Word Finder - tracts

definition

An area or expanse.

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an unexplored tract of sea

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A series of connected body organs, as in the digestive tract.

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A small booklet such as a pamphlet, often for promotional or informational uses.

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A brief treatise or discourse on a subject.

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A commentator's view or perspective on a subject.

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Continued or protracted duration, length, extent

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Part of the proper of the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist for many Christian denominations, used instead of the alleluia during Lenten or pre-Lenten seasons, in a Requiem Mass, and on a few other penitential occasions.

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Continuity or extension of anything.

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the tract of speech

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Traits; features; lineaments.

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The footprint of a wild animal.

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Track; trace.

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Treatment; exposition.

Successful feuds with the bishops of Strassburg and Basel further augmented his wealth and his reputation; rights over various tracts of land were purchased from abbots and others; and he was also the possessor of large estates in the regions now known as Switzerland and Alsace.

In some birds, such as the herons, certain down-feathers or plumulae break off into a fine dust as fast as they are formed and form tracts defined in size and situation and known as "powder-down patches."

In the highlands, where some fertile upland tracts produce corn, dates and other fruits, the climate is genial, but elsewhere it is extremely sultry, and on the low-lying coast lands malarious.

Central Albania differs from the northern and southern regions in the more undulating and less rugged character of its surface; it contains considerable lowland tracts, such as the wide and fertile plain of Musseki, traversed by the river Simen.

The basin of the Garonne occupies south-western France with the exception of the tracts covered by the secondary basins of the Adour, the Aude, the Hrault, the Orb and other smaller rivers, and the lowlying plain of the Landes, which is watered by numerous coast rivers, notably by the Leyre.

The marshy districts of Sologne, Brenne, Landes and Dombes still contain large undrained tracts.

More remarkable still, over large tracts of country the water seems disposed to flow away from, rather than to, the river-beds.

Although the timbers of commercial value are confined practically to the eastern and a portion of the western coastal belt and a few inland tracts of Australia, they constitute an important national asset.

The migrations must have always been dependent upon physical difficulties, such as waterless tracts or mountain barriers.

Others again, like Michaelis and Rosenmiiller, have supposed that the name Cush was applied to tracts of country both in Arabia and in Africa, but the defective condition of the ancient knowledge of countries and peoples, as also the probability of early migrations of "Cushite" tribes (carrying with them their name), will account for the main facts.

In the desert tracts fine breeds of camels, cattle, horses and sheep are to be found wherever there is pasturage.

It is, however, as "the ship of the desert," without which vast tracts of the earth's surface could scarcely be explored, that the camel is specially valuable.

Besides the delta of the Po and the large marshy tracts which it forms, there exist on both sides of it extensive lagoons of salt water, generally separated from the Adriatic by narrow strips of sand or embankments, partly natural and partly artificial, but havin openings which admit the influx and efflux of the sea-water, and serve as ports for communication with the mainland.

Nor do the highest summits form a continuous ridge of great altitude for any considerable distance; they are rather a series of groups separated by tracts of very inferior elevation forming natural passes across the range, and broken in some places (as is the case in almost all limestone countries) by the waters from the upland valleys turning suddenly at right angles, and breaking through the mountain ranges which bound them.

This constitution of the great mass of the central Apennines has in all ages exercised an important influence upon the character of this portion of Italy, which may be considered as divided by nature into two great regions, a cold and barren upland country, bordered on both sides by rich and fertile tracts, enjoying a warm but temperate climate.

Unfortunately several of these fertile tracts suffer severely from malaria (q.v.), and especially the great plain adjoining the Gulf of Tarentum, which in the early ages of history was surrounded by a girdle of Greek cities—some of which attained to almost unexampled prosperity—has for centuries past been given up to almost complete desolation.

The medial portion forms radiating tracts of fibres, the so-called " bell-muscles " running underneath, and parallel to, the radial canals; when greatly developed, as in Tiaridae, they form ridges, so-called mesenteries, projecting into the sub-umbral cavity.

Experience with epidemics, dearly bought in the past, has shown that one fruitful cause is the laying open to the inroads of some Fungus or insect, hitherto leading a quiet endemic life in the fields and forests, large tracts of its special food, along which it may range rampant without check to its dispersal, nutrition and reproduction.

The cardoon and milk thistle, both European plants, cover tracts of country in South America with impenetrable thickets in which both man and beast may be hopelessly lost.

But it was the military genius of Rome, and the ambition for universal empire, which led, not only to the discovery, but also to the survey of nearly all Europe, and of large tracts in Asia and Africa.

As an agent of the New Zealand Land Company he was engaged in purchasing enormous tracts of land from the natives, but the company's title to the greater part of this was later declared invalid.

Some tracts of territory, such as the greater part of the Kru coast, still, however, remain without foreign - Americansettlers, and in a state of quasi-independence.

Throughout the whole of this vast area, their monotonous surfaces are diversified by only a few, and, for the most part, low, hilly tracts.

Taking their rise on the plateau formation, or in its outskirts, they flow first along lofty longitudinal valleys formerly filled with great lakes, next they cleave their way through the rocky barriers, and finally they enter the lowlands, where they become navigable, and, describing wide curves to avoid here and there the minor plateaus and hilly tracts, they bring into watercommunication with one another places thousands of miles apart.

The Devonian dolomites, limestones and red sandstones cover immense tracts and appear on the surface over a much wider area.

The Eocene covers wide tracts from Lithuania to Tsaritsyn, and is represented in the Crimea and Caucasus by thick deposits belonging to the same ocean which left its deposits on the Alps and the Himalayas.

Then it again rises gradually as it approaches the hilly tracts which enclose the great plain.

Drainage finding no outlet through the thick clay, the soil of the forest region is often hidden beneath extensive marshes, and the forests themselves are often mere thickets choking marshy ground; large tracts of sand appear in the W., and the admixture of boulders with the clay in the N.W.

For some time longer the Tatars remained troublesome neighbours, capable of invading and devastating large tracts of Russian territory and of threatening even the city of Moscow, but the Horde was now broken up into independent and mutually hostile khanates, and the Moscow diplomatists could generally play off one khanate against the other, so that there was no danger of the old political domination being re-established.

Upolu is long and narrow; it has a backbone of mountains whose flanks are scored with lovely valleys, at the foot of which are flat cultivable tracts.

Reprinted in Somers Tracts (Scott, 1812), viii.

Projecting into these sounds and between the estuaries of rivers flowing into them are extensive tracts of swamp land - the best known of these is Dismal Swamp, which lies mostly in Virginia and is about 3 o m.

The whole tract, excepting south-eastern Arabia, is nominally subject to Turkey, but the people are to no small extent practically independent, living a nomadic, pastoral and freebooting life under petty chiefs, in the more arid districts, but settled in towns in the more fertile tracts, where agriculture becomes more profitable and external commerce is established.

The population is very scanty; the cultivated tracts are comparatively small in extent and restricted to the more settled districts.

There are considerable tracts which are but little disturbed, but these tracts are enclosed within the arcs formed by the folds, and the zone taken as a whole is distinctly one of crumpling.

The extremely dry and hot tracts which constitute an almost unbroken desert from Arabia, through south Persia and Baluchistan, to Sind, are characterized by considerable uniformity in the types of life, which closely approach to those of the neighbouring hot and dry regions of Africa.

Ponies are most esteemed from the wetter regions of the east, and the hilly tracts.

The delta of the Cauvery occupies the flat northern part, which is highly cultivated, dotted over with groves of coconut trees, and is one of the most densely populated tracts in India.

Rarely are these ciliated, and then only in limited tracts.

Thus Raghoji Bhonsla established himself in the tracts lying underneath the southern base of the Satpura range (namely, Nagpur and Berar), overran Orissa and entered Bengal.

The most elevated tracts are on the west, where the surface rises towards the culminating range of hills, and on the south, where it rises to the elevated tableland of Mysore.

The forest of Fontainebleau is one of the most beautiful wooded tracts in France, and for generations it has been the chosen haunt of French landscape painters.

The tracts over which they roamed were in ordinary circumstances common to all shepherds alike.

The latter, besides its more obvious advantages, speedily freed large tracts of country from stagnant water and their inhabitants from ague, and prepared the way for the underground draining which soon after began to be practised.

Great tracts of low country along the southern shores of the Baltic and in northern Russia are covered with forests of spruce.

It is known that before the Opus Majus Bacon had already written some tracts, among which an unpublished work, Computus Naturalium, on chronology, belongs probably to the year 1263; while, if the dedication of the De Secretis Operibus be authentic, that short treatise must have been composed before 1249.

In his youth he went to the continent and taught mathematics at Paris, where he published or edited, between the years 1612 and 1619, various geometrical and algebraical tracts, which are conspicuous for their ingenuity and elegance.

Between 1562 and 1567 he published many controversial tracts, especially against the Lutheran, Martin Chemnitz.

In 1767 he was appointed to the charge of Mill Hill Chapel at Leeds, where he again changed his religious opinions from a loose Arianism to definite Socinianism and wrote many political tracts hostile to the attitude of the government towards the American colonies.

Since these streams had in no case originally easy access to the sea, we naturally find lakes on their course, and several of them terminate in tracts of more or less permanent inundation.