in Norman-French, the attention of the sleepy ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... Kansas could have to give the ballot to women, for thousands now waiting and uncertain, would flock to our State, and a vast tide of emigration would continually roll toward Kansas until her broad and fertile prairies would be peopled. It is useless to attempt to report her address, as she could hardly find a place to stop. When she had done, her opponent had nothing to say, he had been beaten on his own ground, and retired with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the advent of spring and donning its livery of green. The broad river, flowing southward with a mighty volume of water from four inland seas of which it formed the sole outlet, was lined as far as the eye could reach with the white houses and fertile fields of French farmers. From these, spirals of blue smoke curled peacefully, and the voices of cattle answered each other in morning greetings. A darker mass of buildings on the western bank denoted the palisaded village in which dwelt the British garrison, their wives and children, and ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... one that portion of the merit that belongs to him in the common work. When we thus cast a retrospective glance we find ourselves in the presence of one strange fact, and that is the simultaneousness of discoveries. That an absolutely original idea, fertile in practical consequences, should rise at a given moment in a fine brain is well; we admire the discovery, and, in spite of us, a little surprise mingles with our admiration. But is it not a truly curious thing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... upon shore, and upon the town. But, although they had showed so great a desire for war, when they heard the artillery and saw its effects, they abandoned their village without waiting for battle, and fled through the large, beautiful, and fertile open fields that are to be seen in this region. Accordingly we remained in the village, which had been left totally without provisions by the natives. We pursued the enemy, but they are the lightest and swiftest runners whom I have ever seen. When we entered the village, all the food ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... generally paid above its natural rate. The rent of the land which affords such singular and esteemed productions, like the rent of some vineyards in France of a peculiarly happy soil and situation, bears no regular proportion to the rent of other equally fertile and equally well cultivated land in its neighbourhood. The wages of the labour, and the profits of the stock employed in bringing such commodities to market, on the contrary, are seldom out of their natural proportion ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Catskills sweeps boldly across the near northern horizon. Nowhere do those mountains seem so majestic, or their forms so broken and beautiful; nearer are the Olive mountains, beyond which flows the Esopus. Rondout creek, the Wallkill, and the Hudson, water the fertile vales lying among the hills. To the south stretches the line of the Shawangunk toward the Delaware river, and on the extreme southern and southeastern horizon rise the Highlands, with the river gap, the rifted sides of the Storm King, the Beacons, the great broad ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... very kind to the valley, making it rich and productive to an exceptional degree, and though for three years contending armies had been marching up and down it, the fertile soil still yielded ample subsistence for Early's men, with a large surplus for the army of Lee. The ground had long been well cleared of timber, and the rolling surface presented so few obstacles to the movement of armies that they could march over the country in any direction ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... and turned from the altar to follow the server, laden with the cruets and finger-cloth, to the sacristy, the planet remained sole master of the church. Its rays in turn now rested on the altar-cloth, irradiating the tabernacle-door with splendour, and celebrating the fertile powers of May. Warmth rose from the stone flags. The daubed walls, the tall Virgin, the huge Christ, too, all seemed to quiver as with shooting sap, as if death had been conquered by the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... "A fertile field, a rich vein of ore, a falling stream which supplies power, may give the possessor advantages [176] equivalent to the possession of capital; but to class such things as capital would be to put an end to the distinction between land ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits of copper and cobalt. Agriculture is the most important sector of the economy, employing over 80% of the work force. Coffee accounts for the bulk of export revenues. Since 1986, ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... depths lie the fields of Chancellorsville; where the breastworks of the Wilderness can still be traced; and on the eastern verge of which stand the grass-grown batteries of Fredericksburg. Northward, beyond the woods which hide the Rapidan, the eye ranges over the wide and fertile plains of Culpeper, with the green crest of Slaughter Mountain overlooking Cedar Run, and the dim levels of Brandy Station, the scene of the great cavalry battle,* (* June 9, 1863.) just visible beyond. Far away to the north-east the faint outline of a range of hills marks the source of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... confiscation. It was necessary for Spain to send out annually a fleet, under a convoy of ships of war, for the transportation of merchandise and supplies for the colonies, returning laden with cargoes of almost priceless value. Champlain, fertile in expedient, proposed to himself to visit Spain, and there form such acquaintances and obtain such influence as would secure to him in some way a passage to the Indies in this ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... In fact, so different are these creatures in habits, that whatever be the natural character of a district of country, it will be found the favourite home of one or more species. Even the very desert has its antelopes, that prefer the parched and waterless plain to the most fertile and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... with a picked company of one hundred and twenty emigrants, and on the 12th of February, 1733, landed at the foot of the bluff on which now stands the city of Savannah. The attractions of the genial climate and fertile soil, the liberal terms of invitation, and the splendid schemes of profitable industry were diligently advertised, and came to the knowledge of that noble young enthusiast, Zinzendorf, count and Moravian bishop, whose estate of Herrnhut in Lusatia had become an asylum for persecuted ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... very fertile elevated plains, slightly undulated, and intersected by numerous ravines which are dry in summer. The undulations are scarcely apparent to the eye as it takes in a wide prospect under a blazing sun and with a deep-blue ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... able to procure its own entertainments, and to subsist upon its own stock, is not the prerogative of every mind. There are indeed understandings so fertile and comprehensive, that they can always feed reflection with new supplies, and suffer nothing from the preclusion of adventitious amusements; as some cities have within their own walls enclosed ground enough to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... confident," says John Hunter, the anatomist, "that I can fix my attention to any part, until I have a sensation in that part." This is what is called the influence of the mind upon the body. Its extent is much greater than used to be imagined, and it has been a fertile source of religious delusions. Such sensations are called subjective; those produced ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... wished, could not interfere. Germany was attentive, but motionless. The students, the artisans, the tradesmen, were at heart with the Reformer; and their enthusiasm could not be wholly repressed. The press grew fertile with pamphlets; and it was noticed that all the printers and compositors went for Luther. The Catholics could not get their books into type without sending them to France or ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... a row. They would play various games about the bedrooms, vaulting or jumping over the beds, running races in sheets, getting through the windows upon the roofs, to frighten the study-boys with sham ghosts, or playing the thousand other pranks which suggested themselves to the fertile imagination of fifteen. But the favorite amusement was a bolstering match. One room would challenge another, and, stripping the covers off their bolsters, would meet in mortal fray. A bolster well wielded, especially when dexterously applied to the legs, is a very ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... Baluches I had taken my last look; with the Jesuits of the French Mission I had exchanged farewells, and before me beamed the sun of promise as he sped towards the Occident. Loveliness glowed around me. I saw fertile fields, riant vegetation, strange trees—I heard the cry of cricket and pee-wit, and sibilant sound of many insects, all of which seemed to tell me, "At last you are started." What could I ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... have a good general knowledge of many of the peoples of the eastern coast of the south-eastern peninsula of New Guinea, and of some of the islands from the Trobriands to the Louisiades. The Ethnology of the fertile and populous Mekeo district has been mainly made known to us by the investigations of various members of the Sacred Heart Mission, and by Dr. Seligmann. What little we know of the Papuan Gulf district is due to missionaries among the coastal tribes, Mr. James Chalmers and Mr. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... make a pleasant habitation. She had never seen the inner quadrangle, in all its splendour of modern restoration—sparkling freestone, fresh from the mason's chisel; gothic windows, glowing with rare stained glass; and the broad fertile gardens, with their terraces and banks of flowers, crowded together to make a feast of colour, sloping down ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... about nine miles through fertile slopes of rice-fields, shaded by walnuts and sycamores, and found our halting-place situated in a serai, shrouded in mulberry and cherry trees, and with a charming little rivulet running through it, discoursing sweet music night and day. Our habitation was a baraduree, or summer-house, ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... springing through The air like Vishnu's discus(991) flew. The sea was passed: beneath him, gay With bright-winged birds, the mountains lay, And brook and lake and lonely glen, And fertile lands with toiling men. On, on he sped: before him rose The mansion of perennial snows. There soared the glorious peaks as fair As white clouds in the summer air. Here, bursting from the leafy shade, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... invention of instruments designed for philosophical research. To facilitate his practical work, we find that in 1599 he had engaged a skilled workman who was to live in his house, and thus be constantly at hand to try the devices for ever springing from Galileo's fertile brain. Among the earliest of his inventions appears to have been the thermometer, which he constructed in 1602. No doubt this apparatus in its primitive form differed in some respects from the contrivance we call by the same name. Galileo at first employed water as the agent, by the expansion ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... westward. Standing beside her father in the warm November sunshine, Susan watched the strong horses on the towpath, plodding patiently ahead, and heard the wash of the water against the prow and the noisy greeting of boat horns. As they passed the snug friendly villages along the canal and the wide fertile fields, now brown and bleak after the harvest, she wondered what the new farm would be like and what the future would bring; and at night when the lights twinkled in the settlements along the shore, she thought longingly of her old home and the sisters ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... commonly used when a political contest is on, there are thousands of square miles of what may be called "country," including picturesque mountains, pine lands which are not susceptible of cultivation, and are preserved for recreation and pleasure purposes, and fertile valleys, divided up ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... told us that he had taken up land and was going to build on it and make himself a home there, I wondered what he would do to make a living. The land seemed to be fertile enough, but I did not see any chance to sell what he might raise if he tried farming, but I was told that he cultivated the land for awhile and then it was too valuable. So he cut it up into lots and sold it, and now it is covered with business ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan

... up-hill among villas and between walls enclosing fields of volcanic soil, very fertile, and occasionally a recent eruption had buried the fertility under fresh lava, hard and black, on which ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... immensely large, and opportunities welcomed them everywhere. The first adventurers, who blazed the trail, reported rich and fertile lands along the Connecticut River, with fine opportunities for fishing and trading; for this river, which in the North divides the two states of Vermont and New Hampshire, flows through Massachusetts and Connecticut, where it pours rich deposits of silt ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller

... brilliant dawn. The country was high, rolling, and the foliage, although much browned by the July sun, which was unusually hot that year, was still dense. Most of the hills were heavy with forest, but all the valleys between were fertile and well cultivated. With the dew of the morning fresh upon it the whole region was refreshing and soothing to the eye with a look of peace, where in reality there was no peace. Many thin columns of smoke lying blue against the silver sky ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... poetic and fertile brain of the patriot he took oath to carry out; he vowed his whole life to the cause of Ireland; and he consoled Owen for apparent failure by showing him that he had not altogether failed, since a man, young, earnest, determined, and wealthy should take up the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... the five great Pacific railway lines, the Northern, the Union, the Santa Fe, the Southern, and the Great Northern, with their various branches, brought into valuable employ infinite reaches of fertile land previously as good as desert. Texas made most remarkable advance both in square miles occupied and in density of population, brought about by great extension of railway mileage, and of cattle, sheep, and wheat culture. Large patches of the Dakotas, Montana, and Idaho filled ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... Sophia and her eminent boyard, Prince Basil Golitsyn. A time came (1687) when it served the interests of Russia to degrade Samoilovitch, and raise Mazeppa to the post of hetman, and thenceforward, for twenty years and more, he held something like a regal sway over the whole of the Ukraine (a fertile "no-man's land," watered by the Dnieper and its tributaries), openly the loyal and zealous ally of his neighbour ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... what reason I do not know. Originally planned for the convenience of the missionaries journeying from one station to another, it almost completely encompasses the larger peninsula; skirting for a distance of at least sixty miles along the low, fertile lands bordering the sea. But on the side next Taiarboo, or the lesser peninsula, it sweeps through a narrow, secluded valley, and thus crosses the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... sudden start. I thought of bears and instantly seized my hatchet and knife for defense, before realizing the true situation. Old skulls and bones of buffalo were plentiful, showing that the animals had once occupied these fertile valleys. On starting back we followed an old animal trail, the general course of which was headed toward the range, though it wound around the mountain sides and gulches in all directions. We felt sure it would lead over the Snowy range at the easiest passage. After following it two ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton

... visible, and this lack of human life and action gave to the country an indescribable air of solitude and desertion. In other respects, however, there was everything which could gratify the eye and the taste. The land was fertile, the soil cultivated, the scenery beautiful. Tall trees—the mulberry and the poplar—arose in long lines; here and there the cactus stretched forth its thorny arms, and at intervals there appeared the dark green of extensive ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... except a few tentacles; so we say Paris, and not France. Imperial interests rested on two supports, Paris and the rest of the world. When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris exchange. Accordingly, the price of French government bonds went down with a serious drop; England having announced soon afterward that she ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... interest of a family, for which we are to think ill of a government that will not endure it. But quiet ourselves; the land through which the river Nilus wanders in one stream, is barren; but where it parts into seven, it multiplies its fertile shores by distributing, yet keeping and improving, such a propriety and nutrition, as is a prudent agrarian to a ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... Some spread themselves over the rich pastures in the country lying immediately north of that river, and now forming the infant colony which is presently to be described. Others penetrated far to the north, forded the Vaal or Yellow River, and planted corn-fields and vineyards on the fertile slopes of the Kashan Mountains, where they still maintain themselves as a self-governed and thriving community. One small band of bold adventurers found their way to the verdant but fever-haunted plains about Delagoa Bay, whence the few survivors were presently driven ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... Renaissance, with its long flat roofs, its fine loggia, and terraced vineyards. A rude village of grey stone, part, it seemed, of the tufa rocks from which it sprang, pressed round the villa, invaded its olive-gardens, crept up to its very walls. Meanwhile the earth grew kinder and more fertile. The vines and figs stood thick again among the green corn and flowering lucerne. Peasants streaming home from work, the men on donkeys, the women carrying their babies, met the carriage and stopped to stare after ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a land of rocky hills and narrow though fertile valleys. The possessions of Israel were broader and more luxuriant; and in the beautiful plain of Jezreel the kings of Israel had built their favourite city of Samaria. In that city, Ahab erected the temple consecrated to Baal, and there he ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... little good offices in my power, and invited them to supper; upon which our wise Minister[21] has discovered that I am in the interest of popery and slavery. As he has often said the same thing of Mr. Pitt, it would give me no mortification, if I did not apprehend that his fertile imagination may support this wise idea by such circumstances as may influence those that do not know me. It is very remarkable that after having suffered all the rage of that party at Avignon for my attachment to the present reigning family, I should be accused here of favouring rebellion, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... the breadth of my nail, to anyone; rewards and favours of that sort are reserved for God alone. What I can give I give you, and that is a real, genuine island, compact, well proportioned, and uncommonly fertile and fruitful, where, if you know how to use your opportunities, you may, with the help of the world's riches, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... grandfather Hugh prospered, and in turn his son John, my father, to a far greater extent. Their old home in Wales became to them, as time went on, less and less important. Their acres here in Merion and Bucks were more numerous and more fertile. I may add that the possession of many slaves in Maryland, and a few in Pennsylvania, gave them the feeling of authority and position, which the colonial was apt to lose in the presence of his English rulers, who, being in those days principally gentlemen ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... play an important part in the "Cyropaedeia." They are the Scirites of the Assyrian army who came over to Cyrus after the first battle. Their country is the fertile land touching the south-eastern corner of the Caspian. Cf. "Cyrop." IV. ii. 8, where the author (or an editor) appends a note on the present status ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... children living, for years, without suffering much from the vertical sun and the fevers of the country. There are many places where one only sees a mosquito for three months of the year, the soil is very fertile, and labour not only willing and efficient, but also very cheap. The European, too, has learnt to live properly in this country, and to avoid the midday sun; all offices and works are closed from twelve to ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... the greatest prosperity is not the most lasting. Good living, bad economy, dishonest servants, and ill-luck, all uniting together to disconcert their housekeeping, their table was going to be gradually laid aside, when the Chevalier's genius, fertile in resources, undertook to support his former credit by the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... the head of Risdon creek, on the east side, seems preferable to any other on the banks of the Derwent. The creek runs winding between two steep hills, and ends in a chain of ponds that extends into a fertile valley of great beauty. For half a mile above the head of the creek, the valley is contracted and narrow; but the soil is extremely rich, and the fields are well covered with grass. Beyond this it suddenly expands, and becomes broad and flat at the bottom, whence arise ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... the Cumberland Islands are high, and appear to be better furnished with wood, and more fertile than the southern groups, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... lapsing into mere exclamations, rising to animated description as one memory wakened another in the chain of human associations. Bovine, heavy, and animal, yet peaceful, was that picture of Wisconsin farm lands, saturated with a few strong impressions,—the scents of field and of cattle, the fertile soil, and the broad-shouldered ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Farewell! thou vast and fertile prairie-land. Farewell! Not long so dreary wilt thou be; Already man, with ever-busy hand, Is cultivating and enriching thee; And with the wealth of this, thy virgin soil, Thou well rewardest him ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... happen that there were no species living in any part of it adapted to the consequences resulting from more moisture. In this case therefore, and still more (as we have seen) during the production of new stations from the elevation of the land, an island would be a far more fertile source, as far as we can judge, of new specific forms than a continent. The new forms thus generated on an island, we might expect, would occasionally be transported by accident, or through long-continued ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... pages, however, it has been made clear that Jackson's quiet demeanour concealed a vivid imagination, a fertile brain, and an extraordinary capacity for far-reaching combinations. After he had once made up his mind when and where to strike, it is true that his methods of war were very simple, and his blows those of a sledgehammer. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... country in the world. The age-long struggle against the ocean and the river floods, which has converted the marshes, that lay around the mouths of the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, by toilsome labour and skill into fertile and productive soil, has left its impress on the whole history of this people. Nor must it be forgotten how largely this building up of the elaborate system of dykes, dams and canals by which this water-logged land was transformed into the Holland of the closing decades of the sixteenth century, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... had now sunk behind the hills, and we had floated round the neighboring bend, and under the new North Bridge between Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, into the Great Meadows, which, like a broad moccason print, have levelled a fertile ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... of Esprit des lois is not that of a formal treatise on law, or even on polity. It is that of an assemblage of the most fertile, original, and inspiriting views on legal and political subjects, put in language of singular suggestiveness and vigour, illustrated by examples which are always apt and luminous, permeated by the spirit of temperate and tolerant ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... of the Atlantic our population with ceaseless tide has poured into the wide and fertile valley of the Mississippi, with eddying whirl has passed to the coast of the Pacific, from the West and the East the tides are rushing towards each other—and the mind is carried to the day when all the cultivable and will be inhabited, ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis

... was considerably weakened as he approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder, they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of the Lydian kings and now of the Persian satraps, had recovered from the devastation by the Ionians in their ill-starred revolt seventeen years preceding. The city spread in the fertile Sardiene, one of the garden plains of Asia Minor. To the south the cloud-crowned heights of Tmolus ever were visible. To the north flowed the noble stream of Hebrus, whilst high above the wealthy town, the busy agora, the giant temple of Lydian Cybele, rose the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... mistake of publishing his mistrust and dislike. It must be confessed that the gentlemen who directed the Administration party were no match as tacticians for such file-leaders as Jefferson and Burr. Many of their pet measures were ill-judged, to say the least. The provisional army furnished a fertile theme for fierce declamation. The black cockade became the badge of the supporters of government, so that in the streets one could tell at a glance whether friend or foe was approaching. The Alien and Sedition Laws caused ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... advancing rapidly, the troops were obliged to spread themselves over the country in small parties, in order to collect corn and to get it ground for their daily subsistence. In this way they proceeded slowly through the upper and more fertile parts of North Carolina to Hillsborough, and were preparing to march by Cross creek to Salisbury, where they expected to be joined by the militia of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... about five hundred Filipinos living with the Moros, mostly slaves. Deer, jungle-cock, wild hogs, and cattle are to be found in the plains and forests near the lake. The soil is fertile, and sufficient crops of corn, rice, coffee, and tobacco may be raised, Camotes (wild potatoes), fruits, and cocoanuts are ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... prosperity, it is not necessary to look far in order to understand why the farmers have taken this definite action. Western farmers and citizens generally are carrying extra burdens which offset the advantages of cheap and fertile land. Interest on mortgages and bank loans have been higher than in Eastern Canada. It is more expensive to distribute commodities West than East. On account of the lavish donations of Western lands to railway promoters ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... is gone. All that the people can do in that region is to raise some little articles, some little wheat for their tortillas, and that by irrigation. And who expects to see a hundred black men cultivating tobacco, corn, cotton, rice, or any thing else, on lands in New Mexico, made fertile only by irrigation? ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... in which he took no interest. If he had been allowed to choose, he would have devoted his time to reading the Latin classics and declaiming—that is, as much time as he could spare from plaguing the professors and interrupting the studies of his companions by every device of a festive and fertile imagination. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness. Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask. A river whose estuary resembles a breach in a sand rampart may flow through a most fertile country. But all the estuaries of great rivers have their fascination, the attractiveness of an open portal. Water is friendly to man. The ocean, a part of Nature furthest removed in the unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit of mankind, has ever been a friend to the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... on April 11 1758, with a mixture of joy and regret, in the firm resolution revisiting, as a man, the persons and places which had been so dear to my youth. We travelled slowly, but pleasantly, in a hired coach, over the hills of Franche-compte and the fertile province of Lorraine, and passed, without accident or inquiry, through several fortified towns of the French frontier: from thence we entered the wild Ardennes of the Austrian dutchy of Luxemburg; and after crossing the Meuse at Liege, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... so furnished with good woods, springs, fruits, fish, and foule, that it makes mee thinke though the Coast be rockie, and thus affrightable; the Values, Plaines, and interior parts, may well (notwithstanding) be verie fertile. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various

... rose a succession of heights, beyond which appeared the summits of the ridge of lofty mountains which runs down the centre of the island, dividing it longitudinally into two parts, of which, however, the northern is the largest, most fertile, and best known. My Dutch friend was very communicative respecting the productions of the country, and the manners and customs of the inhabitants. I noted down, therefore, the information I received from him, which I give in as concise a form ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... saloon-keeper had caught the name "Bud," and he now stood racking his fertile brains to place it. But the stranger's identity ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... of a priest in the fifteenth century! ——Fortunate Chatterton! What the warmest wishes of the admirers of the greatest Genius that England ever produced have not yet effected, amagnificent and accurate edition of his works, with notes and engravings, the product of thy fertile brain has now obtained. —It is almost needless to say, that I allude to two new publications by Mr. Bryant, and the Dean of Exeter; in the modest title of one of which, the authenticity of the poems attributed to Thomas Rowley is said to be ascertained; ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone

... the gossip from thy son's courtyard, that when China is again peaceful, there will be more chance for the men within her borders, who can then stay beside their fires and earn their food. Our land is a land of fertile soil, of rich minerals, and great rivers. It is said that there are millions and millions of acres on which food or other products can be grown, and that a great part of China may be made one vast garden. ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... Union! And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse, this happy Union we will dissolve—this picture of peace and prosperity we will deface—this free intercourse we will interrupt—these fertile fields we will deluge with blood—the protection of that glorious flag we renounce—the very name of Americans we discard. And for what, mistaken men! For what do you throw away these inestimable blessings—for what would you exchange your share in the advantages ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... anxiety by your faithful, friendly conduct," continued my father, "for it will make what I am going to seek in the wilderness quite a home at once. It is not the wilderness you think, for I know on very good authority that the place where we are going is a very beautiful and fertile country." ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... Republic, was as great a mystery to the average dweller on the Atlantic seaboard as the elephant was to the blind men of Hindustan. The reports of those who had penetrated this wilderness—of those who had seen the barren ranges of the Alleghanies, the fertile uplands of the Unakas, the luxuriant blue-grass regions, the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and Mississippi, the wide shores of the inland seas, or the stretches of prairie increasing in width beyond the Wabash—seemed strangely contradictory, and no one had been able to patch these ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... town they waved a last farewell to the hundreds below, whose forms they could just make out in the fast-gathering darkness. Then, turning off straight east, they flew over the dark-green canopy of eucalyptus forests of fertile Arnhem Land, and crossed the Gulf of Carpentaria in the full darkness of the night. When they passed over Cape York peninsula, Tom was at the throttle, and the younger boys had been asleep for a number of hours. They had ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... of Gershom; but since he deemed that Gershom had himself preserved faulty readings, he took up the work again, despite Gershom's prohibition. He realized that this careful and detailed critical revision of his predecessor, however ungrateful the soil might appear, was nevertheless fertile ground, and might serve as the solid basis ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... side of the land of Manila, [22] one encounters the jurisdiction of Bulacan, which is but small, and is administered by religious of the calced Augustinians—as also is the jurisdiction of Panpanga, which is large and fertile, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... my ain. I didna buy it for masel. It was to hae been for ma son, John. But John lies sleepin' wi' many another braw laddie, oot there in France. And I've ma farm, wi' its thousands o' acres o' fertile fields. I've no the time to be doing so much work upon it masel' as I'd like. But the wife and I ne'er let it wander far frae our thochts. It's a bonnie place. And I'm proving there that farmin' can be made to pay its way in Britain—aye, even ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... part in the picture that Mrs. Morgan presented, however, for a cool breeze gently ruffled her hair, and her eyes, when she lifted them from her work, rested contentedly on the fertile fields of the Doctor's farm, which were thriving, under Bob's management. She nodded with, pursed-up lips, as she wove her little lattices in heel ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... of Poland, although in many places boggy and sandy, is on the whole fertile, especially in the flat river valleys, and in the east at the sources of the Dnieper; indeed, it is so much so that it has been called the granary of Europe. But as the pleasure-loving gentlemen had nobler pursuits to attend to, and the miserable peasants, with whom it was a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... decked with waving corn; all the animals, finding no fresh grass for pasture, will die and food will then be lacking to the lions and wolves and other beasts of prey, and to men who after many efforts will be compelled to abandon their life, and the human race will die out. In this way the fertile and fruitful earth will remain deserted, arid and sterile from the water being shut up in its interior, and from the activity of nature it will continue a little time to increase until the cold and subtle air being gone, it will be forced to end with the element of fire; and then ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... was at Paris, with her relatives; the other teachers were at their homes. There was Ginevra Fanshawe, whom certain of her connections had carried on a pleasant tour southward. Ginevra seemed to me the happiest. She was on the route of beautiful scenery; these September suns shone for her on fertile plains, where harvest and vintage matured under their mellow beam. These gold and crystal moons rose on her vision over blue horizons ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... the Ephors and the Senate. Having changed thus, the Spartans had good laws; and to Lycurgos after he was dead they erected a temple, and they pay him great worship. So then, as might be supposed, with a fertile land and with no small number of men dwelling in it, they straightway shot up and became prosperous: and it was no longer sufficient for them to keep still; but presuming that they were superior in strength to the Arcadians, they consulted the Oracle ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... the whole of their geographical range, and not merely through the British Islands); that their geographical distribution is sufficiently similar not to present any difficulty; that they breed freely together; and that their offsprings are fertile, a very important consideration in judging whether two forms should be separated or joined as one species. This last seems to me to present the greatest difficulty, and the evidence at present appears scarcely conclusive. Of course in the limits of a note to a work like the present it is impossible ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... the Bishop. "The access is easy. The house would stand here—no need to dig deep foundations in this stone, and behind, when those trees have been cleared away, you could have a beautiful and fertile garden where anything will grow. Also, look, there is a stream of pure water running from some spring above. It is an ideal site for a house, not more than three minutes' walk from the church below, the best I should say in the whole valley. And ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... narrowing the valley of the Nile of Egypt. We see the pyramids gradually diminishing in height, particularly on their western sides, and we read of towns and villages which have been buried in the desart, but which once stood in fertile soils, some of whose minarets were still visible a few years ago, attesting the powers of the invading sand. The sphynx, buried almost up to the head, till the French cleared her down to the back, attested equally the desolating progress of this mighty sand-flood."—"And if we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various

... Fertile plains of corn stretched south of the city, but already dry, and soon giving way to mesquite and dust again. Mountains never ceased, and lay fantastically heaped up on every side. We rose ever higher, though the train kept a moderate speed. At one station the bleating of a great ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... obtained so late as the sixteenth century; the native Irish retained their wandering habits, tilling a piece of fertile land in the spring, then retiring with their herds to the booleys or dairy habitations, generally in the mountain districts in the summer, and moving about where the herbage afforded sustenance to their cattle.[239] An eighteenth-century traveller in Ireland ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... artaba was 3 epha, 18 hins; the mentioned quantity of 15 hins necessary to seed this very fertile field is only ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... 1859. The manuscript volumes are laid open in an appropriate manner, so that we have an opportunity of examining and comparing them with one another, and of observing how the precious thoughts which flowed from the fertile brain took ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... question as to the answer; and hence it comes that psychology is such an indispensable help to physiology, whose fault it only in small part is that she has hitherto made such little use of this assistance; for psychology has been late in beginning to till her fertile field with the plough of the inductive method, and it is only from ground so tilled that fruits can spring which can be ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... who are not special students of the stage to be told that the authors of Froufrou are the authors also of the Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein and of La Belle Helene, of Carmen and of Le Petit Duc. There are a few, I know, who think that Froufrou was written by the fertile and ingenious M. Victorien Sardou, and who, without thinking, credit M. Jacques Offenbach with the composition of the words as well as the music of the Grande Duchesse; and as for Carmen, is it not an Italian opera, and is not the book, like the music, the work of some Italian? As a matter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... Islands are seven low-lying, sparsely populated, coral atolls; the southern Cook Islands, where most of the population lives, consist of eight elevated, fertile, volcanic isles, including the largest, Rarotonga, at ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... what evil genius put the thought of Bubbles into my head. But once in, I could not get it out. Downstairs before the big fire I had laughed as loud as any one, and been as sure as sure could be that Fergus's story was all an invention of his fertile imagination. But, somehow, now that the lights were out, and the fellows all asleep, and the wind was moaning outside, and I lay sleepless on my bed, it did not ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... It is my purpose to protect the rights of the Indian inhabitants of that Territory to the full extent of the executive power; but it would be unwise to ignore the fact that a territory so large and so fertile, with a population so sparse and with so great a wealth of unused resources, will be found more exposed to the repetition of such attempts as happened this year when the surrounding States are more densely settled and the westward movement of our population looks ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes

... wigwams of palmetto leaves, and others ranged the island in quest of wood and water. To their surprise and joy, they found it far different from the desolate and frightful place they had been taught, by seamen's stories, to expect. It was well-wooded and fertile; there were birds of various kinds, and herds of swine roaming about, the progeny of a number that had swam ashore, in former years, from a Spanish wreck. The island abounded with turtle, and great quantities of their eggs were to be found among the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... anything good in that country? The paths run straight and hard and dusty. Stone campongs, full of white faces, are surrounded by fertile fields, but every man you meet is a slave. The rulers live under the edge of a foreign sword. We ascended mountains, we traversed valleys; at sunset we entered villages. We asked everyone, 'Have you seen such a white man?' Some stared; others laughed; women ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... a seed out of Jacob and out of Judah, an inheritor of my mountains, and mine elect and my servants shall inherit it, and my fertile and abundant plains; but I will destroy all others, because you have forgotten your God to serve strange gods. I called, and ye did not answer; I spake, and ye did not hear; and ye did choose the thing ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... Southwest diverged from that of the Northwest. The virgin lands of the Gulf attracted also the planter with his capital invested in African slaves. Once again the small farmer felt the combined pressure of social and economic forces. He saw his wealthier neighbor acquire the more fertile lands; he found himself thrust into a socially inferior class; and again he yielded to fate. While a democratic society of self-reliant yeomen was developing in the northern half of the Mississippi Valley, a society based upon a plantation economy and aristocratic in its outward characteristics ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... lives solicited their notice. Here, by climbing with some difficulty over shattered crags, we made the first experiment of unfrequented coasts. Inch Keith is nothing more than a rock covered with a thin layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass, and very fertile of thistles. A small herd of cows grazes annually upon it in the summer. It seems never to have afforded to man or beast ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... for a while, his hand still resting on Chauvelin's shoulder, his pale green eyes holding those of the other man as if in a trance. But Chauvelin neither stirred nor spoke. His triumph left him quite calm; his fertile brain was already busy with his plans. There was no room for fear in his heart, and it was without the slightest tremor that he waited for the conclusion of ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... returning to Bagdad. The pilgrims were within a day's journey of the Euphrates, and welcomed their approach to fertile earth with a triumphant chorus. Far as the eye could reach, the long line of their straggling procession stretched across the wilderness, thousands of camels in strings, laden with bales of merchandise, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... other families that their traditions took cognizance of the time when great stumps from the primeval forest stood in what was now Endbury's public square, the hub of interurban trolley traffic, whence the big, noisy cars started for their infinitely radiating journeys over the flat, fertile country about the little city. The particular Mrs. Hollister who, at the time the Emerys began to pierce the upper crust, was the leader of Endbury society, had discarded chromos as much as five years before. Mrs. Emery and Marietta, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... secure in the privacy of an anonymous communication. The ordinary man and woman have just as much of the stuff of tragedy and comedy in their lives as the Lord Tomnoddy or Lady Fitzboodle, and as there are many more of them—thank Heaven!—than the lords and ladies, the masses afford a far more fertile field for the psychological student of life and character than the classes. They are, besides, much less artificial. There are fewer apes and more men and women among people who don't pay income tax than among those who do. As Director-General of the Answers ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... may be brought about by other causes as well. Take, for instance, the poor workingman or mechanic who has already six or seven children and whose wife is unusually fertile, giving birth to children year after year. The wages of the father do not suffice to properly support them all. The food that can be purchased with the slender means is not at all adequate. Rent and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... since Mr. Roberts added a useful companion to the Jacquard punching machine, in his combined self-acting machine for shearing iron and punching both webs of angle or T iron simultaneously to any required pitch; though this machine, like others which have proceeded from his fertile brain, is ahead even of this fast-manufacturing age, and has not yet come into general use, but is certain to do so before many years ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... carrying out their researches in different directions, constitute a better agency for finding it than any that could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably contains more or less of basis in facts—each of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in his efforts to make known its success—each of them merciless in his criticism on the rest; there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course. Whatever ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... thing will, in an exalted state of mind, beget a vivid anticipation of it. This subject will be touched on again under the Illusions of Belief. Here I am concerned to point out that such presentiments are fertile sources of sense-illusion. The history of Church miracles, visions, and the like amply illustrates the effect of a vivid anticipation in falsifying ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... castles are standing romances, made to the author's hands. The castle started a talk upon Shakspeare, and how much of the tragedy he made up, and how much he found ready to his hand in tradition and history. It seems the story is all told in Holingshed's Chronicles; but his fertile mind has added some of the most thrilling touches, such as the sleep walking of Lady Macbeth. It always seemed to me that this tragedy had more of the melancholy majesty and power of the Greek than any thing modern. The striking difference is, that while fate was the radical element of those, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe



Words linked to "Fertile" :   rich, strong, fruitful, impregnable, fecundity, fertilizable, stiff, conceptive, rank, sterile, fat, potent, fertility



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