"Fossil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where he and some of the gentlemen employed by the company resided in bachelor retirement. My host described a mammal's tooth that weighed nearly fourteen pounds, which had been taken from a phosphate mine; it had been sent to a public room at Beaufort, South Carolina. A fossil shark's tooth, weighing four and a half pounds, was also found, and a learned ichthyologist has asserted that the owner of this remarkable relic of the past must have been one hundred ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... very childhood of philosophy, from the first faintly-whispered Why? to our own time of matured thought and fearless inquiry, mythology has been the ever-recurrent subject of anxious wonder and careful study. The ancient philosophers, who could pass by the petrified shells on mountain-tops and the fossil trees buried in their quarries without ever asking the question how they came to be there, or what they signified, were ever ready with doubts and surmises when they came to listen to ancient stories of their gods and heroes. And, more curious still, even modern philosophers cannot ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... was the old man who spoke now, with a sort of whiffle through his teeth,—"if you could? A chip of shale next to this you brought this evening would satisfy me. This is evidently an original fossil foot-mark: no work of Indians. I'll go with you,"—gathering his dressing-gown ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... is considerable commercial interchange. I may here observe, that their money currency does not consist of the precious metals, which are too common among them for that purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use are manufactured from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce remnant of some very early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, by which a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. This coinage circulates among all the tribes of the Vril-ya. Their larger transactions ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... allowed the regency, which was composed of three clerical leaders,—General Almonte, of whom Marshal Bazaine was wont to say that he meant well, but il se prend trop au serieux, General Salas, a conservative old fossil unearthed for the occasion, and Archbishop Labastida,—to foreshadow an era ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... oriental turquoise used for brooches and rings which, like the banal pearl and the odious coral, serves to delight people of no importance. He chose occidental turquoises exclusively, stones which, properly speaking, are only a fossil ivory impregnated with coppery substances whose sea blue is choked, opaque, sulphurous, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... circle comprised a maiden aunt of Sir James, Miss Patricia, a stern and awful specimen of the female sex in its fossil state; her ward, Miss Henderson, who, having long passed her pupilage, remained at Collingham-Westmore in the capacity of gouvernante and companion to the young heiress; the heiress aforesaid, and myself. A priest—did I say that the Collinghams still professed the old religion?—came on Sundays ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in time as in space, of the same types in the same areas; and in neither case does the similarity of the conditions by any means seem sufficient to account for the similarity of the forms of life. It is notorious that the fossil remains of closely consecutive formations are closely allied in structure, and we can at once understand the fact if they are likewise closely allied by descent. The succession of the many distinct species of the same genus throughout the long series of geological formations seems to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... advisability of not having any organic or combustible material near the generator, the solid substances just mentioned may preferably be replaced by one of those partially inorganic compositions sold for "lagging" steam-pipes and engine-cylinders, such as "Fossil meal." Indeed, the exact nature of the lagging matters comparatively little, because the active substance in retaining the heat in the acetylene generator or the steam-pipe is the air entangled in the pores of the lagging; and therefore the value of any particular ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... countries have grown and fallen through many ages, whence morasses of immense extent; and from these as the more soluble parts were washed away first, were produced sea-salt, nitre, iron, and variety of acids, which combining with calcareous matter were productive of many fossil bodies, as flint, sea-sand, selenite, with the precious stones, and perhaps the diamond. See ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... cemented together with calcareous spar. These strata alternate with banks of clay and coarse-grained soil, which contain scanty and badly preserved imprints of leaves and mussel-fish. Amongst them, however, I observed a flattened but still recognizable specimen of the fossil melania. The river-bed must be quite five hundred feet above the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... look at the pictures till he has shown them the adjoining cabinet of geological specimens. It is in vain that you assure him of your indifference to these scientific seccature; he is deaf and you are not suffered to escape a single fossil. He asked us a hundred questions, and understood nothing in reply, insomuch that when he came to his last inquiry, "Have the Protestants the same God as the Catholics?" we were rather glad that he should be obliged to settle the fact ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... one over the other, so that the shell becomes more and more thickened and bulky. Judging from the great thickness to which some oyster-shells have attained, this mollusc is capable, if left to its natural changes and unmolested, of attaining a patriarchal longevity. Among fossil oysters, specimens are found occasionally of enormous thickness; and the amount of time that has passed between the deposition of the bed of rock in which such an example occurs, and that which overlies it, might be calculated from careful ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... she had been a fool to attempt to fill the place of mother to these two modern young things. Their own ideas were fully made up about all questions that seemed vital to her. She had been a fossil in a back-country place all her life, and of course they felt she did not know. Well, of course she did not know much about modern society and its ways, save to dread it, and to doubt it, and to wish to keep them away from it. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... seafaring and fishing people is proved by the large number of words of oceanic origin which still characterize their home-speech, while according to the authority above mentioned the "Chandrakant" which they recognize is not the sweating crystal of Northern India and ancient Sanskrit lore, but a fossil coral found upon the Makran coast. Forty years ago Rao Saheb V. N. Mandlik remarked that "the ancestors of the tribe probably came by ships either from some other port in India or from the opposite coast of Africa;" and in ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... In 1831, a year prior to his death, he was appointed a Peer of France. Among the numerous works by which Cuvier greatly expanded the study of natural history may be mentioned as foremost "Researches into Fossil Bones," "Discourse of the Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe," "A Course of Comparative Anatomy," "Natural History of Fishes," and his great work, "The Animal Kingdom," with its subdivisions into the four great classes—vertebrates, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... was rather a disappointment, as we had fancied there was something more to be seen than a mere cave. A heap of reddish earth in one corner attracted Sumichrast's attention, who examined it to see if he could discover some fossil bones. Standing all together, we must have formed, by the smoky light of our odoriferous torches, rather a fantastic-looking group. More than half an hour elapsed without discovering any results from ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... prepared by treating with sulphuric acid, and afterwards with ammonia, the hydrocarbon oil containing sulphur obtained by the dry distillation of the fossil remains of fish and sea-animals, which form a bituminous mineral deposit in Germany. This product has been admixed with soap for many years, the quantity generally used being about 5 per cent.; the resultant ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... pollution resulting in acid rain in both the US and Canada; the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; very limited natural fresh water resources in much of the western part of the country require careful management; desertification natural hazards: tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquake activity around Pacific Basin; ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... nineteen last August. I know it, because the day he was born I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse! It will ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... obtained some few specimens of fossil shells from the shingly beds of the Khyber Pass. They seem to be a Spirifer with a very square base, quite different from the common species of the Bolan Pass, which is like a large cockle, and of which I have one beautiful specimen. How I regret not seeing Bukkur, for with a few days' leisure, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... bank of the Lucalla and right bank of the Coanza, and received true Portuguese hospitality from Senhor Lubata. The town has more than a thousand inhabitants; the district has 28,063, with only 315 slaves. It stands on a mound of calcareous tufa, containing great numbers of fossil shells, the most recent of which resemble those found in the marly tufa close to the coast. The fort stands on the south side of the town, on a high perpendicular bank overhanging the Coanza. This river ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... spire; folio; lithophyll (fossil leaf). Associated words: foliar, foliferous, foliaceous, foliation, defoliate, defoliation, frond, bract, frondation, frondesce, frondescence, verticil, whorl, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... we approach it with curiously-mingled emotions—mingled, because although a fragment, it is so vast, and in parts so finished, and because it may be regarded as at once an early production of his genius, and its latest legacy to the world. It seems a large fossil relic—imperfect and magnificent—newly dug up, and with the fresh earth and the old dim subsoil meeting and mingling ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the scaur which runs out from Colburn Nab, at the mouth of the beck, a one can examine masses of recently fallen rocks, the new faces of which are almost invariably covered with ammonites or clusters of fossil bivalves. The only hindrance to a close examination of these new falls from the cliffs is the serious danger of another fall occurring at the same spot. The fisher-folk are very kind in pointing out this peril to ardent geologists and ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... the passage of light through the universe. The earth was once a hotter orb, passing successively from a vaporous to a fluid, and then a solid state. The northern climes were once torrid zones, from the evidence of the fossil remains and from coals, which are masses of tropical trees. Such were the speculations in which ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... Shell Cabinet arranged according to the Modern System: With a detailed Account of the Animals, and a complete Descriptive List of the Families and Genera of Recent and Fossil Shells. Second Edition, improved; with 405 Woodcuts. ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... our own world. Much of the surface of the earth is clothed in a light vestment of life, which, back in geologic time, seems to have more completely enveloped it than at present, as both the arctic and the antarctic regions bear evidence in their coal-beds and other fossil remains ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... first looked upon the lake from near the mouth of the Ogden River, in 1833. His name has been given to a great fossil lake, whose shore line may now be seen throughout the neighbouring valleys, and of which the Great Salt Lake is ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... there is a class of ancient marbles in Rome of much more recent geological origin—belonging indeed to the Miocene epoch—which are called Lumachella, from the Italian word signifying snail, on account of the presence in all the species of fossil shells. They vary in colour from the palest straw to the deepest purple. Some of them are exceedingly beautiful and valuable, and they are nearly all more or less rare, being found chiefly in small fragments of ancient pavements. Their substance is formed of the shells ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... with dark green. Of the ancient city one could see the sunburnt tower of the Capitol, the black cypresses of the Palatine, and the ruins of the palace of Septimius Severus, suggesting the white osseous carcase of some fossil monster, left there by a flood. In front, was enthroned the modern city with the long, renovated buildings of the Quirinal, whose yellow walls stood forth with wondrous crudity amidst the vigorous crests of the garden trees. And to right and left on the Viminal, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the day of the very earliest races to which history points us. These fragments have sometimes been preserved in the most fortuitous manner, and afford unique illustrations of the remarkable accidents to which man is occasionally indebted for his knowledge. The fossil man of Denyse, whatever his age may have been, has been preserved for our inspection by becoming overwhelmed in a volcanic eruption. The skeleton of Mentone was found by Riviere while engaged in a systematic search among French ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... concerning this little-known country. It was he, indeed, who gave the earliest authentic account of "geysers," those springs of warm water which occasionally reach to such great heights, and he also supplied curious details of the existence of fossil wood, which prove that at an early geological period, Iceland, now entirely devoid of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... one point which the reader may be surprised to see omitted. It is, that if these slow changes were always going on, why is not the present world full of, and the fossil-bearing rocks also abounding in, intermediate forms, creatures which are on their way to being something else? But there are reasons to be given on this ground which make the subject a less definite one for treatment. It is said, for example, that in the ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... supposed that all varieties or incipient species necessarily attain the rank of species. They may whilst in this incipient state become extinct, or they may endure as varieties for very long periods, as has been shown to be the case by Mr. Wollaston with the varieties of certain fossil land-shells in Madeira. If a variety were to flourish so as to exceed in numbers the parent species, it would then rank as the species, and the species as the variety; or it might come to supplant and exterminate ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... necessary to fill up the days. There is not even the distraction of neighbours and friends from the environs; in this part of the country everyone remains at home and occupies him self with his oxen and his land. One would become a fossil here in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... is the word. And economy!" he cried. "That is the true American spirit! That is what appeals to the man who is not a fossil!" This was a delicate compliment to Mr. Gratz, but Mr. Gratz was so used to receiving compliments when Mr. Smalley was talking to him that he did not blush with pleasure. He merely got red in the face. "Think of the advantage of saving one letter in every word that is written in every ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had remarked, disparagingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the tusks sometimes—but evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough to save ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... around the region of the Magdalena River of late. You have a hunch that we may just be unlucky enough to run across some of those ragged chaps, who want to upset the present government of Colombia, and seat some old ex-president fossil ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... pages 170-71. "The cretaceous birds of America all appear to be aquatic, and comprise some eight or a dozen genera, and many species. Professor Marsh and others have found in Kansas a large number of most interesting fossil birds, one of them, a gigantic loon-like creature, six feet in length from beak to toe, taken from the yellow chalk of the Smoky Hill River region and from calcareous shale near Fort ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... sense would take to Miss Mariner. If I told you how near I came to spilling the sauce-boat accidentally over that old fossil's head, you'd be surprised, Ellen. She just sat there brooding like an old eagle. If you ask my opinion, Miss Mariner's a long sight too good for ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Fossil history has no doubt still some obscure passages; and these have been partially adverted to. Fuci, the earliest vegetable fossils as yet detected, are not, it has been remarked, the lowest forms of aquatic vegetation; neither are the plants of the coal-measures the ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... passion-flowers. That's only one thing. Every time we go out to ride she gathers up from the wayside such a load of small rocks as makes the buggy-springs ache. We found a smooth round stone, yesterday, that looks so much like my head she declares it must be a fossil, and is bound to have it set over the front door instead of a monogram. We follow your lead in another direction; if we can't rise in the world without going up stairs for it, we'll try to cultivate ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... how much that's worth," the girl broke off, with one of her flashes of shrewdness. "And besides, it isn't likely that a poor old fossil like Mme. Dolle could get anybody to listen to her now, even if she really thought I had talent. But she might introduce me to people; or at least give me a few tips. If I could manage to earn enough to pay for lessons I'd go straight to some of the big people and work ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... time the discovery of the first known (?) fossil monkey, but its tail was missing. "Depend upon it, Daniel O'Conell's got hold of it!" said 'Adam' briskly.[15] Yule was very happy with Mr. Hamilton and his kind wife, but on his tutor's removal to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a fossil, you see, and I'm called Fossell: and so he sends it to me. He has made a good deal of fun out of my name before now, in his humorous way. Not that I mind, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... evidence furnished by fossil remains is by all odds the strongest evidence we have in ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... believe that some of them possess a knowledge of the proper prayer to lay the monster. It is strange to find fables similar to those of the more northern nations even in the heart of Africa. Can they be the vestiges of traditions of animals which no longer exist? The fossil bones which lie in the calcareous tufa of this region will yet, we ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... speciality—folklore, occultism, all that flummery. If you knocked at his door with the original Sleeping Beauty on your arm he'd only fuss round her with cushions and hope that she'd had a good night. Found a seed once—chipped it out of an old fossil, and grew it in a pot in his study. About the most dilapidated weed you ever saw. Talked about it as if he had re-discovered the Elixir of Life. Even if he didn't say anything in actually so many words, ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... but it was rather for the enjoyment of a freer air than for any beauty of prospect, that we took our daily climb. These hills afford neither shrubs nor flowers, but furnish the finest specimens of millepore in the world; and the water courses are full of fossil productions. ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... museums, we stand in awe and wonder before the fossil skeleton of the Megatherium, and the savants struggle to unveil its past, while the equally great and marvelous Rhinoceros indicus is being rushed into oblivion. We marvel at the fossil shell of the gigantic turtle called Collosochelys atlas, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... mausoleums. In every land he made collections of its greatest curiosities in art, literature, science, natural history, and politics. A sphinx, an obelisk, a winged bull from Nineveh, stuffed porcupines, live monkeys, fossil remains, a pinchbeck president of the United States, and many rare specimens even more curious, did he collect, and after years of wandering, by land and by sea, carry with him to his native village. There he converted an old barn ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... looked for a department of Fish, with your lordship's name at the head of it; but I did not find it. It would be a fine department. It would divide itself naturally into three classes—living fish, fossil fish, and fish ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... is that long line which fringes the Somali coast from Tajurrah to Ras Jerd Hafun (Cape Guardafui). In the portion visited by Lieutenant Speke it is composed principally of limestones, some white, others brownish, and full of fossil shells. The seaward face is a gradual slope, yet as usual more abrupt than the landward side, especially in the upper regions. Steep irregular ravines divide the several masses of hill. The range was thinly covered with Acacia scrub in the lower folds. The upper portion was thickly clad ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... centuries ago, men began to find fossil remains of animals in the rocks, a severe shock was given to the prevailing doctrine of the recent creation of the earth. The adherents of the old theology made strenuous efforts to explain away this unwelcome circumstance. The shells found had been dropped by ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... little touch of art throws a gleam of inner light on the struggle towards originality and truth which characterized the Greek principles of beauty and fitness in literature and art, in direct contrast to that which was always turning back to those fossil forms which were only respectable on account of their age and their mystery, but of which the tradition and ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... promptly now to complete final action on this vital energy legislation. Our Nation will then have a major conservation effort, important initiatives to develop solar power, realistic pricing based on the true value of oil, strong incentives for the production of coal and other fossil fuels in the United States, and our Nation's most massive peacetime investment in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of the Duchess' we are presented with a generous soul-life, as exhibited by the sweet, glad Duchess, linked with fossil conventionalism and mediaevalsim, and an inherited authority which brooks no submissiveness, as exhibited by the Duke, her husband, "out of whose veins ceremony and pride have driven the blood, leaving him but a fumigated ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Nevertheless, such is the fortunate recuperative faculty of boyhood that day after day I would forget the horrors of that hour, and be happy in climbing over the decayed chalk acclivities of Whitby, picking up the fossil shells that nestle there. Yonder on my table, as I write, lies a coiled ammonite found there; it had been there ten thousand years or ages before I detached it from its bed, and, for aught I know, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... solution, which for a time seemed satisfactory, assumed several successive creations and destructions of the world to have taken place in the interval between the first and second verses of Genesis. To these all the fossil remains were ascribed, while the present state of things was supposed to be the result of the operations recorded in the remainder of the chapter. But as geological knowledge advanced, it soon became clear ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... degree; knew their private and public history, could give anecdotes of each, and enumerate their various performances. Opera girls and their keepers, musicians and musical dilletanti, connoiseurs and their jackalls, (picture dealers and auctioneers) collectors, shell fossil and fiddle fanciers, in short every class of idlers that I have since found swarming in this miscellaneous town ranked ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the forms of Nature. If, from the mastodon and the fossil mammoth, to which Buffon attributes five or six times the bulk and size of the elephant, we descend to those animalculae, of which Leuwenhoek estimates that a thousand millions of them would not occupy the place of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... a fossil dramatic critic sleeping in an arm-chair before the fire. At dinner-time he woke ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... he cried; and he looked about the place, up and down, but to all appearances, he was in a cul de sac, whose walls were dotted with the fossil stems of pentacrinites, over which stalagmitic petrifaction had gradually formed, looking as if dirty water had run over the walls in places, and hardened in the course of ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... relics by which the geologist tries to regain the history of the past races and families of the fauna and flora of the ancient world. Surely, as a mere matter of scientific pursuit, the ancient or fossil states of man should—for man himself—have attractions as great, at least, as the ancient or fossil states of plants and animals; and the old Celt, or Pict, or Saxon, be as interesting a study as ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... theory did not at first command universal assent even among those naturalists whose lives had been devoted with the greatest success to the study of organisms. Take, for instance, that great naturalist, Professor Owen, by whose labours vast extension has been given to our knowledge of the fossil animals which dwelt on the earth in past ages. Now, though Owens researches were intimately connected with the great labours of Darwin, and afforded the latter material for his epoch-making generalization, yet Owen deliberately refused to accept the new doctrines. Like Tycho, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... similar plates in the lower jaw correspond to the upper, their undulated surfaces fitting exactly to those of the opposite teeth. There are also two sharp-edged front teeth, which are placed in the front of the mouth in the upper jaw; but these have not been recognised in the fossil specimens. The living Ceratodus feeds on vegetable matters, which are taken up or tom off from plants by the sharp front teeth, and then partially crushed between the undulated surfaces of the back teeth (Guenther); and there need be little doubt but that the Triassic ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... down is the parish church, with a long flight of steps leading up to it from the harbor along which the people go, and when there is a funeral the coffin has to be slung in order to be carried up the steps. Whitby is famous for its jet, which is worked into numerous ornaments: this is a variety of fossil wood, capable of being cut and taking a high polish. It is also celebrated for its production of iron-ore, which indeed is a product of all this part of Yorkshire; while at night, along the valley of the Tees, not far north of Whitby, the blaze of the myriads of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... himself the author of Fossil Chess adds "In the same work may be found some account of the paintings on the tombs at Beni Hassan, presumably the oldest in Egypt, dating from the time of Osirtasen I, twenty centuries before the Christian era, and eight hundred years anterior to the reign ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... extinct, as now seems very probable, Lowell's masterly portrait of him will remain, and future generations can reconstruct him from it, as Agassiz reconstructed an extinct species of mammal from fossil bones. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... of the earth turned up; a workman's tin mug stuck and roasted and hardened into what looks like solid rock—a fossil, as though it had ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... owns twenty-four coins from Carteia, whereas Florez (Medallas, Madrid, 1773) shows a total of only thirty-three. Amongst his antiquities there is a charming statuette of Minerva, a bronze miniature admirably finished. He has collected the rock fauna, especially the molluscs, fossil and modern. He is preparing an album of the Flora Calpensis. His birds' nests were lately sold to an Englishman. All these objects, of immense local interest, were offered by him at the lowest possible rate to the Military Library, but who is there ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... whether she retained recollection enough of her own country to be entertained with "that strange caricature, Castle Rack Rent." Contemporary judgments such as these (not more extravagant than Horace Walpole's) are to the historian of literature what fossil remains ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of evolution; in later years, however, his researches upon fossil crocodilians led him to consider the possibility that the living species were descended from the antediluvian. For the factors of the transformation he refers to Lamarck's hypotheses.