"Devonian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ordinary oil-drilling outfit is employed to sink a hole of about six inches in diameter until the gas is reached. In the neighborhood of Pittsburgh, this is usually found at a depth of 1,300 to 1,500 feet, in what is known as the Third Oil Sand, a sandstone of the Devonian period. Where the gas comes from originally is an open question. When the driller strikes gas, he is not left in any doubt of the event, for if the well be one of any strength, the gas manifests itself by sending the drill and its ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... could cry "Murder!" Heard the rasp of a boat-hook along the wire-rope, and then, as it had been in my ear, Pyecroft's enormous and jubilant bellow astern: "Why, he's here! Right atop of us! The blighter 'as pouched half the tow, like a shark!" A long pause filled with soft Devonian bleatings. Then Pyecroft, solo arpeggie: "Rum? Rum? Rum? Is that all? Come an' ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... not worth more than English grass would be, thanks to that small-farm system much be-praised by some who know not wheat from turnips. Then along a road, which might be a Devon one, cut in the hill-side, through authentic "Devonian" slate, where the deep chocolate soil is lodged on the top of the upright strata, and a thick coat of moss and wood sedge clusters about the oak-scrub roots, round which the delicate and rare oak-fern mingles its fronds with great blue campanulas; while ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... Major Buckley, a hero of Waterloo, gigantic in stature, refined, calmly courageous—a fitting leader of the settlement; Mrs. Buckley, high-bred, stately, self-reliant, a model English matron; Tom Troubridge, the big, merry Devonian, grown with prosperity weighty and didactic in his speech, and thinking of turning his attention to politics; Miss Thornton, the dignified, sweet old maid, born to spend her life in uncomplaining service of others; Mary Hawker, tragic, passionate, paying the slow penalty of youthful wilfulness; ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the gaps, by which a chronological table, like that given at page 135, is rendered defective, will be removed. We were enabled by aid of the labours of Prof. Sedgwick and Sir Roderick Murchison to intercalate, in 1838, the marine strata of the Devonian period, with their fossil shells, corals, and fish, between the Silurian and Carboniferous rocks. Previously the marine fauna of these last- mentioned formations wanted the connecting links which now render the passage from the one to the other much less abrupt. In ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... use of the term forrell, when describing the cover of a book, is a solecism, I fancy, peculiarly Devonian. Whether a book be bound in cloth, vellum, or morocco, it is all alike forrell in Devonshire parlance. I imagine, however, that the word, in its present corrupt sense, must have originated from forrell, a term still used by the trade to designate an inferior kind of vellum {631} or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... by Mr. Antony Froude illustrates rural mentality in relation to contemporary politics. Mr. Froude was the tenant of a well-known house in Devonshire, and had come to be on very friendly terms with Mr. Emmot, his landlord's agent, a typical and true Devonian. One day Mr. Emmot came to him in a condition of some perplexity. He had been asked an important question, and was anxious to know if the answer he had given to it was satisfactory. It appeared that a cottager ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... radioactivity in which the derived lead would be small in amount. By rejecting such results as appeared to be of this character, he arrives at 370 millions of years as the age of the Devonian. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... their apparent allies. It has in our own country, as has been just shown, its ferns, its lepidodendra, its striated plants allied to the calamites, and its decided araucanite; in America, in the Cadent series, it had its "plants allied to ferns and lepidodendra;" and in the Devonian basin of Sabero in Spain, its characteristic organisms are, a lepidodendron (L. Chemungensis), and a very peculiar fern (Sphenopteris laxus).[52] But while in its main features it resembled the succeeding flora of the Carboniferous period, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... the Trilobites, occurring so abundantly in what is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance, whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil, characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much in time and place as in extended localities and conditions—indicating the presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Vertebrata to appear in the fossil history of the world are fishes; fish spines and placoid scales (compare dog-fish) appear in the Ordovician rocks. In the coal measures come the amphibia; and in the Permo-triassic strata, reptile-like mammals. In the Devonian rocks, which come between the Silurian and the coal measures, we find very plentiful remains of certain fish called the dipnoi, of which group three genera still survive; they display, in numberless features of their anatomy, transitional characters between true fish and amphibia. Similarly, in ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... trilobites and mollusks, but no plants save fucoids. Next came, after a long time, a few cartilaginous fishes and corals. A long time passed—thousands of years rolled by: then came real fishes and land plants in what is called the Devonian period, or the old red sandstone. After a great while came the period to which belongs all the coal formation; and in that carboniferous epoch first appears a whole vegetable world of trees and plants, to the number of nine hundred and thirty-four species. Some insects arrived at this ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Cambrian period of Europe. Over this system lie beds which have yielded in succession Ordovician and Silurian fossils, forming altogether a compact division which has been distinguished locally as the Muth system. Then follows the so-called Kanawar system, which introduces Devonian conditions, followed by fossils characteristic of the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... coming across the expression, "a proper bender," is inclined to ask if this is not Zummerzetsheer for, and only applicable to, a running hare? The Baron remembers the expression well, though 'tis years since he heard it, and owns to being uncertain as to whether it is not Devonian or Cornish. That he heard it applied to a hare apparent he is prepared to make oath and say; but he is not in the least prepared to assert that it is not generally applied as an expression of admiration for adroitness in avoiding ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various |
