Word: scarcer
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...Anderson, S. C., a pensive stranger stood gazing into the depths of a trout hatchery. When fish became scarcer, mystified officials first scratched their heads, then broke in on the stranger's waterside musings. Through a hole in his pocket he was dangling a line, pulling his catch through a pants...
...Having backed down at Swatow, the Japanese military at Tientsin, where they claimed the British were harboring anti-Japanese terrorists (TIME, June 26), became ever bolder. Live wire encircled the British and French Concessions, had by week's end killed a cat and a coolie. As food got scarcer, 1,500 Britons within the area realized that for all practical purposes they were imprisoned. Those who tried to get in or out were stripped, searched, cuffed. The colony settled down to make the best of the situation. Unable to go to the British Country Club, outside the Concession, they...
...Arab territory constitutes one of the world's last frontiers, with population scarcer than in any .other inhabited part of the globe. Palestine is rich in many minerals, can grow almost any kind of fruit or vegetable, has sufficient water supply. Instead of being overpopulated, it is notoriously undermanned. If as dense as Massachusetts, it would have 5,270,000 instead of 1,300,000 inhabitants. It now supports only one-tenth of the population of Roman times...
...Italian-style tenors have always been a scarce commodity, and for the past two decades they have been growing scarcer & scarcer. Opera impresarios count on the fingers of one hand (Gigli, Lauri-Volpi, Borgioli, Schipa . . .) the lusty high-voiced Latins still capable of raising even moderate-sized rafters on either side of the Atlantic. Since the death of Enrico Caruso (1921), tenor departments of U. S. opera-houses have shown a steady decline. Today their audiences count it a privilege to hear their "Ridi Pagliaccios" and "La donna e mobiles" sung by anything bigger than a microphone voice...
...quarts of air there is one quart of krypton. An inert gas discovered in 1898 by Ramsay and Travers, krypton is scarcer and less volatile than argon, neon and xenon; its name means "the hidden one." In the U. S., small quantities of krypton have been obtained by Linde Air Products Co. and Air Reduction Co. during the fractional distillation (selective boiling) of liquid air, and sold to academic laboratories for $100 a litre if pure, $15 a litre if mixed. Argon or nitrogen at low pressure are the usual fillers for electric tamp bulbs manufactured...