[98] In a memoir of 1828,[99] dealing with the possible genetic relation of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... settled once more on his little, square face and the talk ceased. But the fight was on. Day after day, week after week, he had me guessing—through all the living quadrupeds—through all the fossil forms—through many that the Lord did not make, but might have made, had Adam only known enough Greek and Latin to give them names. Gently, persistently, he kept me guessing as the far-off day ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... to gather some roses and jessamine for the Princess, and to collect some of the curious fossil echini, which he believed to be olives turned to stone by the Prophet Elijah, as a punishment to a churlish peasant who refused him a meal. He thought that such treasures would be a welcome addition to the store he was accumulating ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the former Soviet republics in territory, excluding Russia, possesses enormous fossil fuel reserves and plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals. It also has a large agricultural sector featuring livestock and grain. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources and also on a growing machine-building ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... well-developed uterus containing a full-sized foetus, and yet that the arch of the pelvis should be too small to allow the foetus to pass. And were the only mammal having a very small pelvic arch, a fossil one, it would have been inferred, on the Cuvierian method, that the foetus must have been born in a rudimentary state; and that the uterus must have been proportionally small. But there happens to be an extant mammal having an undeveloped pelvis—the mole—which presents us with a fact that saves ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... out of a pill-box. "So far as I am a judge this human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the creature. You will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil specimen, but recent. What do you ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I daresay, above twenty minutes contemplating this singular crystal fossil of a ship, and considering whether I should go down to her and ransack her for whatever might answer my turn. But she looked so darkly secret under her white garb, and there was something so terrible in the aspect of the motionless ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... moment the possible stumbling-block, Henry Lord, Ph.D., came in and greeted her civilly. His manner was never genial, for there was neither love in his heart nor warm blood in his veins; but he was courteous, for he was an educated fossil, of good birth and up-bringing. He had been dissecting specimens in his workroom, and he looked capable of dismembering Mother Carey; but bless your heart, she had weapons in her unseen armory that were capable of bringing confusion to his paltry apparatus!—among others a ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... adjustment, a constantly growing experience. By the study of the Christian revelation it is always finding new meanings in old truths, new modes of application of familiar practices. This simply means that the Christian is alive and not a fossil. It means that his relation to our Lord is such that it opens to him inexhaustible depths of experience. It is easy to see this in the concrete by taking up the life of almost any saint. It is easy to trace the growth of S. John from the young fisherman, fiery, impatient, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... Living and Fossil, containing Descriptions of every species, British and Foreign, the methods of procuring and viewing them, &c., illustrated by numerous Engravings. By ANDREW ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... send a funny book to an old fossil of a reviewer with no sense of humour?" I said, testily and waited for the next post. Well, it came; it brought three ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... modestly—like a violet, not like some of these blatant tropical flowers. He had been in the house for six weeks, and had not as yet attempted to slap him on the back, or address him as "old boy," or try to make him feel a superannuated fossil. He had nothing of the exasperating young man's chatter. He was good-tempered, had not much to say for himself, was not clever by any means, thank goodness—wrote my friend. It appeared, however, that Jim was clever enough to be quietly appreciative of his wit, while, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... somewhat like the young Pauropus, which combines in a remarkable degree the characters of the myriopods and the degraded wingless insects, such as the Smynthurus, Podura, etc. Some such forms may have been introduced late in the Silurian period, for the interesting discoveries of fossil insects in the Devonian of New Brunswick, by Messrs. Hartt and Scudder, and those discovered by Messrs. Meek and Worthen in the lower part of the Coal Measures at Morris, Illinois, and described by Mr. Scudder, reveal carboniferous myriopods (two species of Euphorberia) more ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... this neighborhood abounds in remains of the antediluvian world: they are found not only in considerable quantity, but in great perfection. In the course of last year; a fossil crocodile was dug up at Allemagne, a village about a mile distant, imbedded in blue lias. Other specimens of the same genus, comprising, as it appears, two species, both of them distinct from any that are known in a living state, had previously ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... had become so accustomed to them before he started upon his manuscript that he rather slighted them. As I stood there beneath that tree—a tree which should have been part of a coal-bed countless ages since—and looked out across a sea teeming with frightful life—life which should have been fossil before God conceived of Adam—I would not have given a minim of stale beer for my chances of ever seeing my friends or the outside world again; yet then and there I swore to fight my way as far through this hideous land as circumstances would permit. I had plenty ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... San Fiorenzo and the tower of Farinole, the tertiary deposits are seen in successive layers forming beds which in some places are in the aggregate from 400 to 500 feet thick, and the calcareous beds contain great quantities of fossil remains of marine animals of low organisation, such as sea-urchins, pectens, and other shells; forming a compact mass, of which the greater part of the formation consists. The singular phenomenon of the presence ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... come? Have they been blown on to the lake, or left behind by man? or are they fossil trees, integral parts of the vegetable stratum below which is continually rolling upward? or are they of both kinds? I do not know. Only this is certain, as Messrs. Wall and Sawkins have pointed out, that not only 'the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... pale, and there was a curious look about her whole figure. It seemed as if shrinking from something, twisting itself rigidly, as a fossil tree might shrink in a wind that could ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... into it. Olga, the irrepressible man-hunter, in love with a "fossilized Galahad." That was ironically amusing, extraordinary, if true, a punishment which fitted her crime, and something of a grim joke on the man-hunter as well as the fossil. Markham tried to view the matter with unconcern, man-like, recalling the many times that Olga's name had been coupled with those of various distinguished foreigners and the frequent reports of her engagement, always denied and forgotten. And yet she worried him. For a brief moment she had ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... summer, but we'll promise to do better. We'll dump the paste pot in the fire, throw the old shears out of the window and get out a regular screamer of a Democrat some week; a paper with red ink on it and big headlines and a real piece of news in it. We will when this gabby old fossil does his part. When he pays his six years' subscription, we'll write two columns about it. And even then no ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... phosphatic nodules which have been found in great abundance in the greensand formation, in the crag of the eastern counties, and in the chalk formation of the southern counties. These coprolites are rounded nodules, and are composed of the fossil excrements and remains of ancient animals. They are found in large quantities in Cambridgeshire, and were discovered by Dr Buckland many years ago. The history of their discovery is not a little curious. The manurial properties of road-scrapings ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... information respecting the dodo was obtained, and some authors have gone so far as to pretend that it never existed; but amongst a great mass of satisfactory evidence in favour of the recent existence of this species, we may mention that an assemblage of fossil bones were recently discovered, under a bed of lava, in the Isle of France, and sent to the Paris museum by M. Desjardins. They almost all belonged to a large living species of land-tortoise, called Testudu Indica, but amongst them were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... know climate has an immense effect upon birth. A fine day perks a woman—gives her heart for her business. Good weather is as necessary to a confinement as it is to a washing day. Not bad—that last remark of mine—for a professional fossil, eh?" ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... large leathern buckets, by mule power, attached to a windlass. Such portions as were deemed sufficiently rich were at once conveyed to the smelting furnace, where the pure ore was melted down and extracted from the virgin fossil. If of inferior quality, it was submitted to the ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... satisfying, dear?" He took an eager step forward. "Am I too much of a fossil?" He paused and then added with a note of hurt. "I have felt young, since I've been ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... with people in the mass, David, and no one living can do it better. I am like most women, I think: I deal with the individual. That is all the difference. When do the Annerses go out to the fossil-beds?" ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... its best, is somewhat rude. The country possesses no marble, and has not even any stone of a fine grain. The cretaceous limestone, which is the principal geological formation, is for the most part so pierced with small holes and so thickly sown with fossil shells as to be quite unsuited for the chisel; and even the better blocks, which the native sculptors were careful to choose, are not free from these defects, and in no case offer a grain that is satisfactory. To meet these difficulties, the Phoenician sculptor occasionally imported his blocks ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... the modern copal varnishes consists principally of linseed oil with some turpentine. Their base is Copal, a fossil, resinous substance of vegetable origin. The gums of which they are made have been chemically altered by long exposure in the earth. Other gums, as mastic, dammar, sandarac, and even resin are sometimes mixed with copal to cheapen the product or to cause ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... ago they inhabited our northern states. Their family has come down practically unchanged from the steaming days of the Carboniferous period, when ferns grew one hundred feet high, and thronged with other rank tropical growths in matted masses to form the coal measures. The fossil remains of cycads in the rocks of that period prove that they once flourished in the tropic swamps where now are the hills of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... for believing that the appearance of fossil horses with a diminishing number of toes is caused by the creation at separate periods of a four-, a three-, a two-, and a one-toed horse are, he says, "personal, philosophical, historical," and he opposes them with the utmost apparent sincerity to Huxley's assertion that ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Moorish and Syrian slave-boys as they played knuckle-bones on the beach, his enjoyment of the cool breeze which swept through his villa even in summer or of the cool plash of water from the fountain in the peristyle, his curiosity about the big fossil bones dug up in the island which he sent to Rome to be placed in the galleries of his house on the Palatine, his fun in quizzing the pedants who followed him by Greek verses of his own making. But in the midst of his idleness the indefatigable energy which marked the man was ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... product of a tree growing in the East Indies; it is the basis of a very fine white varnish. Copal is a term applied to oleo-resins soluble in turpentine, and used almost universally as varnishes. They come from the tropical regions of South America, Africa, and from the East Indies. Kauri is the fossil gum of a cone-bearing tree dug from the ground in northern New Zealand. Amber is the fossil gum of extinct cone-bearing trees found mainly along the Baltic coast of Prussia. It is used chiefly for the mouth-pieces of tobacco-pipes and cigar-holders; the inferior product is made ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... by source This entry indicates the percentage share of annual electricity production of each energy source. These are fossil fuel, hydro, nuclear, and other (solar, geothermal, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... particularly interested in the study of minerals and different species of rock, he often endeavored to explain to me the various forms of strata which were found below the earth; but my comprehension could not take it in. He was continually poring over fossil remains, and digging in the garden for something curious. He one day ran in with his apron full of stones and other rubbish, and holding up in triumph an object of various hues, through which a slight blue shade was distinctly visible, he called out eagerly: "See, mother! I have really found some ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... strong. A specimen made of the bone of a fossil elephant is possessed by Senor A. Chavero, of Mexico. See Tezozomoc, Cronica Mexicana, cap. 55, and the note of Orozco y Berra to that passage in the Mexican edition. Also Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva Espana, Lib. VIII, cap. 20, who likewise describes most of the ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... numismatics revives from amid the fossil [Page: 100] sciences. For from this to our own common coinage, or notably to that of France, America, Switzerland, etc., the transition is easy, and still better to that of the noblest civic past, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... are always interesting as the means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her lights, an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking of composition. Fig. 5. is a rough sketch of a fossil sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in the light; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... at last.' But alas and alack a day! Prosey the second chimes in, and works away, and hems and haws, and hawks up some old scraps of schoolboy Latin and Greek, which are all Hebrew to you, honest man, until at length he finishes off by some solemn twaddle about fossil turnips and vitrified brickbats; and thus concludes Fozy No. 2. Oh, shade of Edie Ochiltree! that we should stand in the taunt of such umnerciful spendthrifts of our time on earth! Besides, the devil of it is, that whatever may be said of the flippant palaverers, the heavy bores are ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... are found in shallow mines in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, and also as pebbles in the river beds. They are the fossil remains of animals. After being dug from the mines the rock is kiln dried and then ground to a very fine powder called "floats" which is used on the soil. The phosphoric acid in the floats is insoluble ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... mind the lecturer is pictured as an old fossil to whom he has to listen attentively for an hour without understanding a word of his learned discourse. The funereal blackboard, the austere diagrams, the severe pointer and the chilly glass of water, a professor something like one ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... outlines that we reproduce on our celestial maps are the fossil remains of a luxuriant mythological vegetation, and besides our classic sphere the ancients knew another, the "barbarian" sphere, peopled with a world of fantastic persons and animals. These sidereal monsters, to whom powerful qualities ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... no moss, young man, an' not become a fossil like some of the fellers in big cities, but I git a heap of rubbin' with me rollin', an' ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... of a carp, its claws those of an eagle, the soles of its feet those of a tiger, its ears those of an ox;" but some have no ears, the organ of hearing being said to be in the horns, or the creature "hears through its horns." These various properties are supposed to indicate the "fossil remnants of primitive worship of many animals." The small dragon is like the silk caterpillar. The large dragon fills the Heaven and the earth. Before the dragon, sometimes suspended from his neck, is a pearl. This represents the sun. There are azure, scaly, horned, hornless, winged, etc., ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... I had heard that Sir James Hall had taken up the subject, but I did not care about it; I am certain that at that time I had never heard the word Geology. I think it was now, on going with Somerville to see the Edinburgh Museum, that I recognised the fossil plants I had seen in the coal limestone on the sands at the Links of Burntisland. Ultimately Geology became a favourite pursuit of ours, but then minerals were the objects of our joint study. Mineralogy had been much cultivated on the Continent by this time, especially in Germany. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... something to wean our segundo from that old man," said Fox Quarternight, as he rode up and overtook me, "he's liable to quit the herd and follow that old fossil back to Tennessee or some other port. Just look at the two now, will you? Old Joe's putting on as much dog as though he was asking the Colonel for his daughter. Between me and you and the gatepost, Quirk, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... from the men's prison, and a grating from the women's quarters, let into the wall; in the Old Market stands an ancient fire engine and the stocks, removed here from the church. Near by is the "Old Fossil Shop" devoted to the sale of fossils and fish, as quaint a combination of trades as one could imagine. The old houses around the Buddle are of dark and mysterious aspect. This part of the town has always had a romantic air, here and there slightly flavoured ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... himself to see Daisy's face at this statement, though outwardly he kept perfectly grave. Daisy's own simple orbs were so full and intent. She looked from him to the fossil. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward. So, too, with the great families of mammals, as we know from fossil remains. From the earliest geological times the vast interior of Asia has been the great mother of the world, the source from which the most important families of ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... their ancestors! That is an irrational interference with the liberty of the players which hardly anybody nowadays ventures to defend in principle, and which is only upheld in some half-hearted way (save in the case of that fossil anachronism, the Duke of Argyll) by supposed arguments of convenience. It won't last long now; there is talk in the committee of "mending or ending it." It shows the long-suffering nature of the poor blind players at this compulsory game of national ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence." The Hindus dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... time. Coarse and plain, it is an index to a chapter of life. In the occupations of a busy existence we forget how much we owe to the sweet emotional nature which, by mere chance association, retains the dearer part of the past fixed in memory, just as the graceful volutes of a fossil shell are preserved in the coarse matrix of a stony paste. In this way the nodule connects itself with my emotional life, and recalls the incidents ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Colonization Society hopeless at the North. It dares never show its face before the people, and only lingers in some few nooks of sectarian pride, so secluded from the influence of present ideas as to be almost fossil in their character. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... made on the coast of Ecuador in 1860, by James S. Wilson, Esq. At various points along this coast he found "ancient or fossil pottery, vessels, images," and other manufactured articles, all finely wrought. Some of these articles were made of gold. The most remarkable fact connected with them is that they were taken from "a stratum of ancient ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... industry makes use. Thus in the lowest layers of the coal ground appears the anthracite, which, being almost destitute of volatile matter, contains the greatest quantity of carbon. In the higher beds are found, on the contrary, lignite and fossil wood, substances in which the quantity of carbon is infinitely less. Between these two beds, according to the degree of pressure to which they have been subjected, are found veins of graphite and rich or poor coal. It may be asserted that it ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... the bookshelf, where he looked to see the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured to discover a title like "Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the British Isles." It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarily read, for instance, "Contributions to the Natural History of the United States," would split his skull when his back was turned. Yet ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... begins to thaw, new mines or deposits of fossil ivory—a perfect treasure of mammoths' tusks—are discovered in the marsh-lands of Eastern Siberia. There are no mammoths now—unless we call elephants by that name; yet their remains have been found upon both continents. In the year 1799, the perfect ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... season flesh, fish, butter, &c., and other things that are to be kept. It is distinguished, with reference to the general sources from which it is most plentifully derived, into three different sorts, namely, fossil, or rock salt; sea, or marine salt; and spring salt, or that drawn from briny springs ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... should come to Brisbane and take a more important position. It was when this patronage was declined that the Premier (dropping for a moment into that bushman's jargon which came naturally to him) said, irritably, that Louis Bachelor was a "old fossil who didn't know when he'd got his dover in the dough," which, being interpreted into the slang of the old world, means, his knife into the official loaf. But the fossil went on as before, known by name to the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... meet with an entire specimen; nor could I ever find in books any engraving from a perfect one. In the superb museum at Leicester House, permission was given me to examine for this article; and, though I was disappointed as to the fossil, I was highly gratified with the sight of several of the shells themselves in high preservation. This bivalve is only known to inhabit the Indian Ocean, where it fixes itself to a zoophyte, known by the name Gorgonia. The curious foldings of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... a prosperous Western-style capitalist economy, with a per capita GNP comparable to levels in industrialized West European countries. Rich in natural resources, Australia is a major exporter of agricultural products, minerals, metals, and fossil fuels. Of the top 25 exports, 21 are primary products, so that, as happened during 1983-84, a downturn in world commodity prices can have a big impact on the economy. The government is pushing for increased exports of manufactured goods but competition in international ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... tarry while the Cross was in danger and the Infidel lived. He did not know that it was all finished and over hundreds of years ago, a page of history upon which many pages were turned, and which lay as unalterable as the fate of some warm swift creature of early Eocene days over whose fossil today the strata ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... soon as the will is entirely extinct, the being ceases to live; or it is no longer an animal. It falls and reverts altogether to the element of matter. The processes of decomposition and incorporation are longer, or shorter, according to circumstances; and these fossil remains of which your writers say so much, are merely cases that have met with accidental obstacles to their final decomposition. As respects our two species, a very cursory examination of their qualities ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been written on the morrow of Salamis, and the Odes of Pindar dedicated to George the Fourth. The literary historian must rove in other hunting grounds. He is the geologist of literature, whose study lies among the buried strata of forgotten generations, among the fossil remnants of the past. The great men with whom he must deal are the great men who are no longer great—mammoths and ichthyosauri kindly preserved to us, among the siftings of so many epochs, by the impartial benignity of Time. It is for him to unravel the jokes of Erasmus, and to be at home among ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the deposits of salt, petroleum, and lignite, and in association with the second is found the substance known as ozokerit or fossil wax. This is a brownish-yellow translucent crystalline hydrocarbon, which softens with the warmth of the hand, and burns with a bright light. It has never been industrially applied, excepting in small quantities by the peasantry, who themselves fabricate rude candles ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... which are besides to some extent supplied by embryology and geology, and to a farther extent accounted for by the meagreness of the geological record. Natural selection for survival necessarily implies extinction of all that are not selected to survive, so that fossil remains are now the only procurable evidence that any of these latter that have long been extinct ever existed. But very many organic beings are incapable of being preserved in a fossil condition, while of those ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... myself saying over and over. I must have said other things before, but I don't remember them. "You can't! it is impossible. You! marry an old fossil like me! Oh, Frances, are you sure? Are ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... flows almost to his waist, and whose face is furrowed by a thousand storms; Anthony Jenkinson by name, the great Asiatic traveller, who is discoursing to the Christ-church virtuoso of reindeer sledges and Siberian steppes, and of the fossil ivory, plain proof of Noah's flood, which the Tungoos dig from the ice-cliffs of the Arctic sea. Next to him is Christopher Carlile, Walsingham's son-in-law (as Sidney also is now), a valiant captain, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... passes easily into another by slight deviations of pronunciation, resulting from trivial differences in National and Individual condition and culture; like the Flesh of the animal, which readily decays from the Bony Skeleton, while the last remains preserved for ages as a fossil. The Vowel-Sounds so readily lose their identity, that they are of slight importance to the Etymologist or Comparative Philologist, who is, in fact, dealing in the Paleontology ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Melbourne to Wood Bay, and examine the neighbourhood geologically and geographically. The sledge team found some remarkable ice structures and new and interesting glaciers. They had, a crop of small adventures, and found sandstone rock containing fossil wood and many other excellent fossils, garnets, etc., besides which Campbell did good work surveying. A new glacier was named after Priestley and another ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the central tables of the saloon. To explain the presence of coral in the midst of a zoological collection it is necessary to remind the visitor that this beautiful substance, which is chiefly a deposit of carbonate of lime, is also the fossil remains of that animal known to zoologists as the polypus. These polypi put forth buds, which remain attached to the parental polypus, and generate other buds; and in this way countless polypi, linked together, yet maintaining a separate and ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... whose influence one gazes with a certain poignant tenderness at the worn face of the moon; that little "fossil world'' (the child of our mother earth, too) bears such terrible scars of its brief convulsive life that a sense of pity is awakened by the sight. The moon is the wonder-land of the telescope. Those towering ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... vicinity. There were huge fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the work of man; while, half-way down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Fossil geology occupied much of the time and attention of the great philosopher and statesman, Jefferson, and he was rewarded by the discovery of the megatherium. The mastodon, exhumed in 1801, from the marl pits of New York, by Charles Wilson Peale, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... recognition. Cuvier, the greatest ichthyologist of his time, to whom the first volume was dedicated, received him as a pupil, and gave to him all the material that he had been collecting during fifteen years for a contemplated work on Fossil Fishes. In Paris Agassiz also won the friendship of Humboldt, who, learning that he stood in need of money, presented him with so generous a sum as to enable the ambitious young naturalist to work with a free ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner |
