"Sparse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the three midshipmen had advanced through the rock-strewn ravine, had crept cautiously inside the ridges that encircled the camp, and concealed by the sparse bushes of mimosa, and favored by the light of a full moon, had approached near enough to take note of what ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... ally in shape and somewhat in song, have mended their ways, and though it is true they make a bad mess of it, they at least try to build their own nest, and rear their own young with tender solicitude. The nest is usually so sparse and flimsy an affair that you can see through its coarse mesh of sticks from below, the fledglings lying as on a grid-iron or toaster; and it is, moreover, occasionally so much higher in the centre than at the sides that the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... longest established and a generation has been trained to the work, Southern labor is actually as well as nominally cheaper than Northern; whilst in other districts, where many mills have sprung up all at once amongst a sparse rural population, wholly untrained, the Southern labor at present procurable is really dearer than the Northern[1]." This does not mean that Southern labor is permanently inferior; but a highly skilled body of operatives requires ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... canal irrigation is modifying somewhat the character of the vegetation. The soil and climate are unsuited to the growth of large trees, but adapted to scrub jungle of a drought-resisting type, which at one time covered very large areas from the Jamna to the Jhelam. The soil on which this sparse scrub grew is a good strong loam, but the rainfall was too scanty and the water-level too deep to admit of much cultivation outside the valleys of the rivers till the labours of canal engineers carried their waters to the uplands. East of the Sutlej the Bikaner desert thrusts northwards a great ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... and dry between the past and the hereafter. A ragged chin beard, ashen in hue, hung below his gaping, empty mouth. But there was a spirit in his bosom still, for upon his head he wore a circle of bright flowers to supplement the sparse locks. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... greenish stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but small-windowed and melancholy-looking: the sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open windows, and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr. Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into relief ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... benevolent despotism gave the valley into the keeping of an individualism even purer and less restrained than that which it succeeded, for the sparse pioneer transmontane settlements were practically governed at first by only the consciences or whims of the inhabitants, instructed of parental commandments learned the other side of the mountains, and by their love of forest ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... a career peculiar to herself. In St. Louis there was a strong Unionist majority, and especially the numerous German population was thoroughly anti-slavery, and was vigorously led by F.P. Blair, Jr. But away from her riverfront the State had a sparse population preserving the rough propensities of frontiersmen; these men were not unevenly divided between loyalty and secession and they were an independent, fighting set of fellows, each one of whom intended to follow his own fancy. The result ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... took fire; and every man vowed he wished he had gone to sea, before it was too late, or even to California, when the gold craze was on. Johnnie had the tongue of the improvisator, and he loved a listener. He liked to sit out on a log, in the sparse shadow of the one little grove the hill possessed, and, with the whispering leaves above him tattling uncomprehended sayings brought them by the wind, gather the old men about him, and talk them blind. As he sat there, Mary came walking swiftly by, a basket ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... minute or so he stood aimlessly in the full glare of a gaslamp. His thin, creasy Inverness cape was thrown back, displaying evening dress. He carried a soft grey felt hat in one hand. His whole aspect was seedy, disappointed, dejected; his face pale and puffy, his sparse reddish hair and beard but indifferently trimmed. It was borne in upon Iglesias, moreover, that the man was hungry, that he had not—and that for some time—had enough to eat. Voluntary poverty is among the most beautiful, involuntary poverty among ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... morning, shortly after the McKee prolonged breakfast was over, a small man of perhaps fifty, with iron-gray hair and a sparse goatee, made his way along the Street. He moved with the air of one having a definite destination but a ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... population was somewhat sparse at Oldfield. There were a few Eton boys, and one or two in that delightful transition age when youth is most bashful and uninteresting,—a sort of unfledged manhood, when the smooth boyish cheek contradicts the deepened bass of the voice,—an age that has not ceased to blush, and which ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... thicker in proportion to their length than the young cotton worms, and they have not so delicate and transparent an appearance. Their heads are black and their bodies seem already to have begun to vary in color. The body above is furnished with sparse, stiff hairs, each arising from a tubercle. I have often watched the newly hatched boll while in the cotton fields. When hatched from an egg which had been deposited upon a leaf, they invariably made their first meal on the substance of the leaf, and then wandered about for a longer or ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ... there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the broad mead ... one heard mountain ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... wealthy, thickly settled, and firmly governed coast of India, the settlers were only a few servants of the company. If, on the other hand, the region for which the monopoly of the company was granted was a broad and temperate tract, occupied by a sparse population of savages, and offering only such objects of trade or profit as could be collected slowly or wrested by European labor from, the soil or the forest, the quickest way to a commercial profit was the establishment ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... rode for perhaps a mile. Then the timber grew sparse, and Purgatory and his rider at last emerged upon a level that extended about a hundred feet and then sloped down abruptly to another level, through which flowed a narrow stream ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... man of about thirty with sparse reddish hair, perspiration glistening on his upper lip, stood at the mouth of a narrow way like the one Brett had come through. He wore a grimy pale yellow shirt with a wide-flaring collar, limp and sweat-stained, dark green knee-breeches, soft ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... co-operation with the English, also refused to take part in the war, and thus the Pequots were left to fight the battle alone. But the Pequots, with their four thousand merciless warriors, were a fearful foe to rush from their inaccessible retreats, with torch and tomahawk, upon the sparse and defenseless settlements scattered along the ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the candlestick on the mantel-shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish's, and of no particular color. His chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not enough teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face, as ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the darker it became, until we were moving at last through an endless twi-light. The vegetation here was sparse and of a weird, colorless nature, though what did grow was wondrous in shape and form. Often we saw huge lidi, or beasts of burden, striding across the dim landscape, browsing upon the grotesque vegetation or drinking from the slow and sullen rivers that run down from ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the mangy Cats of Amochol trim my hatchet-sheath. When the young men ask me what this sparse and sickly fur may be, I shall strip it off and cast it at their feet, saying it is but ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... caperberry shall burst: the three are linked together as being images from natural objects, not because of their symbolising similar things. The blossoming of the almond tree probably refers to the sparse white hairs of age. The name of this tree in Hebrew is founded on the fact that it is the first to blossom; though not strictly white, its blossoms may be called whitish: the whitish blossoms, solitary while ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... singular conduct this morning. Was there much of a row?" This came from a thin-visaged young man with eye-glasses and a sparse, whitish moustache. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... olive green in colour, with white blotches and sparse, coarse bristles, the animal has no comeliness, and yet when a herd frolics in the water, rising in unison with graceful undulatory movements for air, and the sunlight flashes in helioscopic rays from wet backs, the spectacle is rare and fine. Rolling and lurching ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... us, a weather-beaten Frenchman, who, as well as his clothes and his intellect, had seen better days—a man about five feet six inches high, with face deeply lined; moustache, goatee, and hair, all somewhat sparse and grizzled; a blue berret (the native hat) in his hand; his shirt fastened by a single stud, barely hiding what had been once a brawny chest; his loose trousers half-covered by a leathern apron; and his two coats both threadbare, and decorated with ribands in an equally ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... everything, so much so that the stalk yields to the grower's suggestions and becomes fleshy and swells into an ellipse similar to the turnip, of which it possesses all the merits of corpulence, flavour and delicacy; only the strange product serves as a base for a few sparse leaves, the last protests of a real stem that refuses to lose its attributes entirely. This is ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... came up the steps, and they went in to a rather dreary evening service with a sparse congregation and a bored-looking choir, who passed notes and giggled during the sermon. Allison and Leslie sat and wondered what kind of a shock it would be to them all if the Great Companion should suddenly become visible in the room. If all that about His being always present ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... berries and nuts, such as make one of the charms of Northern forests. On the ground is no rich, springing sod of emerald green, fragrant with the elusive sweetness of white clover, and dainty flowers, but a sparse, wiry, famished grass, scattered thinly over the surface in tufts and patches, like the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of bone and sparse of flesh in the mountain desert. It was the more surprising to Pierre to see this young fellow with the marvelously delicate-cut features. By some freak of nature here was a place where the breed ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... evidence from the living soul, not from the dead body. True that the science of American linguistics is still in its infancy, and that a proper handling of the materials it even now offers involves a more critical acquaintance with its innumerable dialects than I possess; but though the gleaning be sparse, it is enough that I break the ground. Secondly, religious rites are living commentaries on religious beliefs. At first they are rude representations of the supposed doings of the gods. The Indian rain-maker ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of this region were sparse in number, but of strong, sober, and yet wild characteristics. The long boundary quarrel had made them predatory, and though God-fearing people, they would fight with all their religious intensity for their right in the land and the dominion of their particular province. They suspended their ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... by a poor and sparse population. It needed a fortuitous combination of circumstances to relieve them from their poverty-stricken condition—either a war, which would bring into prominence their strategic positions; or the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... advancing toward them the figure of a man. His step was feeble and slow; his black garments hung loosely about his shrunken limbs; his face was bloodless, like that of a corpse, his cheeks hollow, his large eyes so sunken that their light seemed to come from the depths of a cavern. His sparse hair, lightly blown about by the wind, was white as snow; his long, thin beard was of the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... left the sand and sagebrush, cacti and sparse bunch-grass was bounded by the horizon; behind him, in front of him, it was the same; only on the right was the monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the slight elevation or "bench" upon which he sat he looked down upon a greasewood ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... remain a mystery. Every such case is a law unto itself, and neither science nor poetry is ever able to analyze and explain its causes and effects. The conflicting stories then current, and the varying traditions that yet exist, either fail to agree or to fit the sparse facts which came to light. There remains no dispute, however, that the occurrence, whatever shape it took, threw Mr. Lincoln into a deeper despondency than any he had yet experienced, for on January 23, 1841, he wrote to his law partner, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... the brink of a huge canon, with a snowy mountain range in the distance beyond, and in the intervening space, a vast panorama of granite mountain sides, almost white,—here and there covered with a sparse growth of timber. The waters from these mountain reaches had cut a channel for themselves known as Little Yosemite Valley, where pour the two wonderful cataracts known as Nevada Falls and Vernal Falls. Their deep roar came up from ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... little man, this man who had prodded me, with a long, pale face and pale eyes, a long reddish beard, and hair rather darker, both hair and beard being sparse. He was a fidgety person, always twitching with his hands, and he walked with something of a strut, as though the earth belonged to him. He snapped-to the case of his binoculars as though he had ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... turned her sparse face toward the down-town tide and against a light wind that tasted of rain and napped her skirts around her ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... odd, slender voice that spoke, just behind Talbot Potter, and he turned to stare at a little figure in black—she had come so quietly out of the shadows of the scenery into Miss Lyston's place that no one had noticed. She was indefinite of outline still, in the sparse light of that cavernous place; and, with a veil lifted just to the level of her brows, under a shadowing black hat, not much was to be clearly discerned of her except that she was small and pale and had bright eyes. ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... quite fair to one brought upon the English notions of "off-side." The concerted cheering of the students of each university, led by a regular fugle-man, marking time with voice and arms, seems odd to the spectator accustomed to the sparse, spontaneous, and independent applause of ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 1816 we had a steamer—the Frontenac—running on Lake Ontario, and others soon followed. The increase was much more rapid after the date referred to, and the improvement in construction and speed was equally marked. Owing to our sparse and scattered population, as well as our inability to build, we did not undertake the construction of railroads until 1853, when the Northern Railroad was opened to Bradford; but after that, we went at it in earnest, and we have kept at it until we have made ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... ran a fringe of trees, sparse in some places and thicker in others. It was Chester's plan to wheel the gun in among the trees at the proper moment and open on the foe when ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... The sparse population of this territory, the want of scientific information in its inhabitants, and the difficulties which have existed in the way of keeping up an intercourse with their fellow-citizens of the centre of the republic, are causes weighty enough for explaining ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... sweeping the channel with his glasses, his hands shutting off his vision on the sides, like blinders on a horse. Quickly Willie scurried up the tree, wrapping himself closely about the slender trunk, concealing as much of his body as he could, and snuggling behind the sparse clumps of foliage. Then he brought his glasses to bear, and sat silently ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... dark in that part of the camp. The electric lights had a sparse reddish glow. Fuselli kept straining his eyes, expecting to see a wharf and the masts of a ship at the end of every alley. The line filed into a dim mess hall, where a thin stew was splashed into the mess kits. Behind the counter of the kitchen the non-coms, the jovial first sergeant, and the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... feet, the President had never answered so quickly before. He faced the screen on the wall to his right and saluted, amazed once again at how old the man looked. Sparse white hair criss-crossed haphazardly over the President's head, his face was lined with deep trenches that not even the most charitable could call wrinkles, and the faded eyes that stared from deep caverns no longer radiated the flaming vitality that had inspired victorious ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... smell of seaweed struck forcibly now upon his nostrils. The grass beneath his feet had become more sparse and more coarse. The moisture which clung to his face had a taste of salt in it. Obviously he was quite close to ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... home in the 6 P. M. boat again, the transparent shadows are filled everywhere with leisurely falling, slightly slanting, curiously sparse but very large, flakes of snow. On the shores, near and far, the glow of just-lit gas-clusters at intervals. The ice, sometimes in hummocks, sometimes floating fields, through which our boat goes crunching. The light permeated by that peculiar evening haze, right after sunset, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... flat pulled them together again, and they plodded on by Bardie's Farm, where the scent became sparse, and on to Steg where, for the first time since leaving Templeton, they came ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... so sparse that there is not one person for every 20,000 acres; and most of these people live on the coast. Consequently, the vast interior could not be used for food supplies in any case. Besides, ever since the white man occupied the coast, the immediate hinterland, which used to be full ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... of four and a half years, the Wonder was bald, save for a few straggling wisps of reddish hair above the ears and at the base of the skull, and a weak, sparse down, of the same colour, on the top of his head. The eyebrows, too, were not marked by any line of hair, but the eyelashes were thick, though short, and several shades darker than ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... rim of sand, where the brush was sparse, allowing us to keep a good lookout ahead. We went along a few yards at a time, stepping out occasionally to reconnoitre the sand-reaches ahead. We found that the northern end of the island was higher ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... and his fist came down like a hammer on his own skull, and his crooked fingers clutched pitilessly at the sparse growth of hair on the back of his head, until he held up a whole handful torn out by the roots, and ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... after journeying a half-mile or so, the character of the country underwent a great change. The ground became more level, and they found themselves traveling among stunted trees and sparse vegetation. The moon did not rise until quite late, so that until then they could barely see each other's bodies as they moved along. This made them uncertain as to whether they were following the right course; but they were greatly pleased to find that they had deviated ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... can be given to English readers almost unabridged, in view of the singular delicacy and pure-mindedness of the Jurgen mythos: in all, not more than a half-dozen deletions have seemed expedient (and have been duly indicated) in order to remove such sparse and unimportant outcroppings of mediaeval frankness as might conceivably offend ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... other side of the island opposite to the Bugis camp, and led them across. After a short but quite silent scuffle, Cornelius, who had tried to slink away at the moment of landing, resigned himself to show the way where the undergrowth was most sparse. Brown held both his skinny hands together behind his back in the grip of one vast fist, and now and then impelled him forward with a fierce push. Cornelius remained as mute as a fish, abject but faithful to his purpose, whose accomplishment loomed before him dimly. At the edge ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... the way was easy, and by moving slowly he suffered less pain than he had expected. Around him the frost-smitten aspens were shivering in the wind, their sparse leaves dangling like coins of red-and-yellow gold, and all the billowing land below, to the west, was iridescent with green and flame-color and crimson. A voiceless regret, a dim, wide-reaching, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... use, "poses, and rheumatisms, and catarrhs," were unknown, so wholesome and healthful was the smoke. Earl Godwin's favourite hound, old, like himself, lay at his feet, dreaming, for it whined and was restless. And the Earl's old hawk, with its feathers all stiff and sparse, perched on the dossal of the Earl's chair and the floor was pranked with rushes and sweet herbs—the first of the spring; and Githa's feet were on her stool, and she leaned her proud face on the small hand which proved her ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pacific Ocean, capable itself of sustaining in comfort a larger population than will be in the whole Union for one hundred years to come. Over this vast expanse of territory your population is now so sparse that I believe we provided, at the last session, a regiment of mounted men to guard the mail from the frontier of Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia; and yet you persist in the ridiculous assertion, "I want room." One would imagine, from the frequent ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... her thumps for attention to be called to 'the strangeness of it,' that a poor, small, sparse village, hardly above a hamlet, on the most unproductive of Kentish heights, part of old forest land, should at this period become 'the cynosure of a city beautifully named by the poet Great Augusta, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... other gardens I transplant them, and I treasure them like gold. One cluster bears light-coloured bloom; another bears dark shades. I sit with head uncovered by the sparse-leaved artemesia hedge, And in their pure and cool fragrance, clasping my knees, I hum my lays. In the whole world, methinks, none see the light as peerless as these flowers. From all I see you have no other friend more intimate than ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... nothing very elevating about it. Worldliness, sensuality, and devilism are things helped forward by their gibberish. Words dealing with honesty, uprightness, fidelity, industry, religion, cleanliness, and love are very sparse. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... hare" lives upon the leaves and twigs of the dwarf birch-tree; and this, transformed into its own white flesh, becomes the food of the Arctic fox. The herbage, sparse though it be, does not grow in vain. The seeds fall to the earth, but they are not suffered to decay. They are gathered by the little lemmings and meadow-mice, who, in their turn, become the prey of two species of mustelidae, the ermine and vison weasels. Have the fish ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... heard nothing of the train yet, and it was not to be seen approaching. His watch told him that it had been due for ten minutes now. Surely it could not have gone! No, there it was. Its whistle sounded, and soon it came winding through the sparse woodlands. He gave a sigh of relief, and squatted down to wait for it. Soon it drew ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... mosaic-like in the midst of green and blue-grey mountains that soared up from it—up, up, in shapes strange as a goblin's dream. Then, the azure star vanished, and rocky heights shut away the view of the distant sea. Vegetation grew sparse. At last we had reached the desolate and stony top of the mountain-range which a little while ago had touched the sky. Clouds like huge white swans swam in the blue air below us, where we could look down from some sheer precipice. But where was Schloss Hrvoya? And would Aunt ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have passed, for beyond them were the radiant mists of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous gateway filtered the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us uprose gradually converging and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse foliage. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence and of Chaleur Bay. The seigneury of Sorel was well peopled, for each grantee received only sixty acres and a town lot, taking the rest of his allotment in some of the newer settlements. The settlement in the Gaspe peninsula was more sparse; the chief centre of population was the tiny fishing village of Paspebiac. In addition to these settlements, some of the exiles took up land on private seigneuries; these, however, were not many, for the government discouraged the practice, and refused supplies to ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... within the limits of the United States, have been furnished with arms and munitions of war by persons dwelling in conterminous foreign territory, and are thereby enabled to prosecute their savage warfare upon the exposed and sparse settlements ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... this principle was still unknown and not even guessed at, it is evident that many mistakes must have been made, and that many an instance, which until now has been considered reliable proof of a so-called single variation, is in fact only a case of vicinism. In reading the sparse literature on sports, numerous cases will be found, which cannot stand this test. In many instances crossing must be looked to as an explanation, [215] and in other cases the evidence relied upon does not suffice to exclude this assumption. Many an old argument has ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... the interior, he spent some time on the larger islands at the mouth of the Amazon, on one of which he immediately noticed the scarcity of trees, while "the abundance of every kind of animal life crowded into a small space was here very striking, compared with the sparse manner in which it is scattered in the virgin forests. It seems to force us to the conclusion that the luxuriance of tropical vegetation is not favourable to the production of animal life. The plains are always more thickly peopled than ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... short chapter covering a period of 10,000 or 12,000 years at the utmost, but a period crowded with events which have a critical bearing on our present and future welfare. In the first or long phase mankind was broken into small and scattered groups which gained as best they could a sparse, uncertain, and coarse sustenance from the natural produce of shore and stream, moorland and woodland. In the second or short phase man conquered nature; by means of cultivation and domestication he forced from the soil a sure and abundant supply of food, thus ...
— Nationality and Race from an Anthropologist's Point of View • Arthur Keith
... original paged manuscript to an unpaged "cyberscroll", page numbers are lost. In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles" of sub-chapter scale. Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages. Therefore, it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper by adopting a shortest path method ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... fertile to the tops, covered with the richest sward of bluegrass and white clover, the inclosed fields waving with the natural growth of timothy. The inhabitants are few and population sparse. This is a magnificent grazing country, and all it needs is labour to clear the mountain-sides of its great growth of timber. There surely is no lack of moisture at this time. It has rained, I believe, some portion of ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... distraction of the week. The repressed magnetic excitement in gatherings of familiar faces, fellow-beings bound by the same convention to the same kind of behaviour, is precious in communities where the human interest is still thin and sparse. It is valuable in itself, and it produces an occasional detached sensation. There was the case, in Dr Drummond's church, of placid-faced, saintly old Sandy MacQuhot, the epileptic. It used to be a common regret with Lorne Murchison that as sure as he was allowed ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... in his case was well deserved, the door of the cell was walled up, only one small opening being left through which he could receive the scanty allowance of food brought him, and a little barred window through which some sparse ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the hill nearer to us there were two or three field batteries in action. To the right of us a brigade of artillery was limbered up ready to go anywhere. In the left, at the bottom of the dip the 108th was in action, partially covered by some sparse bushes. A few ambulance waggons and some miscellaneous first-line transport were drawn up along the side of the road at the bottom of the dip. To the N.W. we could see for about four miles over low, rolling fields. We could see nothing to the right, as our view was blocked by a ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... He found that they had left the heath, and were riding down a smooth grassy place into a deep valley. The decline was dotted with young oak-trees, sparse at the top but thickening in clusters and ranks lower down. Between the stems, but at some distance, he could see a herd of deer feeding on the rank grass by a brook at the bottom. Beyond the brook ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... the fruit trees. She had seen hillside orchards in the west country break into a foam of flower—a sight perhaps as beautiful as any England has to show. But, to her mind, it did not compare with the sparse white bloom which lay like a first hoar frost on her crooked trees and showed cold and delicate against the pale blue sky. After that, nearly every day, there was something fresh and interesting for Mr. Gillat ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... or I ceased to notice it, and seeing a little way before me a bank above the road, and a fine grove of sparse and dominant chestnuts, I climbed up thither and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... from a native word meaning "red" and was given to the mountain people because in their attacks upon the lowlanders they wore, as a distinguishing mark, red trousers or a dash of red colour elsewhere about their sparse clothing. They raided coast towns and did immense damage before they were finally brought under control. It should be remembered that these conditions were allowed to arise by a Filipino provincial governor, and by Filipino municipal officials. It is altogether probable that a ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old, by constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his age. A sparse and straggling beard and mustache did not conceal a thin but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and narrow jaw gave him very much the air of a priest, and this impression was helped by his ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... by the few sparse folk of the countryside; But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide, In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... among the canals of San Erasmus, where are market-gardens and fields and hedges. It was here that Geof had listened to the whistle of the blackbird only the other day, as his boat lay moored to the bank, while he sketched the tiniest of little chapels, nestling modestly in the sparse shade of two dark cypresses. His mind recurred to that peaceful hour, as he chatted in desultory fashion with May, but those quiet musings seemed very far away and unreal in the clear, matter-of-fact atmosphere ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... liberal appropriations should be made for this important object. Whatever may have been our policy in the earlier stages of the Government, when the nation was in its infancy, our shipping interests and commerce comparatively