"Silex" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not much unlike in appearance, and two of larger size. Hand them to the learned Pundit, Chemistry, who tells us how combustion goes on in the lungs, and plants are fed with phosphorus and carbon, and the alkalies and silex. Let her decompose them, analyze them, torture them in all the ways she knows. The net result of each is a little sugar, a little fibrin, a little water—carbon, potassium, sodium, and the like—one ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... there is a rush in Holland which contains much more silex than the wheat-straw, and it is employed by the Dutch to polish wood and brass, on that very account. We know but little yet, but we do know that mineral substances are found in the composition of most living animals, if not ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... gentle fall to the road, which, in a smaller degree, ought to be conferred artificially on all roads, in order that they might drain lengthways, and that the argillaceous earth might be carried off in solution, and only the hard bed of silex remain behind. This beautiful piece of road is a fine exemplification of that principle; but an elevation of two degrees, or nearly one yard in thirty, would be sufficient for the purpose; and, if the rise and fall in flat roads were ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... as he thought fit, did murder and mischief, and what he list himself." This duke hath too many followers in our days: say what you can, dehort, exhort, persuade to the contrary, they are no more moved,—quam si dura, silex aut stet Marpesia cautes, than so many stocks, and stones; tell them of heaven and hell, 'tis to no purpose, laterem lavas, they answer as Ataliba that Indian prince did friar Vincent, [6637]"when he brought him a book, and told him all the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the sun's heat-rays, concentrated by a lens"— she shivered, and I magnanimously withheld my hand. "If this hypothesis should prove untenable," I continued gently, "we may assume spontaneous ignition, produced by chemical combination. Nor are we confined to this supposition. Silex is an element which enters largely into the composition of wheaten straw; and it is worthy of remark that, in most cases where fire is purposely generated by the agency of thermo-dynamics, some form ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... reached the suburbs of the city, Selkirk sees before him only an irregular assemblage of calcareous stones, crowned with dry herbs, or reddish, arid, angular rocks, flattened at their summits, tessellated with fragments of silex and mica, on which the sun is just pouring his rays; a company of goats, which the mist had condemned to a momentary repose, are bounding here and there, startling flocks of clamorous black-birds and plaintive sea-gulls; the fearless and yellow-crested ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... me a sound one. He says he often found small heaps or groups of them in one place, all perforated, just as if, when swept into the river's bed by a flood, the bond which had united them together remained unbroken.* (* Rigollot, "Memoire sur des Instruments en Silex" etc., ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... Sir, when you next go to the British Museum, look for a Poet named Vaughan. Do you know him? I read some fine sacred poems of his in a Collection of John Mitford's: he selects them from a book of Vaughan's called 'Silex Scintillans,' 1621. He seems to have great fancy and fervour and some deep thought. Yet many of the things are in the tricksy spirit of that time: but there is a little Poem beginning 'They are all gone into a World of Light,' etc., which shews him to be capable of much. Again farewell, my dear Allen: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... including all our grains, the sugar-cane, and the bamboo,—a silicate (an actual flint) is taken up by the roots and stored away in the stalks as a stiffener. The rough, sharp edge of a blade of grass sometimes makes an ugly cut on one's finger by means of the flint it contains. Silex is the chief ingredient in quartz rock, which is so widely diffused over the earth, and enters into the composition of most of the precious stones. The ruby, the emerald, the topaz, the amethyst, chalcedony, carnelian, jasper, agate, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... twenty-five feet deep, twelve feet wide, and about sixty feet long. It was elliptical in form, the sides coming together at a sharp angle at the ends, bottom, and top. The way down to the fiery heart of the earth had simply grown up by deposits of silex on the sides and at the bottom. The water had evaporated by the intense heat, and I was in the hot hollow that had once held an earthquake and volcano. When I squeezed up to the blessed upper air I was glad there ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... 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. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of which rose the peaks for which we were steering, and from which we were separated by fine downs, plains, and a lightly timbered country, with belts of narrow-leaved Ironbark growing on a sandy soil. On one of the plains quartzite cropped out; and silex and fossil wood lay scattered over the rich black soil: the latter broke readily, like asbestos, into the finest filaments, much resembling the fossil wood of Van Diemen's Land. It is difficult to describe the impressions which the range of ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... impossible that mineral acids should be harmless to others; the germs might be carried through sulphuric acid in air without coming into contact with the acid, as air would pass through in bubbles, in the centre of which they might be suspended; or if like the diatomaceae, they were coated with silex, they might come into contact with it and resist its action. Thus one of the precautions commonly taken is not certain in its action, and the same might be shown to be true of the others. The theory of spontaneous generation is, in fact, generally repudiated by Evolutionists, ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... compassionately invests it with additional grace and beauty. Assyrian glass was either transparent or stained with a single uniform color. It was composed, in the usual way, by a mixture of sand or silex with alkalis, and, like the Egyptian, appears to have been first rudely fashioned into shape by the blowpipe. It was then more carefully shaped, and, where necessary, hollowed out by a turning machine, the Marks of which are sometimes still visible. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Chamberlayne, complaining bitterly of the poverty of the poetical tribe. In 1651, he published a volume of verse, in which nascent excellence struggles with dim obscurities, like a young moon with heavy clouds. But his 'Silex Scintillans,' or 'Sacred Poems,' produced in later life, attests at once the depth of his devotion, and the truth and originality of his ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Cuzco a stone arrangement which was used by the Incas for washing and milling gold. Many ornaments of silex, agate and emerald, and also of coral, which had evidently been brought there from the coast, have ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fact, and one which requires further examination than it has yet received, that, if this mixture be suffered to remain long at rest before it is worked up, it becomes useless; for it is then found that the silex, which at first was uniformly mixed, becomes aggregated together in small lumps. This parallel to the formation of flints in ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... stone will not harden into that sugary crystalline state, save under the influence of great heat: but I do not know how the heat should have got to that layer in particular. Possibly there may have been eruptions of steam, of boiling water holding silex (flint) in solution—a very rare occurrence: but something similar is still going on in the famous Geysers or boiling springs of Iceland. However, I have no proof that this was the cause. I suppose we shall find out some day how it happened; ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... little, if at all, to the support of animal life. The ferns and their allies remain untouched by the grazing animals. Our native club mosses, though once used in medicine, are positively deleterious; the horse tails, though harmless, so abound in silex, which wraps them round with a cuticle of stone, that they are rarely cropped by cattle; while the thickets of fern which cover our hill-sides, and seem so temptingly rich and green in their season, scarce support the existence ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... deverticulo fuimus fortasse loquaces: Carmine propositum jam repetamus iter. Advehimur celeri candentia moenia lapsu: Nominis est auctor sole corusca soror. Indigenis superat ridentia lilia saxis, Et levi radiat picta nitore silex. Dives marmoribus tellus, quae luce ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... earth (which my guide informed me) the neighbouring indians use to paint themselves, and which appears to me to resemble the earth of which the French Porcelain is made; I am confident that this earth Contains argill, but whether it also Contains Silex or magnesia, or either of those earths in a proper perpotion I am unable to deturmine. we left the top of the precipice and proceeded on a bad road and encamped on a Small run passin g to the left. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... twenty days, into four sub-periods, or weeks, of five days. The cycle was called XIUHMOLPILLI, which signifies, "the tying up of years." Each day of the month had a separate name, derived from some animate, or inanimate object, as Tochtli, a rabbit, Calli, a house, Atl, water, Tecpatl, Silex, Xochitl, a flower, Cohuatl, a serpent. The fifth day, was a fair or market day. The names of the days were represented by hieroglyphic figures of the objects described. The divisions were perfect and regular, and enabled them to denote, ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft |
