Fecundity

[ad. L. fēcunditāt-em fruitfulness, f. fēcundus: see FECUND and -ITY. Cf. F. fécondité.]

  1.  Of female animals: The faculty of reproduction, the capacity for bringing forth young; productiveness.

1447.  Bokenham, Seyntys (Roxb.), 50.

1607.  Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1673), 217. The fœcundity of the beast that beareth them.

1727.  Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Bee, His Fecundity is such almost throughout the Year, that [etc.].

1775.  Johnson, Tax. no Tyr., 7. The continent of North America contains three millions, not of men merely, but of Whigs, of Whigs fierce for liberty, and disdainful of dominion; that they multiply with the fecundity of their own rattle-snakes, so that every quarter of a century doubles their numbers.

1856.  Grindon, Life, ix. (1875), 112. The most astonishing examples of fecundity occur among fishes and insects.

  2.  Bot. The faculty or power of germinating.

1691.  Ray, Creation (1714), 300. Some of the Ancients mentioning some Seeds that retain their Fecundity forty Years.

1884.  Syd. Soc. Lex., Fecundity … in Botany, the capacity of a seed for germination.

  3.  Of the earth: The quality of producing abundantly; fertility.

c. 1420.  Pallad. on Husb., I. 57. Ffecunditee thowe see thus in thi lande.

1432–50.  trans. Higden (Rolls), I. 320. The … fecundite or plentuosenes of the soyle.

1548.  Hall, Chron., Hen. VII an. 12. 41 a. The Cornyshe men inhabityng the least parte of the realme … and without all fecunditee, compleyned and grudged greatly.

1622.  T. Scott, Belg. Pismire, 2. The Earth answered thy expectation, and preuented thy desires with overflowing fecunditie.

1718.  J. Chamberlayne, Relig. Philos. (1730), II. xx. § 7. It [the Earth] has never failed, nor entirely lost its Foecundity.

1843.  Prescott, Mexico, IV. vii. (1864), 251. The marvellous fecundity of the soil.

  4.  Productiveness in general, the faculty or power of being fruitful, fertility: a. of material things.

1555.  Eden, Decades (Arb.), 297. The sea then, beinge all of such qualitie, poureth furth it selfe far vppon th[e] extreme landes, wherby by reason of the fatnesse therof, it moueth and stereth vp generatiue heate, as by fatness it noryssheth the fecunditie of thynges generate.

1662.  J. Davies, trans. Mandelslo’s Trav., 137. This fecundity lasts all night, till the return of the Sunne makes both the flowers and leaves drop off.

1721.  R. Bradley, Works of Nature, 102–3. That Fecundity, which so much embarass’d the antient Physicians, and which they attributed to a Sympathy, or Love among Trees.

1796.  H. Hunter, trans. St. Pierre’s Studies of Nature (1799), I. 573. It is not the heat of the Tropics which gives to this tree a fecundity so constant, and so varied.

1836.  Macgillivray, trans. Humboldt’s Trav., xiv. 181. A few drops of a vegetable fluid impress us with an idea of the the power and fecundity of nature.

1855.  Milman, Lat. Chr. (1864), II. III. vi. 93–4. The monks seemed to multiply with greater fecundity than the population of the most flourishing cities, and were obliged to throw off their redundant brethren to some new settlement.

  b.  of immaterial things.

1621.  Donne, Serm., xliii. 427. The Fecundity of the words.

1691.  Ray, Creation (1714), 18. A demonstrative Proof of the … feccundity of His Wisdom and Power.

1789.  Bentham, Princ. Legisl., xii. § 17. The mischief … is … in point of fecundity pregnant to a degree that baffles calculation.

1824.  W. Irving, T. Trav., II. 54. The extreme fecundity of the press.

1842.  H. Rogers, Ess., I. i. 10. Most marvellous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy, which can adorn whatever it touches.

  5.  The capacity for making fruitful or productive, fertilizing power.

1642.  H. More, Immortal. of Souls, III. iii. 169.

1680.  Morden, Geog. Rect. (1685), 443. The River Nilus is famous for its Greatness and Fœcundity.

1860.  Pusey, The Minor Prophets, 144. The Egyptian race is still accounted very prolific. So general is this, that the ancients thought that the waters of the Nile must have some power of fecundity.

1868.  Peard, Water-Farming, xii. 120. Most of the facts which follow bear an intimate relation to the fecundity of ‘the springs.’