small, our resources limited, our population sparse and scarcely extending beyond the limits of the original thirteen States, that policy must be essentially different now that we have grown from three to more than twenty millions of people, that our commerce, carried in our own ships, is found ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... slopes to lose itself in a green curve. A singular feature of this canyon was that a heavy growth of spruce trees covered the slope facing northwest; and the opposite slope, exposed to the sun and therefore less snowbound in winter, held a sparse growth of yellow pines. The ranch house of Colonel Jorth stood round the rough comer of the largest of the three canyons, and rather well hidden, it did not obtrude its rude and broken-down log cabins, its squalid surroundings, its black mud-holes ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... kind of secondary sincerity that she liked it very much. Yet the room was convincing her of something she was too young and too poor ever to have proved before, and that was the possibility of excess. All her delights had been so sparse and in character so simple that no cloying of after-taste had ever changed them from being finally and unquestionably delights; they stood like a knot of poplars on the edge of a large garden whose close resemblance to golden flame could ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... He gazed at the strange combination of instruments on the page in his own nervous handwriting. How came the cataclysm? Vainly the composer scanned the various clefs, vainly he strove to endow with significance the sparse bunches of notes scattered over the white ruled paper. He saw the violins in the highest, most screeching position; saw them disappear like a battalion of tiny balloons in a cloud. No, it was not by the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... of the second order with leaves 4-5' long, sparse, 5-nerved, heart-shaped, broad, acute, entire, glabrous, 6 small glands on the lower face of the base. Petioles of equal length with the leaves. Flowers large, axillary, solitary. Calyx double, the outer portion deciduous, consisting of 3 small, acute leaflets inserted on ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... influenced. Also the mucous membranes, the color and lustre and structure of the hair, as well as its general distribution and development, are hieroglyphics of the endocrine processes below the surface. Whether the muscles are massive or sparse, atrophied or hypertrophied, soft or hard, easily fatigable or not, bespeak conditions in the glandular chain. In short, we must regard the individual as an immensely complicated pattern of designs traced by the hormones as the primary etchers of his development. Though it must be admitted ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... is greater than in China, averaging eight hundred. This fact alone placed a much greater power in the masters' hands after emancipation, as the competition of labor must be so much more severe than with a more sparse population. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Mexico. The good land and cultivated spots in Mexico are but dots on the map. Were it not that it takes so very little to support a Mexican, and that the land which is cultivated yields its produce with little labor, it would be surprising how its sparse population is sustained. All the towns we have visited, with perhaps the exception of Parras, are depopulating, as ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... undergraduate body. His desire for an immediate theological campaign was merely that passion for doing things and for self-expression which were always conspicuous traits. His intense ambition as a boy is still remembered in this sleepy little village. He read every book in the sparse college library; he talked to his college mates and his professors on every imaginable subject; he led his associates in the miniature parliament—the Franklin Debating Society—to which he belonged; he wrote prose and verse at an astonishing rate; he ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... name was Old Terran Italian, but he had slanted Mongoloid eyes and a sparse little chin-beard, which accounted for his nickname. The amount of intermarriage that's gone on since the First Century, any resemblance between people's names and their appearances is purely coincidental. Oscar Fujisawa, who ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... you he brings me a little bunch of eels of his own spearing? that you must be careful at table he has enough to eat, he takes such small pieces? that he is altogether a sparse man? has rows of pins on his sleeve that he picks up?—an old-fashioned man, whose type is fast fading out from these "fast," "steep" times. He tells a story of a stream of black flies which came so thick ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the second son of William Adam of Maryburgh, in Fife, and the most celebrated of four brothers, John, Robert, James and William Adam, was born at Kirkcaldy in 1728. For few famous men have we so little biographical material, and contemporary references to him are sparse. He certainly studied at the university of Edinburgh, and probably received his first instruction in architecture from his father, who gave proofs of his own skill and taste in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... convoys are stretched forth below, Tattered by thronging mad torrents descending; Beneath them the naked rocks downward are bending, Still deeper, the wild shrubs and sparse herbage grow; But yonder the forests stand verdant in flora And birds are ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... clad in the silver robe of the moonlight. We were camped—Harry and I, two Kaffirs, a Scotch cart, and six oxen—on the swelling side of a great wave of bushclad land. Just where we had made our camp, however, the bush was very sparse, and only grew about in clumps, while here and there were single flat-topped mimosa-trees. To our right a little stream, which had cut a deep channel for itself in the bosom of the slope, flowed musically on between banks green with maidenhair, wild asparagus, and many beautiful ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... subscriptions, statues and other monuments have at different times been erected; and many others doubtless will be erected in them hereafter. Some of them are in secluded situations, where for many mites the population is sparse, and the few people that live near them cherish tenderer recollections of the "Lost Cause" than of that which finally won. But such of them as are contiguous to cities are places of interest to more or less of the neighboring population; ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to Cecilia that it resembled Hilary. Its look was kindly and uncertain; its colour a palish tan; the eyebrows of its windows rather straight than arched, and those deep-set eyes, the windows, twinkled hospitably; it had, as it were, a sparse moustache and beard of creepers, and dark marks here and there, like the lines and shadows on the faces of those who think too much. Beside it, and apart, though connected by a passage, a studio stood, and about that studio—of white rough-cast, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in many regions it may at present prove impossible to consolidate all the rural schools. In places where the population is so sparse as to require transportation for very long distances, or where the country roads are still in such a condition in wet seasons as to be practically impassable, consolidation must of necessity be delayed. In such communities, however, the rural school need not be completely at ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... outer offices to the door marked "private," and there, near the window of his sanctum, sat a stout and elderly gentleman. In the unsparing revelation of the morning sunshine the visitor's face declared all its wrinkles. The whitening hair, growing sparse, was carefully combed across an arid patch of scalp. Hamilton Burton's smile died and his face grew for a moment solicitous as he read his father's troubled eyes. Old Thomas Burton was shaven and manicured and betailored into a model of well-nourished—possibly over-nourished—senectitude. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light, and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse, yellow grass on both ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... escort marched unmoved along. Max marched in the middle, unbound like a prisoner of war rather than the miscreant he had been called. Once away from the governor's palace the people were sparse—ones and twos and a few groups here and there—until the gates of the Durend works ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... generally excluded from our common schools, in consequence of the prejudices of teachers and parents. In some of our cities there are schools exclusively for their use, but in the country the colored population is usually too sparse to justify such schools; and white and black children are rarely seen studying under the same roof; although such cases do sometimes occur, and then they are confined to elementary schools. Some colored young men, who could bear the expense, have obtained in European seminaries the education ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... picturesquely crooked and twisty. As it grows and branches under the cultivation and guidance of the orchardist, it maintains a lusty, hearty aspect, its yellowish, reddish or brownish twigs—again according to variety—spreading out to the sun and the air freely. A decade passes, and the sparse showing of bloom that has decorated it each spring gradually gives place to a great glory of flowers. The tree is about to bear, and it assumes the character of maturity; for while it grows on soberly for ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... and planed down through an interminable bank of clouds until he found a gray countryside running up to meet him. There were no houses, no lights, nothing but a wide expanse of country dotted with sparse copses. ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... reduction, this revolution, in freights, will that not hurt the railroads? Ask the railroads whether they make their profit on the long or the short haul. Ask them whether high rates and sparse population or dense population and low rates pay the better dividends! Compare New York Central traffic receipts and Southern Pacific on the average per mile! Now ships that are to use Panama plan pouring twenty million people into the Pacific ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... 1800. This is a distinct and pretty hardy species, a native of swampy low-lying districts. It grows about four feet high, and bears pure white, bell-shaped, Lily-of-the-Valley like flowers in great abundance during the summer. In too dry situations it becomes sparse of foliage and unhappy, but grows and flowers freely in light, peaty soil. Z. speciosa pulverulenta is a very desirable variety, the whole plant, stems, foliage, and flowers, being of a pleasing light gray or white colour. ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... to in its original form), the word in question is given both as an adjective and as a verb, and the derivatives "sparsed," "sparsedly," "sparsely," and "sparseness," are also admitted. The reference given for the origin of "sparse" is to the Latin "sparsus, scattered, from spargo;" and the definitions are, 1. "Thinly scattered, set or planted here and there; as, a sparse population:" and, 2., as a botanical term, "not opposite, not alternate, nor in any regular order; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... many of their companion growths were beginning to run out in dwarfed, twisted misery, and came to a rocky pass through the mountains where on all sides the red cedar, the juniper of the Sierra, throve hardily among bare boulders, crowning the lofty crests like a sparse, stiff, hirsute display upon the gigantic body of the world. The dwarf pine lingered here, straggling along the slopes, beaten down by many a winter of wind and heavy snow. But by noon they had made a slow, tedious way down a rocky ridge and were once more in the heart of the upper forest ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... sparse about them. He began to hear his feet. So did the men beyond the bank. There was the click of a cocking musket. The fellow was ready: the fellow would pot them at twenty yards as they came over ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Old Baldy through the sparse timber that edged its roots. He knew this country well; for he had run cattle here, and combed the draws and ridges on the annual spring and ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... coast and rises to the height of about three thousand feet. It is a rough, broken country, cleft by many ravines and covered with forest, bush, or bamboo thickets; though here and there at rare intervals some brown patches mark the clearings which the sparse inhabitants have made for the purpose of cultivation. Water is plentiful. Springs gush forth everywhere in the glens and valleys, and rushing streams of crystal-clear water pour down the mountain sides, and in the clefts of the hills are lonely tarns, the undisturbed haunts of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... stone embrasure at that place by Holmes, who quickly forced the eleventh and last diamond cuff-button out of his nerveless grasp, then turned triumphantly to me, his faithful but out-of-breath squire, while the spring breezes ruffled the sparse hair on his uncovered head, and the gentle afternoon sun shone down on as queer a scene as had ever taken ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... a sparse crop of brown grass growing on the grave to which he led his companion. A cracked wooden head-board, already tilting rakishly, marked Henry's devotion. It had been white-washed and the inscription done in black letters, now partly washed away by the ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... interrogated Marrineal. "Do you really think—" His uplifted brows, sparse on his broad and candid forehead, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... than you did. He was tall, thin—even gaunt, perhaps—and his face was long, rather pale, and shrewd and gentle; something in its oddity not unremindful of the late Sol Smith Russell. His hat was tilted back a little, the slightest bit to one side, and the sparse, brownish hair above his high forehead was going to be gray before long. ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... crawled the lizard and the rattlesnake; and there was no music to the desolation save the petulant chirp of the cricket. At the sides an occasional stream tumbled out of the mountains to be all but drunk away at once by the thirsty sands. Along the banks of these was the only green to be found, sparse fringes of willow and wild rose. On the borders of the valley, where the steeps arose, were little patches of purple and dusty brown, oak-bush, squaw-berry, a few dwarfed cedars, and other scant growths. At long intervals could be found a marsh of wire-grass, or a few acres of withered bunch-grass. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... was doing something against his wish on this anniversary. Deliberately, she sat alone by the river, waiting for the pageant of sunset to pass; and when she reached home the moon was up, a great white moon that turned the waving waste of pale, sparse grasses ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... volume of noise attainable. And right here the splendid triumphs of modern invention and discovery are made manifest; electricity and gunpowder come to the relief of puny muscle, simple appliance, and orchestras limited by sparse population. Batteries of artillery thunder exultingly our victory over Primeval Man, beaten at his own game-signally routed and put to shame, pounding his impotent gong and punishing his ridiculous kettledrum in frantic silence, amidst the clash and clang and roar of modern ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... 'The Harmonious Blacksmith.' My dear one had a great favour for this honest Darwin always; many a road to shops, and the like, he drove her in his cab, in those early days when even the charge of omnibuses was a consideration, and his sparse utterances, sardonic often, were a great amusement to her. 'A perfect gentleman,' she at once discerned him to be, and of sound worth and kindliness, in the most unaffected form." He died in 1881, aged 77, leaving no memorial to the public of ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... these sandhills come into the region of the 'Desert Oak' (Casuarina Decaisneana). Some of the trees reach a height of forty or fifty feet, and growing either singly or in clumps form a striking feature amongst the thin sparse scrub. . . . The younger ones resemble nothing so much as large funeral plumes. Their outlines seen under a blazing sun are indistinct, and they give to the whole scene a curious effect of being 'out ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... that Forks Settlement enjoyed the height of its prosperity—a prosperity based on the supply of dry-goods and machinery to a widely scattered and sparse population of small ranchers and farmers. These things brought it into existence and kept it afloat for some years. Then it gradually faded from ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... years old, small, thin, bent, with two big hands resembling the claws of a crab. His colorless hair was sparse and thin, like the down of a young duck, allowing patches of his scalp to be seen. The brown and wrinkled skin of his neck showed big veins which disappeared behind his jaws and came out again at the temples. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the river, the opposite bank of which was much nearer than the swirling currents, crystal brown in the romantic shadows below. They walked in single file, the jury of view in their minds, and now and then referred to in their sparse speech. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... voices chimed in, and at last there was an outburst of applause, sparse and feeble, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that every object which in turn presented itself, first ahead of the train, then alongside and then behind, became speedily but 'a dot in the distance,' to use Bob's words over again; the snugly secluded seats of the county gentry, the scattered villages and sparse red-roofed farmhouses, with their outposts of hayricks and herds of cattle and other stock, that one moment appeared and the next disappeared from view behind masses of foliage, all dancing a wild ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... given by the sparse reports from the eastern army to the question of the entire foreign press: "Where has Hindenburg been keeping himself?" Wishes and speculations may thus busy themselves as much as they like with the answering of that question. In the Russian version of the war situation there is reference ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... after this, he convoyed me to several of the cafe's where inverts are accustomed to foregather. These trysting places were much alike: a long hall, with sparse orchestra at one end, marble-topped tables lining the walls, leaving the floor free for dancing. Round the tables sat boys and youths, Adonises both by art and nature, ready for a drink or a chat with the chance Samaritan, and shyly importunate for the pleasures for which, upstairs, were small rooms ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... lot of happy ideas occurred to me, of which I at once made use; a few sparse words, fragments left in my dessicated brain. What would one expect from such a small menagerie? On the whole, it did not interest me in the least to see animals in cases. These animals know that one is standing ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... slivers of shingle; rivers full of tumbled and dishevelled logs; forests in green, in which the crimson maple leaf burns brightly; vast amphitheatres of cliff-like hills; mounds of the stark Laurentine rock pushing up through trees like bald heads through the sparse covering of departing hair; miles of blanched trees and black trees standing like skeletons or strewn all-whither, like billets of stick—acres of murdered stumps, where evil forest fires have swept ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton |
