Sparse

Permit me to refer your correspondent "C. FORBES" for a reply to his query, p. 215. of your last Number, to the article "Americanism" in the *Penny Cyclopædia*, the author of which observes:— "*Sparse* is, for any thing we know, a new word, and well applied; the Americans say a sparse instead of a scattered population; and we think the term has a more precise meaning than scattered, and is the proper correlative of dense." In the *Imperial Dictionary* (avowedly based upon Webster's American work, which I cannot at this moment refer to in its original form), the word in question is given both a…