"Silex" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coral-reefs, and other coasts destitute of flinty stones, search should be made for drift-wood and drifted sea-weed. In the roots of these, the pebbles of other shores are not unfrequently entangled, and flint may be found among them. The joints of bamboos occasionally contain enough silex to give a spark. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... it beautiful at any other season. The road was bad, and the last one and a half mile into camp most difficult, the path winding round and over spurs of sharp limestone rocks which must have had abundance of silex in them they were so very hard. At the very worst part, my headman being in front, all of a sudden I heard three shots in quick succession with the usual hallooing, and then I was called on in advance, meeting ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... porphyry, and serpentine, which, issuing from the interior of the earth, have broken, as eruptive rocks, through the secondary strata, and modified them by contact, either in rendering them harder by the introduction of silex, or reducing them into dolomite, or, finally, by inducing within them the formation of crystals of the most varied composition. The elevation of sporadic islands, of p 45 domes of trachyte, and cones of basalt, by the elastic forces emanating from the fluid interior ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... up of Globigerinoe, with the granules which have been mentioned, and some few other calcareous shells; but a small percentage of the chalky mud—perhaps at most some five per cent. of it— is of a different nature, and consists of shells and skeletons composed of silex, or pure flint. These silicious bodies belong partly to the lowly vegetable organisms which are called Diatomaceoe, and partly to the minute, and extremely simple, animals, termed Radiolaria. It is quite ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... fire-born, the son of lightning; lightning being to light, as regards concentration, what wine is to the other strengths of the earth. And who that has rested a hand on the glittering silex of a vineyard slope in August, where the pale globes of sweetness are lying, does not feel this? It is out of the bitter salts of a smitten, volcanic soil that it comes up with the most curious virtues. The mother faints and is parched up by the heat which brings the child to the birth; ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... which it can hold. The result is an auger, of diameter varying from an inch to a thousand feet, capable of altering its direction so as to bore curved holes, revolving with incalculable rapidity, and armed with a cutting edge of silex. Is it possible to conceive an instrument more powerful, more versatile? Indeed, practically, there is no description of surface, no kind of cut, which it is not capable of making. I have repeatedly seen it in operation. One day, while riding from Denver to Pike's Peak, I saw it (in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... landscape. Sometimes the reddish-brown cricket is seen. Even the Platte River, which flows through this region, partakes of its nature. It seems to consist of a saturated solution of sand: when a handful is taken up, a grey mud of silex remains in the palm. Dry as this gramma grass appears, it possesses nutritive qualities, as the animals which ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston |
