When any species becomes very rare, close interbreeding will help to exterminate it; authors have thought that this comes into play in accounting for the deterioration of the aurochs in Lithuania, of red deer in Scotland and of bears in Norway, etc.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition by Charles Darwin

The cheapness of pots, I may mention incidentally, and the more frequent sale of roots in them, has almost entirely swept away the fragment of a pitcher and “the spoutless tea-pot,” which Cowper mentions as containing the poor man’s flowers, that testified an inextinguishable love of rural objects, even in the heart of a city.
— from London Labour and the London Poor (Vol. 1 of 4) by Henry Mayhew

The river traverses an immense level of rice-fields, open to the horizon north and south, but on the west walled in by a range of blue peaks, and on the east by a chain of low wooded hills.
— from "Out of the East": Reveries and Studies in New Japan by Lafcadio Hearn

Its physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting competition in comparison with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over the lighter-than-air vessel and cause the public to pass it by without interest.
— from Opportunities in Aviation by Arthur Sweetser

At the early age of sixteen he had been betrothed to Elizabeth Trentham, a great heiress; but in the course of his travels abroad he formed a strong attachment to an Italian lady of rank, whom he afterwards deserted for his first betrothed.
— from Strange Pages from Family Papers by T. F. (Thomas Firminger) Thiselton-Dyer

Some tribes will take animals in lieu of ready money.
— from Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 2 by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir

Only a mention of this appearance is left on record.
— from Bible Atlas: A Manual of Biblical Geography and History by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut

Doubtless we have interests in common, from which a place so near (but the road is heavy) as Tilliedrum is shut out, and we have an individuality of our own too, as if, like our red houses, we came from a quarry that supplies no other place.
— from The Little Minister by J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie

But at the same time I remembered the almost incredible lack of reasoning powers shown by most members of the public where a deed of violence has been committed, and knowing that there is nothing so improbable that it will not find a host of ready believers, I did not attach much importance to the circumstance until later.
— from The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story by Bryce, Charles, Mrs.