Whether progress would ever invade those mountain regions; or the ingenuity of man ever discover uses for these rocks and boulders, or coin wealth from the sterile and sandy soil of this old wilderness?

The whole land is bare and unpeopled, the very earth scarcely covering the rock that lies beneath it, and with which the country abounds, in places rising out of the soil in wave-shaped ridges.

But at length the elevation of the meadow-land goes on so far as to produce too dry a soil for the specific meadow-plants, when, of course, they have to give up their places to others fitted for the new conditions.

The land-owners sometimes cultivate the soil with their own handssometimes with hired labourersand sometimes they rent them for about a third of their produce.

Here, sitting on the stump of an old tree, he spies little Bob Peepers, weeping as if his heart would break: the briny tears coursing down his ruddy cheeks form little rivulets of salt water with high embankments of genuine soil on either side, and a distracted map of a war-ridden country is depicted upon his grief-stricken countenance.

They made up a fire, melted snow, and half filled a rusty pan with gravel and soil from the bottom of the pit.

I went down through stone and soil to the coffin there.

If, then, the peculiar distribution of Sequoia has not been governed by superior conditions of soil as to fertility or moisture, by what has it been governed?

"Mine and my brothers' garments," she replied, "that have contracted soil by this time with lying by so long in the wardrobe.

The Eleventh Massachusetts Regiment were encamped on a wet soil at Budd's Ferry, in Maryland.

We seemed to take a long time groping along seeking this; the squash of the wet soil under our feet was the only thing that marked our progress.

In every instance like the above I have observed that the seedling Sequoia is capable of growing on both drier and wetter soil than its rivals, but requires more sunshine than they; the latter fact being clearly shown wherever a Sugar Pine or fir is growing in close contact with a Sequoia of about equal age and size, and equally exposed to the sun; the branches of the latter in such cases are always less leafy.

Troops that had held the last strip of Belgian soil through all those bitter years with a tenacity the Huns could never shake.

Wheeling the barrow to the edge of the pit, the watchman cast his load into it; and without even tarrying to throw a handful of soil over it, turned back, and rejoined Thirlby, who had halted at some distance from the excavation.

It was Hanford's first trip across, and he arrived on British soil without so much as a knowledge of English coins, with nothing in the way of baggage except a grip full of blue-prints, and with no destination except the Parliament buildings, where he had been led to believe the Royal Barrata Bridge Commission was eagerly and impatiently awaiting his coming.

In England, every available spot of spare soil about the yard, is planted with flowers; on the continent, all the fashionable restaurants and cafes must daily be supplied with fresh bouquets, with which these halls are decorated in lavish profusion.

In this it stands unrivalled, and there is no other breed capable of converting the produce of a poor soil into such fine butter and cheese.

But if we watch more closely still, we should find that the plants could not live without the animals, nor the animals without the plants, nor either of them without the soil beneath our feet, and the air and rain above our heads.

The soil between Khan Yunus and Deir el Belah, especially on the west of our railway line, was very sandy, and after the winter rains had knitted it together it began to crumble under the sun's heat, and it soon cut up badly when two or three limbers had passed over it.

" The idleness, contempt of labor, dissipation, sensuality, brutality, cruelty, and meanness, engendered by the habit of making men and women work without pay, and flogging them if they demur at it, constitutes a congenial soil out of which cock-fighting and horse-racing are the spontaneous growth.

They never knew with what endless care the new den had been chosen; how the mother, in the days when she knew she was watched, had searched it out and watched over it and put her nose to every ridge and ravine and brook-side, day after day, till she was sure that no foot save that of the wild things had touched the soil within miles of the place.

"They varied from six inches to several feet in diameter, the soil around the edges was dry and hard, and as fast as water was dipped out, a new supply rose to the surface."

Several German Zeppelins were brought to earth on English soil during the progress of aerial raids in September and November, 1916.

" The man ventured no further remonstrance; he took off his jacket, and struck his pickaxe into the hard, dry soil near the point where the cane rested.

As they stood, drawn back near some roadside bushes, watching him, the long, lean old arm went up, the knife flashing against the knuckles of the clenched fist and, with a whirl of the wrist, reversing swiftly in air, to bury its blade in the soil before the player.