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Soil   /sɔɪl/   Listen
Soil

verb
(past & past part. soiled; pres. part. soiling)
1.
Make soiled, filthy, or dirty.  Synonyms: begrime, bemire, colly, dirty, grime.



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"Soil" Quotes from Famous Books



... among whose roots, no doubt, was the den of the bear. The tree itself grew up out of the sloping bank; and its great rhizomes stretched over a large space, many of them appearing above the surface soil. In front of the aperture was a little ledge, where the snow was hacked by the bear's paws, but below this ledge the bank trended steeply down—its slope terminating in the bed of deeper ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... That on French soil he seemed in anything but a subsidiary position, that he appeared to rule rather than to obey, could in no way appear to Marguerite in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... seen in the naturalization of vulgar foreigners, devoid of talent, who are enthroned in the Chamber of Peers! What a perversion of justice! What an insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions native to the soil of France! We looked upon these things as upon a spectacle, and groaned over them, without taking ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac

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

... garden with somewhat the same attachment that a French peasant bears for the soil upon which he has been reared. She rejoiced in every yard of it. To go away and resign it to others would be tragedy unspeakable. The fear that Aunt Harriet might recommend the family to leave Highfield was sufficient to darken her horizon indefinitely. That her mother ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... gradual slope, leaving the mesa behind. There was a faint trail, narrow, over which in other days cattle had been driven. For the grass had been trampled and cut to pieces; and in some places there were still prints of hoofs in the baked soil. ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... stalk comes up easily the sweetheart will be easy to win; if the reverse, hard to win. The shape of the stump will hint at figure of prospective wife or husband. Its length will suggest age. If much soil clings to it, life-partner will be rich; if not, poor. Finally, the stump is carried home and hung over door, first person outside of family who passes under it will bear a name whose initial is same as ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... our immigrants. They've taught us a lot. We owe them a mighty big debt. Before their coming we were prodigals. We used up our natural resources with a ruthless disregard for the future. We leveled our forests for timber, and just scratched the top soil of the land for corn. Now we're learning to farm scientifically and to conserve our wealth. And this is due in no small degree to the Germans. The German, emancipated from feudalism and kaiserism, is a pretty good citizen. In fact, among the men who have most helped modern ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... about this home to which he and his family were to grow as trees grasp the soil. Already it seemed better to him than the one he had left. There would be new playmates, new landscapes, new meadows to run in, new neighbors, new prospects. The home, so distant during the journey that he had scarcely thought about it at all, now seemed ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... self-control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth. This vital element, which many centuries of warfare, of anarchy, of oppression had extinguished in the countries that were still draped in the pomp of ancient civilisation, was deposited on the soil of Christendom by the fertilising stream of migration that overthrew ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... had never once occurred to her, for she had always believed that love could only exist where high esteem and unbounded reverence prepared the soil; and she was well aware that this man's character had from the first hour of their acquaintance excited her aversion and dread. Ten days before she had positively disliked and feared him; now, to her amazement, she found him throned in her heart, defying ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... we their descendants may realize ourselves in "lives made beautiful and sweet," through all unlikeness to dragons. It was necessary that every foot of soil in Europe should be crimsoned by blood, wantonly shed, to bring the relative peace and tolerance of the civilization of Europe today. It always "needs that offense must come" to bring about the better condition in which each particular offense shall be done away. For the evolution of life ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan

... on encountering Mrs. Mills. Mrs. Mills asked, with reserve, concerning the health of Miss Radford's mother, and mentioned (not apparently for the first time) that the lady, in her opinion, ought to be living on a gravel soil. Miss Radford, obviously suffering from repressed information, promised to deliver the advice, word for word, and in the meantime gave her ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... exactions of court etiquette which to republican eyes seem extremely irrational and foolish. Louis could not cross the river to take his Spanish bride, neither could Maria Theresa cross the stream to be married on French soil; therefore Don Luis de Haro, as the proxy of Louis XIV., having the French Bishop of Frejus as his witness, was married to Maria Theresa in the church at Fontarabia. The ceremony was conducted with the most punctilious observance of the stately ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... which extends, as far as the eye can reach, round Stones Hill. Every quarter of an hour the railway brought fresh accessions of sightseers; and, according to the statement of the Tampa Town Observer, not less than five millions of spectators thronged the soil ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... ii. 29. Que le visage ne paroisse point fantastique, changeant, egare, rauy en admiration, couuert de tristesse, divers & volage, & ne fasse paroitre aucun signe d'vn esprit inquiet: Au contraire, qu'il soil ouuert & tranquille, mais qu'il ne soit pas trop epanouey de joye dans les affaires serieuses, ny trop retire par vne grauite affectee dans la conversation ordinaire & familiere de la ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway

... W. H. Day, in addressing a convention of negro men at Cleveland, O., in 1852, truly said: "Of the services and sufferings of the colored soldiers of the Revolution, no attempt has, to our knowledge, been made to preserve a record. Their history is not written; it lies upon the soil watered with their blood; who shall gather it? It rests with their bones in the charnel house; who shall exhume it?" Upon reading these lines, it occurred to me that somewhere among the archives of that period there must exist at least a clue to the record of the negro ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... Countrymen! as I live, I will not buy a pin out of your walls for this; Nay, you shall cozen me, and I'le thank you; and send you Brawn and Bacon, and soil you every long vacation a brace of foremen, that at Michaelmas shall come up ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... has anything to do with it, Ned; it is a natural law. Now, if a fir tree is in a sheltered place, where the soil is deep and sandy, it grows to a tremendous size; but if the seed falls in a rocky place, where it has to get its roots down cracks to find food, and cling tightly against the cold freezing winds, it keeps down close to the ground, and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... the youthful consort to his care. True to his charge, the bard preserved her long In honour's limits; such the power of song. But when the gods these objects of their hate Dragg'd to the destruction by the links of fate; The bard they banish'd from his native soil, And left all helpless in a desert isle; There he, the sweetest of the sacred train, Sung dying to the rocks, but sung in vain. Then virtue was no more; her guard away, She fell, to lust a voluntary prey. Even to the temple stalk'd the adulterous ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... leaves them all black and festering, a future life wherein what was manifestly meant to be, and capable of being, dominant, supreme, but was hampered and hindered here, shall reach its full development, and where the plant that was dwarfed in this alien soil, transplanted into that higher house, shall blossom and bear immortal fruits. The new moon has a ragged edge, and each of the protrusions and concavities are the prophecy of the perfect orb which shall ere long fill ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... to make all round our fields, and hedges to plant, and even trees. Then there was the whole irrigation system to see to, and the land to sow with grain and lucerne, after the soil had been duly ploughed and attended to. All this kept us young fellows very busy indeed, for we worked with the men almost constantly, not only as simple superintendents, but ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... to Carteret Park beside the Indian officer and his daughter as a man might ride in a trance. Surely within an hour the whole world had been changed! He rode on air instead of solid soil, and the sunshine of heaven was not half so brilliant as ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... The very soil of Flanders seems polluted. British surgeons are sighing for the clean dust of the Boer war of South Africa, although they cursed it at the time. That it is not the army occupation which is causing ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the resources of science, all the suggestions of domestic, social, and political economies, all the appliances of school and industries in order to raise and elevate the most abject and needy race on American soil. If the scholarly and enlightened colored men and women care not to devote themselves to these lowly but noble duties, to these humble but sacred conditions, what is the use of their schooling and enlightenment? Why, in the ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... of ten minutes part of the layer of surface-earth was removed, revealing the bluish-clay soil in which gold was usually found; the pan was filled with this "pay-dirt," as it was called, in contradistinction to the "surface-dirt," which didn't "pay," and was taken down to the stream, where Larry washed it out under the eye of McLeod; but he did ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... from New Archangel to San Francisco he had met with his second failure since leaving St. Petersburg. It was his intention to move the Sitkan colony down to the mouth of the Columbia River; not only pressed by the need of a more beneficent soil, but as a first insidious advance upon San Francisco Bay. Upon this trip it would be enough to make a survey of the ground and bury a copper plate inscribed: "Possession of the Russian Empire." The Juno had encountered terrific storms. After three desperate attempts to reach the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... from the first. Maryland was made to seem against the Union. Our soldiers were assaulted, bridges were burned, and railroads torn up within her limits, and we were many days at one time without the ability to bring a single regiment over her soil to the capital. Now her bridges and railroads are repaired and open to the Government; she already gives seven regiments to the cause of the Union, and none to the enemy; and her people, at a regular election, have sustained the Union by a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... extensively grown native pear are everywhere tied to an overhead framework which completely covers in the land on which the trees stand. This method was adopted in order to cope with high winds and at the same time to arrest growth, for in the damp soil in which Japanese pears are rooted, the branches would be too sappy. Foreign pears are not more generally cultivated because they come to the market in competition with oranges, and the Japanese ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... In some cases, where the initial pressure and leaking between the staves of the dry pipe were great, the escaping air and water lifted the coating into bubbles. At some points where this lifting was great enough to rupture the asphalt, and the soil is heavily charged with alkali, some corrosion ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... while each household has its own patch of ground, the cultivation is communal; that is, all the able-bodied women of the clan take a share in cultivating every patch. Each clan has a right to the service of all its women in the cultivation of the soil. It would be difficult to find a more striking example than this of communism in labour. I claim it as proof of what I have stated in an earlier chapter of the conditions driving women ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... waited a few minutes longer, the idea to wait with ears close to the earth, one of the oldest devices of primitive man, occurred to him. It was fairly dry in the bushes, and he lay down, pressing his ear to the soil. Then he heard a faint sound, as if some one crawling through the grass, like a wild animal stalking its prey. It was Shepard, of course, and then Harry planned his campaign. Shepard had left his horse, and was endeavoring to reach him ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated. In the year A.D. 303 the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and soil his last days by debauchery. The threats and arguments of his commanding officer Bassus failed to shake his constancy, and accordingly he was beheaded, as the Christian martyrologist records with minute accuracy, at Durostorum by the soldier John on Friday the twentieth day of November, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... That call that thundered round the world into every corner of the Empire, setting the hearts of her youth, whether they beat under palm or pine, aflame for the Great Cause; and at its sound. Freedom rose up once more from the blood-soaked soil of Flanders, and gave back, yet again, a challenge to the ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... not inconsiderable. This man, who began life as a tailor or embroiderer, was early interested in the fine arts. Like Ciriac of Ancona, he had a taste for travel and collection,[170] visiting the sacred soil of Greece and sojourning in divers towns of Italy, everywhere making drawings, copying pictures, taking casts from statues, and amassing memoranda on the relics of antiquity as well as on the methods practised by contemporary painters. Equipped with these aids to study, Squarcione ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... inclined to practise them upon the white man, whom, having always known as a plunderer, he was only too glad to have an opportunity to plunder in return. Had Jamaica been occupied by a resident proprietary, attached by hereditary affection and pride to the soil, elevated by family sanctities, connected by something like kindly ties with their bondmen, and regarded by these in turn with something of affectionate fealty, in that case, although it is not likely that the ruin of the plantations ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... walk or an excursion, but she would never suffer me to leave the house alone; and I, seeing that she also lived under the shadow of that widespread Mormon terror, felt too much pity to resist. To the child born on Mormon soil, as to the man who accepts the engagements of a secret order, no escape is possible; so I had clearly read, and I was thankful even for this respite. Meanwhile, I tried honestly to prepare my mind for my approaching nuptials. The day drew near when my bridegroom was to visit me, and gratitude and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... drink while standing in the water with his head turned down stream lest he should soil the water with his feet. But once when drinking with his head turned up stream he saw a whole drove of hogs washing ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... colonists, and I hope they will send home those unfortunate wretches they have there now, and commence, in their expected two years, to reap the profits of the coffee and cocoa. Certainly the chances are that they may, for the soil of Fernando Po is of exceeding fertility; Mr. Hutchinson says he has known Indian corn planted here on a Monday evening make its appearance four inches above ground on the following Wednesday morning, within ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... evergreen shrubs, bearing tubular, funnel-shaped flowers. They succeed in any ordinary soil if the situation is warm and sheltered, and are readily raised by cuttings. Height, 3 ft. ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... Then, hastening his preparations, he embarked his forces for the deliverance of Germany. It was on the 24th of June, 1630, just one hundred years after the confession of Augsburg, that Gustavus Adolphus landed on the German soil. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... with its constant accompaniment of privations—bad weather, wet bivouacs, and wretched roads, wood that would not kindle, and rations that did not satisfy. They had learned that a soldier's worst enemy may be his native soil, in the form of dust or mud; that it is possible to march for months without firing a shot or seeing a foe; that a battle is an interlude which breaks in at rare intervals on the long round of digging, marching, bridge-building, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... was the smell of the good red soil in the little story, a whiff of the home earth reminiscent and heartening. But the under-thought laid hold on Japheth and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... which was the keynote of Charlemagne's system of administration, and was exercised in too arbitrary a manner; and that some check was necessary to curb the spirit and limit the independence of these local lords of the soil and the city who had little consideration for their inferiors, and who might at any time become a source of danger to their superiors. Such a check was found, in regard to the central authority, in the missi regii, and in reference ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... or a little farther inland, the ocypode[1] burrows in the dry soil, making deep excavations, bringing up literally armfuls of sand; which with a spring in the air, and employing its other limbs, it jerks far from its burrows, distributing it in radii to the distance of several feet.[2] So inconvenient ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... cared whether he lived or died, unless they had something to gain or lose by it. He looked out on the broad acres which belonged to him, and he knew what Fauntleroy did not—how far they extended, what wealth they represented, and how many people had homes on their soil. And he knew, too,—another thing Fauntleroy did not,—that in all those homes, humble or well-to-do, there was probably not one person, however much he envied the wealth and stately name and power, and however willing he would have been to possess ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Here, for the first time, had Marcella been brought face to face with the agricultural world as it is—no stage ruralism, but the bare fact in one of its most pitiful aspects. Men of sixty and upwards, grey and furrowed like the chalk soil into which they had worked their lives; not old as age goes, but already the refuse of their generation, and paid for at the rate of refuse; with no prospect but the workhouse, if the grave should be delayed, yet quiet, impassive, resigned, now showing a furtive childish ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... scoops with curious toil Her subterranean bed, Thinks not she plows a human soil, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... invasions upon those new and pleasing territories, and there spending the remainder of their life, which might be perhaps a day, or thereabouts, in very plentiful and riotous living, might leave their off-spring behind them, which by the change of the soil and Country they now inhabite, might be quite alter'd from the hew of their primogenitors, and, like Mores translated into Northern European Climates, after a little time, change both their skin and shape. And this seems yet more probable ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... blood, and blackened with the soil of their harness, stepped out of the hall with the three kings. They knew not whom to bewail ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown

... farm-house of an ordinary kind, and occupied by the industrious cultivator of the soil; but when increasing riches inspired the citizens with a taste for new pleasures, it became the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... well, with its old sweep, and the "moss-covered bucket," too; and look at the corn-crib, and the old barn—and what a noisy set of fowls around it, cackling, clucking and crowing, as if they owned the soil; and how the pigs are scampering through the clover-field; ah! the little wretches, they have stolen a march, or rather a caper; at them, old Jowler, at them, my fine fellow, you will soon turn them back to their pen, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... which at present prevailed were altered for the better. They were offered to the landed interests as a resting-place, a firm and solid ground on which time and experience might accumulate a richer soil. They were a compromise between conflicting interests and opinions. For himself, he conceived them imperfect, because they fell short of the bill of last year; but they had been brought as near to that measure as was consistent with the likelihood ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Massachusetts as she was in the year 1700, permeated with the evil theocratic traditions, without judges, teachers, or books, the mind can hardly fail to be impressed with the unconquerable energy which produced great jurists from such a soil; and yet in 1725 Jeremiah Gridley graduated from Harvard, who may fairly be said to have been the progenitor of a famous race; for long before the Revolution, men like Prat, Otis, and John Adams could well have held their own before any court of Common Law that ever sat. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... conscience that my whole sky lightened. The thought of establishing a family hearth at the point where my life began, had a fine appeal. All my schooling had been to migrate, to keep moving. "If your crop fails, go west and try a new soil. If disagreeable neighbors surround you, sell out and move,—always toward the open country. To remain quietly in your native place is a sign of weakness, of irresolution. Happiness dwells afar. Wealth and fame are to be found by ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... They thought on broad lines, and honestly understood the strength of their emotions. Moreover, although Mary Wollstonecraft was unborn and "Emile" unwritten, Individualism was germinating; and what soil so quickening as the Tropics? Nevertheless, to admit was not to lay the question, and Rachael passed through many hours of torment before hers was settled. She was not unhappy, for the intoxication lingered, and behind the methodical ticking of her reason, stood, calmly ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... savage grandeur is rendered more striking by the scenes of fairy-like beauty left behind. But even here, in the midst of the mightiest desolation, the vegetative vigour of the numerous islands proves the wondrous productiveness of the soil ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... Verde to Cape Palmas is extremely various from the vertical rays of the sun, the nature of the soil, and the face ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... Emerson about the poverty of Arnold's poetry. His "Dover Beach" is one of the first-rate poems in English literature. Emerson has words of praise for Lowell—thinks the production of such a man "a certificate of good elements in the soil, climate, and institutions of America," but in 1868 he declares that his new poems show an advance "in talent rather than in poetic tone"; that the advance "rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem, and which ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... fair, but very pale, And looked like stainless marble; a touch methought would soil Its whiteness. On her temple, one blue vein Ran like a tendril; one through her shadowy hand Branched like the fibre ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various

... around them; teach them to compare the old with the new life. If you show a better way than theirs of doing work, teach them, too, why it is better. Thus will the mind be prepared by development for a moral reformation; there will be some soil fitted to receive ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... have been able to hold so long in check the forces of the first military Empire in Europe, and that a great number of them, helped by new contingents of recruits and led by their young King, should still be fighting on their native soil, must appeal ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts

... battle! The Mexicans fled southward. Then we started to bury our dead. Our losses were terrible. So many boys from Illinois were hearsed in this bloody soil. Colonel Hardin was killed; but we were commissioned to bring his ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... English soil with all sorts of feelings, but he hadn't quite faced having to reckon with a certain ruefulness in regard to that subject as one of the strongest. He was aware later on that there were questions his impatience had shirked; whereby it actually rather smote him, for want of preparation and ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... course—how otherwise could he support his family?—but the idea that his work might ever usurp the place in his heart that belonged to her and the children would have been utterly incomprehensible to her had she ever thought of it. Jealousy was an alien weed, which could not take root in the benign soil of her nature. ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... some kind of service. A majority of these men were no longer entirely free, while some were actual slaves. The greater part of this servile class were villeins or farm laborers (S150). They were bound to the soil, and could be sold with it, but not, like the slaves, separately from it. They could be compelled to perform any menial labor, but usually held their plots of land and humble cottages on condition of plowing a certain number of acres or doing a certain number ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... good food when it is properly prepared; but when a village has soaked its soil-laden manioc tubers in one and the same pool of water for years, the water in that pool becomes a trifle strong, and both it and the manioc get a smell which once smelt is never to be forgotten; it is ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... land being lost to urbanization and windblown sands; increasing soil salinization below Aswan High Dam; desertification; oil pollution threatening coral reefs, beaches, and marine habitats; other water pollution from agricultural pesticides, raw sewage, and industrial effluents; very limited natural fresh ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... power that had hitherto modified the body had its action transferred to the mind, then races would advance and become improved, merely by the harsh discipline of a sterile soil and inclement seasons. Under their influence, a hardier, a more provident, and a more social race would be developed, than in those regions where the earth produces a perennial supply of vegetable food, and where ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... such as "health," as used with reference to the animal frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral nature.' Well, it is a reproach to us that we do not possess the term: and perhaps again a reproach to us that our attempts at it—the word 'culture' for instance—have been apt to take on some soil of controversy, some connotative damage from over-preaching on the one hand and impatience on the other. But we do earnestly desire the thing. We do prize that grace of intellect which sets So-and-so in our view as 'a ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... bluff cordiality, the vigour of his various talk—were scarcely surprised. The young lady was no heiress; she had, in fact, been a school teacher, and might have wearied through her best years in that uncongenial pursuit. Transplanted to the richest English soil, she developed remarkable aptitudes. A month or two of London exhibited her as a type of all that is ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... are: and public opinion varies accordingly, and is, in one place, severe, in another, lax. The present anarchy and upheaval of the majority will not change the unvoiced power of the minority. It is more dangerous for them to be uprooted from their native soil and scattered far and wide in the great cities. But even so, lost amid strange surroundings, living in isolation, yet the individualities of the good stock persist and never mix with those about them.—Sidonie knew nothing, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... whom the Lord's celestial kingdom consists dwell for the most part in elevated places that appear as mountains of soil; the angels of whom the Lord's spiritual kingdom consists dwell in less elevated places that appear like hills; while the angels in the lowest parts of heaven dwell in places that appear like ledges of stone. These things spring from correspondence, ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... life, among common men and women. He died a common death. His own methods of teaching were what a Saturday reviewer, had he to deal with the case, would undoubtedly term vulgar. The roots of Christianity are planted deep down in the very soil of life, amid all that is commonplace, and mean, and petty, and everyday. Its strength lies in its simplicity, its homely humanness. It has spread itself through the world by speaking to the hearts, rather than to the heads of men. If it is still to live ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... beautiful garden," Macleod said, looking round on the withered leaves and damp soil; "no wonder you look after ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... Wing surrendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! Others have crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning. As fo' myself, two grandfathers who fought fo' our libuhties rest in the soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood in my veins I will nevuh, nevuh, nevuh submit to Northern rule and dictation. I will risk all to be with ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... place—why the villagers should have deserted a spot, so quiet and so beautiful—it does not fall within our present purpose to inquire. It was most probably abandoned—not because of the unfruitfulness of the soil, or the unhealthiness of the climate—for but few places on the bosom of the earth, may be found either more fertile, more beautiful, or more healthful—but in compliance with that feverish restlessness of mood—that ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... every inch of ground that could be cultivated was green with barley, even to extreme heights which appeared inaccessible. Small terraces had been arranged by heaping up stones among the numerous declivities to save the soil from falling below, and to catch the wash that might be added by some passing shower. This was the result of enormous labour, far disproportioned to the value of the crops; yet in the face of this perilous industry there are persons who declare that the Cypriotes are an idle race, and that ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... PRUDHOE ISLANDS; besides which there were several scattered about the sound, and some of larger size near the main: of the latter are KATER'S and WOLLASTON'S. They are of a very rocky character, and furnished with but a poor and shallow soil, although the surface is thickly covered with small trees, growing most luxuriantly. WATER ISLAND, to the north-east, in latitude 14 degrees 21 minutes, and longitude 125 degrees 32 minutes 25 seconds, was visited by us, as was also CAPSTAN ISLAND, in ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... never once, turned his back upon the corpse; no, not for a moment. Such preparations completed, he moved, backward, towards the door: dragging the dog with him, lest he should soil his feet anew and carry out new evidence of the crime into the streets. He shut the door softly, locked it, took the key, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... that their own day has departed. The buffalo and elk have gone. Even the prairie chickens are seen but seldom. Almost no game is found upon our plains, and not much back in the hills. Many of our young men till the soil. Some have been to the Carlisle School and have taken up professions or are teachers. The Osage people are no longer warlike. But some of our young men volunteered ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... in 1867, the Association purchased a large building, with forty acres of land attached, and the young men were set to tilling the soil under systematic training. In 1877 the Winsted Farm, of 160 acres, was secured, and ten years later the Newton Farm was added, the whole tract now containing 270 acres. On this large farm is carried forward ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various

... but their reigns were short, for in twenty years they too had passed away, to be succeeded by the strong, brave, and learned man who drove the Danish' invaders finally from the shores of England, or forced them to become peaceful workers of the soil. He was the brave warrior who never knew what it was to be conquered, but tried again and again till the enemy fled before him ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn

... Joseph was solemnly chosen Patron of Canada, which from its birth has claimed devotion to the Holy Family and to St. Anne, as its devotion by excellence. The following year, the Recollet Fathers were joined by a little band of Jesuits, who came to fertilize the soil with martyrs' blood and win for themselves the martyrs' palm. Their arrival gradually prepared the way for the realization of the pious governor's first and dearest wish, the establishment of missions throughout the country. On these we shall ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... quantities of vines "such as we had never before seen." Cartier called this attractive spot the Island of Bacchus, but changed the name subsequently to the Isle of Orleans, in honour of one of the royal sons of France. Cartier was equally {37} charmed with the varied scenery and the fruitful soil of ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... distance off, a band of men were, in very deed, engaged in digging up the soil, while Chia Yn was seated on a boulder on the hill, superintending the works. The time came for Hsiao Hung to pass by, but she could not muster the courage to do so. Nevertheless she had no other course than to quietly proceed to the Hsiao ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... bored, and had concluded that these pleasures were not made for him. His tastes were simple, serious. He loved solitude, work, long walks, open space, horses, and books. He was rather savage—a son of the soil. He loved his village, and all the old friends of his childhood. A quadrille in a drawing-room caused him unspeakable terror; but every year, at the festival of the patron saint of Longueval, he danced gayly with the young girls and ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy

... levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough—it is said—to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... in such a locality as that, be taking a regular holiday. The sense of all the wrongs they had still to redress must be lighter there than it was in Boston; the ardent young man had, for the hour, an ingenuous hope that they had left their opinions in the city. He liked the very smell of the soil as he wandered along; cool, soft whiffs of evening met him at bends of the road which disclosed very little more—unless it might be a band of straight-stemmed woodland, keeping, a little, the red glow from ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... alder swamp was sold last month for ten dollars an acre, and thought a rash purchase at that; so that for wide houses hereabouts there is plenty of room, and cheap. Indeed so cheap—dirt cheap—is the soil, that our elms thrust out their roots in it, and hang their great boughs over it, in the most lavish and reckless way. Almost all our crops, too, are sown broadcast, even peas and turnips. A farmer among us, who should go about his twenty-acre field, poking his finger into it here and there, ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville

... France nor to the new France. It was a mere exotic transplanted from our island. Here it had struck its roots deep, and having stood during ages, was still green and vigorous. But it languished in the foreign soil and the foreign air, and was blown down by the first storm. It will be no such easy task to uproot ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... expression of the child's mind and body, anything that represses play is a hindrance to development. In the cheery home where to have fun and lots of it is a daily habit every child grows and matures as perfectly as a plant where there are just the right amounts of sun and moisture and where the soil is perfectly adapted to growth. A little less light, a little less moisture, and the plant will wither and fail. A little less play and more repression and the child will become morose and fail to keep pace with his mates. To repress is so ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... soil actually in contact with an extensive province in the hands of a potential enemy and known to be garrisoned by a considerable body of native troops. Everything pointed to the need for extensive reconnaissance ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... organizations, temperaments, and idiosyncracies, can no more be educated at random than plants, gathered from the four quarters of the earth, can be perfected through the same culture, and in the same climate and soil. Each child in the great crowd that gathers in our schools, is in some respects like a particular musical instrument, designed by God, in its complicated mechanism, to perform its particular part, to yield its own particular tone in the diapason of life; and I ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... Brittany. There was the same melancholy, heavy sky, the same sun, which seemed older than in other parts of the world and which but feebly gilded the sorrowful, age-old forests and the mossy sandstone. There were the same endless stretches of broken, rocky soil, pitted with ponds of rusty water, dotted with scattered clumps of gorse and fruze copse, and sprinkled with pink harebells and nameless ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... publication of Tristram Shandy it would be futile to seek for any knowledge of Sterne on German soil. He had published, as is well known, two sermons preached on occasions of note; and a satirical skit, with kindly purpose, entitled "The History of a Good Warm Watchcoat," had been written, privately circulated, and then suppressed; yet he was an unknown and comparatively insignificant English ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... 1820. It is so far lucky that I have a literary turn;—but it is very tiresome not to be able to stir out, in comfort, on any horse but Pegasus, for so many days. The roads are even worse than the weather, by the long splashing, and the heavy soil, and the growth ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... whose welfare is as vital to the welfare of the whole country as is the welfare of the wageworkers are the tillers of the soil, the farmers. It is a mere truism to say that no growth of cities, no growth of wealth, no industrial development can atone for any falling off in the character and standing of the farming population. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... potatoes will be in better order to receive a crop of wheat, barley, rye, or any kind of grain, than from any other culture. The farmer often receiving the advantage of a double crop, at the expense of seed and labor. They grow equally well in every soil and climate, in poor as well as rich ground—provided the thin soil be manured, and the potatoes plastered with plaster of Paris; and moreover, they are easier prepared for distilling than either apples, rye or corn, as ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... these humble plants possess the power of rendering even unpalatable and insipid dishes piquant and appetizing, and this, too, at a surprisingly low cost. Indeed, most of them may be grown in an out-of-the-way corner of the garden, or if no garden be available, in a box of soil upon a sunny windowsill—a method adopted by many foreigners living in tenement houses in New York and Jersey City. Certainly they may be made to add to the pleasure of living and, as Solomon declares, "better is ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... have had many Adversaries of our own Language, who have been perpetually assaying to deprive us of those English Liberties, in the encouragement whereof these Territories have been settled. As if this had not been enough; The Tawnies among whom we came, have watered our Soil with the Blood of many Hundreds of our Inhabitants. Desolating Fires also have many times laid the chief Treasure of the whole Province in Ashes. As for Losses by Sea, they have been multiply'd upon us: and particularly in the present French War, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... allowed to die; it was neglected Normanthorpe that had loaded the tables and replenished the greenhouses of seats more favored by the family; and all this was the more wonderful as a triumph of art over some natural disadvantages in the way of soil and climate. The Normanthorpe roses, famous throughout the north of England, were as yet barely budding in the kindless wind; the blaze of early bulbs was over; but there were the curious alien trees, and the ornamental waters haunted by outlandish wildfowl, bred there on the same principle ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... old Scott as he dug his spade deep down into the soil; "don't stand just there, Missy, you'll get the ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... Grant. The United States government, at the end of the war, mustered out of service 1,000,000 of men, and had in the field, from first to last, 2,600,000. If the Confederate soldier had then had only this disparity of numbers to contend with, he would have driven every invader from the soil of Virginia. ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... last day of the month came the announcement from Bucharest that Russian forces had arrived on Rumanian soil and were already crossing the Danube over into Dobrudja, their left wing on the Black Sea coast being protected by ships of the Russian fleet. The commander of this force was General Zaionchovsky, who, together with his staff, had been welcomed in Bucharest by a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... situation, and deserves the earnest consideration of the ecclesiastical statesmen of all denominations which work in the South. It will be impossible to protect that part of the nation, or any other, from the epidemic madness of the lynching mob if the seeds of it are sown in the sacred soil of religion.... Their preachers are great 'soul-savers,' but they lack the practical sense to build up their emotionalised converts into anything that ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... redoubt, which the Boer leaders had thus determined to hold, rises abruptly from the level, and commands the approaches across the veld on the south, east and west; the even surface of the plain, the sandy soil of which was barely concealed by dry tufts of coarse grass, presented not an inch of cover, save for a few ant-mounds dotted about here and there: their hard sun-baked walls afford good protection ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... thousand as poverty-stricken and disreputable people as could be seen anywhere. The squatters' settlements in the Park were surrounded by swamps, and overgrown with briers, vines, and thickets. The soil that covered the rocky surface was unfit for cultivation. Here and there were stone quarries and stagnant pools. In this wilderness lived the squatters, in little shanties and huts made of boards picked up along the river fronts and often pieced out with sheets ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... into confidence. I was an only son; and ten years before, I had lost my mother. In time past my father, the head of a historic family remembered even now in Auvergne, had come to Paris to fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the prospect of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He was endowed with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of France a certain ascendency when energy goes with it. Almost unaided, he made a position for himself near the fountain of power. The ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... formed on an elevated platform, nearly level, on the bank of the river, and of a sandy soil. On the right of the position, extended from the river, a ravine of about forty feet in depth, and more than one hundred yards in breadth; the center was formed by a horn-work of entrenchments; and an extensive redoubt beyond the ravine on the right, and two ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... was shaking violently, pouring its golden rain into both gardens, and the bush beneath it looked alive; a tall figure rose out of it, and came creeping towards the little conservatory, bent double, and brushing the soil from his clothes as he advanced with long and stealthy strides. It was Dr. Baumgartner, in a cap pulled down over his eyes, and the old alpaca jacket. He had a newspaper parcel ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... Maricopas.—Road takes the river bottom, and passes through cultivated fields; soil and grass good. The Indian village is on a gravelly ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... without intermission for three entire days. During this interval, not only was it impossible to send the canoe or pinnace to sea, but even to venture a step beyond the threshold, so completely had the tempest broken up the burning soil, the thirst of which the great Disposer of all things had proportioned to the deluges that were destined to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... 'we are now walking through the muddy streets. I love those pretty feet so dearly, that I feel as if I could not bear the dirt to soil the sole of your shoe. Is it not natural that I wish you could ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... toilsome life with the pleasant and easy existence of his brother Abel. With incessant exertion, tormented by anxiety, and helplessly dependent on the uncertainty of the skies, he forced a scanty subsistence out of the womb of the repugnant soil; whilst his brother enjoyed a life of security and abundance, in the midst of rich valleys, beautiful hills, and charming rural scenes. And while he envied Abel's prosperity, he despised his idleness, which was indebted for the necessaries of life to the liberality of nature, rather than to ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... seemed to himself at times almost to see their thoughts taking reality and form to accompany him whither he led them; while the stream of his thought, as it disappeared from his consciousness and memory, seemed to settle in the minds of those who heard him, like seed cast on open soil—some of it, at least, to grow up in resolves, and bring forth fruit. And all the road as the friends returned, now in moonlight, now in darkness and rain, sometimes in wind and snow, they had such things to think of and talk ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... let you take it in your hand a few moments to look at it, if you will be careful not to soil it, Enna," said Elsie, in the same gentle tone; "and if you wish, I will get some more silk and beads, and make you one just like it; but I cannot give you this, because I would not have time to make another ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... sally bushes of the flat land, the sun was setting over a streak of gold on the sea. They had left behind them the smell of burning turf, of crackling sticks, of fish, and of the cowhouse, and were come into the atmosphere of flowering gorse and damp scraa soil and brine. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... chilled me, as it seemed to destroy all my schemes, but I resolved that I would bring some earth to the rock, and make my garden in that way. I at first thought of the guano, but Jackson had told me that it was only used in small proportions to enrich the soil, and would kill plants if used by itself. After an hour's consideration, during which I called to mind all that Jackson had told me on the subject, I made up my mind I would return to the cabin, and on my return ascertain how low down the ravine ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... South America's soil Yields the towering Cow-tree, With sweet milk in its cells For you or for me; Its sap is the Milk,— Cut the tree and it flows; Like leather its leaves, And its branches ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... feelings from the gay buoyancy with which we had sailed from that same harbour for the Peninsula; many of our best and bravest had we left behind us, and more than one native to the land we were approaching had found his last rest in the soil of the stranger. It was, then, with a mingled sense of pain and pleasure, we gazed upon that peaceful little village, whose white cottages lay dotted along the edge of the harbour. The moody silence our thoughts had shed over us was soon broken: the preparations for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... somewhat exceeding half a million; but, from the internal peace which the country has since enjoyed, and the plenty and prosperity which prevails among the peasantry, there can be little doubt that it has since greatly increased. As not more than one-sixth of the soil is supposed to be in cultivation, there is abundance of excellent land undisposed of; as every man, therefore, with ordinary industry can support himself and his family, abject want and pauperism are almost unknown. The innumerable herds of swine, which form the staple commodity of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... with others, were sent to America, where they were of great assistance in training men Uncle Sam had selected to officer his troops. They had relinquished their rank in the British army to be able to do this. Now they found themselves again on French soil, but fighting under ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes

... fire under a tree. The country, as we continued to advance, became more and more beautiful. Naturally, perhaps, the earth is everywhere pretty much alike, but how different is it rendered by art! How different is that on which I now tread from ours, and every other spot I have ever seen. The soil is rich even to exuberance, the verdure of the trees and hedges, in short the whole of this paradisaical region is without a parallel! The roads too are incomparable; I am astonished how they have got them so firm and solid; every step I took I felt, and was conscious it was English ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... schooner, named the Percy Edward (an ex-Tahitian mail packet), to seek for an island or islands whereon they were to found a Socialistic Utopia, where they were to pluck the wild goat by the beard, pay no rent to the native owners of the soil, and, letting their hair grow down their backs, lead an idyllic life and loaf around generally. Such a mad scheme could have been conceived nowhere else but in San ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... appropriations made by the last Congress several cases have arisen in relation to works for the improvement of harbors which involve questions as to the right of soil and jurisdiction, and have threatened conflict between the authority of the State and General Governments. The right to construct a breakwater, jetty, or dam would seem necessarily to carry with it the power to protect and preserve such constructions. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce

... 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 for all ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... round the label. In delivering seisin under a feoffment, the grantor, or his attorney, handed over to the grantee, together with the deed, a piece of turf, or a twig, or something plucked from the soil, in token of his giving full and complete possession. I have generally supposed that these strips of rush were the tokens of possession so handed over, as part and parcel of the soil, by the grantor; and that they ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various

... upon this continent a forest of moral evil more formidable, a barrier denser and darker, a Dismal Swamp of inhumanity, a barbarism upon the soil, before which civilization has thus far been compelled to pause,—happy, if it could even check its spread. Checked at last, there comes from it a cry as if the light of day had turned to darkness,—when ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... were always darned. Aunt Olivia had seen to that, ever since she heard of Peter's singular device regarding them on his first Sunday. She had also given Peter a Bible, of which he was so proud that he hated to use it lest he should soil it. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... green streak of light. Near its foot the water gleamed palely among overhanging alders, and in the distance the hills faded into the grayness of the eastern sky. Except for the low murmur of the stream, it was very still; and the air was heavy with the smell of dew-damped soil. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... stalks was stuffed between the bars. Its odor was not unpleasant but it carried clods of soil at ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov

... guided by any will of brain or joy of soul in the task of the day. There has been a time in the story of mankind when hand and brain worked together. In every monument of the past on this English soil, even at the topmost point of springing arch or lofty pillar, is tracery and carving as careful and cunning as if all eyes were to see and judge it as the central point and test of the labor done. Has ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... certain plants—the Dodder, for instance—which begin life with the best intentions, strike true roots into the soil, and really appear as if they meant to be independent for life. But after supporting themselves for a brief period they fix curious sucking discs into the stem and branches of adjacent plants. And after a little experimenting, the epiphyte ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... beneath him, by the high heaven above him, and by the sun that wends to the west, that he will have no rest by day nor sleep by night if the sons of Uisnech, the sons of his own father's brother, will not come back to the land of their home and the soil of their nativity, and to the feast likewise, and he has sent us on embassy ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... smooth, clean bole, in open places it assumes its naturally somewhat conical form very promptly. Utterly dissimilar in form from the American elm, it seems to stand for dignity, solidity and vigor, and yet to yield nothing in the way of true elegance. The botanists tell us it prefers deep and moist soil, but I know that it lives and seems happy in many soils and in many places. Always and everywhere it shows a clean, distinct trunk, its brown bark uniformly furrowed, but in such a manner as to give a nearly smooth appearance at a little distance. The branches do not leave the stem so imperceptibly ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... but Ta Cheng Tz[)u] was my headquarters. It is a small market town, with a daily fair. The surrounding neighbourhood is peopled with Mongols and Chinese in about equal proportions. The Mongols are mostly lords of the soil, and style the Chinese slaves, that is in the country. The real trade of the whole locality is in the hands of the Chinese. The Mongols all speak Chinese, and the town resident Mongols have, many of them, forgotten Mongolian, and laugh at themselves as ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... be released from this present life and to go where we shall be lordly citizens forever. But being obliged to continue in this wretched state—our Babylon—so long as God wills, we should do as the Jews were commanded to do—mingle with other mortals, eat and drink, make homes, till the soil, fill civil offices and show good will toward our fellows, even praying for them, until the hour arrives for us to depart ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... I know. Manioc might seem the answer to human starvation because it will grow abundantly on tropical soils so infertile and/or so droughty that no other food crop will succeed there. Manioc will do this because it needs virtually nothing from the soil to construct itself with. And consequently, manioc puts next to nothing nourishing into its edible parts. The bland-tasting root is virtually pure starch, a simple carbohydrate not much different than pure corn starch. Plants construct ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... Twisting, winding with the poppies and the weeds meeting over his head, and the water brushing off them against his face and coat, he walked slowly on. Seven feet deep, perhaps three feet wide, it might have been a sunken Devonshire lane in model, and a faint red tinge in the soil helped the illusion. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... all the producing agencies of the country into a high state of activity and efficiency, giving to the loyal States a larger aggregate production than they had before the war. Of mining and manufactures this is unquestionably true. As regards the products of the soil, the Commissioner of Agriculture, in his Report for 1863, says,—"Although the year just closed has been a year of war on the part of the Republic, over a wider field and on a grander scale than any recorded in history, yet, strange as it may appear, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... will grow on almost any soil, and do well with only a moderate chance. While it has its preferences, it readily adapts itself to circumstances, and makes the most of what it finds. Whether sand, clay, gravel, muck or loam, it will get a living ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

... agriculturist, has made direct and positive experiments for the purpose of testing this question, and has clearly and conclusively shown that the qualities of timber felled in different parts of the lunar month are the same. M. Duhamel felled a great many trees of the same age, growing from the same soil, and exposed to the same aspect, and never found any difference in the quality of the timber, when he compared those which were felled in the decline of the moon with those which were felled during its increase: ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... plant, in some less skilful hands, To bloom a while, factitious heat demands: Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies, The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies: By Johnson's genial culture, art, and toil, Its root strikes deep, and owns the fost'ring soil; Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins, And grows a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... to be off, eager for her new career, eager that he should stand on a soil where he could once more face his fellow- creatures without shame. She panted to put thousands of leagues of ocean between him and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... in addition a perpetual outlet west, and a "free and unmolested use of all the country lying west of the western boundary of the above described limits and as far west as the sovereignty of the United States and their right of soil extend" (p. 229). The Cherokees who had settled in Arkansas agreed to leave their lands within 14 months. By the treaty of 1836 the Cherokees ceded to the United States all lands east of the Mississippi. ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing



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