Slab

“ Like the steel strengthening in the cement, it may be there, but you can’t see it, and you can’t touch it, but it makes—oh, such a difference to the slab. Heigho, Dorothy, let us forsake these hard-headed subjects, and turn to something human. ”

“ In most cases the surface of the slab is so weathered and carious, that the most careful rubbing with heel-ball or black-lead presents but an indistinct representation, for by these means every accidental cavity appears on the paper as clearly as the lines, and confusion is the result. ”

“ At length there was a long slab, nearly smooth, fixt at an angle of about forty degrees between two wall-sided pieces of rock; nothing, except the glacier, could be seen below. It was a very awkward place, but being doubtful if return were possible, as I had been dropping from one ledge to another, I passed at length by lying across the slab, putting the shoulder stiffly against one side and the feet against the other, and gradually wriggling down, by first moving the legs and then the back. ”

“ An incised stone slab may be an excellent vehicle for a brief record intended to remain fixed in the same place, but for a chronicle or a liturgy, or a set of astronomical observations, or any other of the staple productions of Babylonian or Assyrian literature it is objectionable in two respects—it is profuse of space, and it is not easily portable. ”

“ If, at the border of the dangerous slope, a sharp stamping with your ski produces a settling noise, followed by the breaking away of detached fragments of snow-slab, you will know that the slab is probably insecurely poised on a shallow vault below. ”

“ If we break the slab in the prying, and thus secure only part of it, leaving an abrupt jagged edge on the part that remains, we have still a better likeness of the work of these great geologic quarrymen. But other workmen, invisible to our eyes, have carved these jagged edges into novel and beautiful forms. ”

“ The process of weathering in the case of this white marble presents three phases, sometimes to be observed on the same slab, viz., superficial solution, internal disintegration, and curvature with fracture.
1. Superficial solution is effected by the carbonic acid and partly by the sulphuric acid of town rain. When the marble is first erected it possesses a well-polished surface capable of affording a distinct reflection of objects placed in front of it. ”

“ It is clear that in this way each block or slab is made to provide the maximum of wall area at the expense of the thickness of the wall. Naturally, in districts where the rock is of a slabby nature blocks of a more or less uniform thickness lay ready to the builders' hand, and the appearance of the structure was much more finished than it would be in places where the rock had a less regular fracture or where shapeless boulders had to be relied on. ”

“ The stone walls sometimes seen are a sham, the stones being thin slabs nailed on the wooden framework of a house, like tiles or shingles, to rattle down in a harmless shower when the earth heaves and rocks. ”

“ A. Michie, `Retrospects and Prospects of the Colony,' p. 9:
"A skull-banker is a species of the genus loafer—half highwayman, half beggar. He is a haunter of stations, and lives on the squatters, amongst whom he makes a circuit, affecting to seek work and determining not to find it."
Slab, n. In English, the word slab, as applied to timber, means "an outside piece taken from a log in sawing it into boards, planks, etc." (`Webster.') In Australia, the word is very common, and denotes a piece of timber, two or three inches thick a coarse plank, axe-hewn, not sawn. ”

“ Conversely, when the temperature of the upper surface is lower than that of the bottom of the slab, as often it is at night, the edges of the slab bend or warp upward to such an extent that they are no longer in firm contact with the foundation. ”

“ The left slab represents a man richly habited, with collar, medallion, girdle, and greaves; the right slab a woman, to judge from her size, long plait of hair, and peculiar clothing. This female is borne on palms having the very well-preserved outline of human heads. Both the male and female seem to stand before the symbolic bird offering presents, the nature of which it is not easy to specify. ”

“ Great slabs of marble, squared fragments of wall and triangular pieces of roofing, are scattered about, half-buried in the earth. I have often, continued the young man, ‘passed hours at a time in examining the combats and the games, the dances and the processions, the beautiful and ludicrous figures which are sculptured there. ”

“ Marble wall-slabbing needs very careful fixing, and should be well supported by a sufficient number of cramps at a little distance from the wall, leaving a space of about half an inch at the back of the slab. ”

“ Curvature and Fracture.—This most remarkable phase of rock weathering is only to be observed in the slabs of marble which have been firmly inserted into a solid framework of sandstone and placed in an erect or horizontal position. ”

“ Then there are upright slabs of various shapes and heights, mostly rounded at the top, usually bearing sculptures in relief. Finally, there are many curiously angled stones, or natural rocks, dressed on one side only, with designs etched upon the smoothed surface. There would appear to be some meaning even in the irregularity of the shape of these slabs; the rock always seems to have been broken out of its bed at five angles, and the manner in which it remains balanced perpendicularly upon its pedestal is a secret that the first hasty examination fails to reveal. ”

“ However, joints will typically be very much wider than cracks. Since joints will presumably extend the entire thickness of the slab, once the joint fails, the flow through the joint would overwhelm the transport of ions through the central portion of the slab. In fact, the transport coefficients would be as great as, or greater than, those of the soil. Therefore, upon failure of the joint, 4SIGHT assumes that the roof fails to impede the flow of water into the vault, the transport properties of the concrete should be approximated by the transport properties of soil, and the calculation ceases. ”

“ Often after a heavy job of clearing out and heaving-up mullock, water, and slabs, all the time in imminent peril of a ‘fall’ from some part of the shaft, would we discover, on exploring the drives, that they were simply groves of props—not a natural support left standing. ”

“ Hence we meet so frequently in the various formations alternate masses of sedimentary and eruptive rocks. Both kinds have been used by men from the earliest times in tools and as building materials. On the one hand, stones have been employed in slabs and blocks in the construction of houses and walls, to mark graves, and for altars ”

“ If there are big visible gaps, giant slabs, or terraces interrupted and continuing at a higher level as a result of uneven upheaval, in the same or similar places, although too small to be visible, the climber has to look out for exposed passages on slabs, or he will have to search for cracks to connect up his interrupted ledges. ”

“ The rock on which the boulder formation reposes, if it consists of granite, gneiss, marble, or other hard stone, capable of permanently retaining any superficial markings which may have been imprinted upon it, is usually smoothed or polished, like the erratics above described, and exhibits parallel striæ and furrows having a determinate direction. ”

“ As you have marked an elaborately-carved stone sink slowly from its ponderous 'drop' to its place in an edifice which is to stand for ages, did you never scan closely its grained streaks, its delicate chissellings, with the thought that when you were senseless clay, that very stone might arrest the eye of another, gazing upon it with sensations like your own? ”

“ There is not a single straight line to be met with from foundation to roof, all is bending or broken. The form of every stone stone in its walls is a study; for, owing to the infinite delicacy of structure in all minerals, a piece of stone 3 in. in diameter, irregularly fractured, and a little worn by the weather, has precisely the same character of outline which we should find and admire in a mountain of the same material 6,000 ft. ”

“ As if to mock us, the huge rock had fallen in such a way, that its sides were jammed against protruding masses of stone either way, and a wide gap opened from below on the outer side, large enough to admit of a big man’s head and shoulders. ”

“ We see in one place the primary rock, with its veins of granite and quartz,—its dizzy precipices of gneiss, and its huge masses of hornblende; we find the secondary rock in another, with its bed of sandstone and shale,—its spars, its clays, and its nodular limestones. ”

“ And standing there beside a mass of crumbled granite, gray like the stone itself, his hulking body naked, neither clad nor furred, incredibly long arms now swinging as his weak eyes focused under bone-ridged brows, a man—though not a man—was raising in his ugly hand a shining tubelike object. ”

“ There slate and marble often touch one another, and I have seen some rocks which were slate at one end and marble at the other. Every new liquefaction of rock, analogous to slate, and cementing its layers, makes the whole rock harder and more compact; the rock is no longer slate, but becomes marble. ”

“ Imagine an instantaneous descent of granite-sand and gravel sufficient to smash and crush these trees to the ground, to bury their trunks, and to cover the earth one hundred to five hundred feet higher than the elevation to which their tops now reach! ”

“ Now and then a warning shout would come from the hill-side, and a rock would leap down, gathering speed, and rush across the road, split sometimes into a hundred fragments and useless, but for the most part—for the limestone was hard—a valuable building stone. ”

“ Each basin is a single, huge block of stone, hollowed out and cut with such exactness that the water, welling up from the bottom, pours over the smooth edges so evenly as to give it the look of a cube of polished glass. ”

“ Here and there, fronting the rest, stands a semicircular mass, as it were a huge grindstone, one half buried in the earth, or a pile that looks like a weatherbeaten, buttressed wall; and, raised by the slope of the ground, you see the tops of other masses, continuing away to the rear. ”

“ The unstratified drift may be described as a heterogeneous mass of clay, with sand and gravel in varying proportions, inclosing the transported fragments of rock, of all dimensions, partially rounded or worn into wedge-shaped forms, and generally with surfaces furrowed or scratched, the whole material looking as if it had been scraped together. ”

“ An awkward situation is a subrounded wall of rough granulated granite blocking our course and traversed obliquely by an up-trending fissure barely the breadth of hempen soles, its inclination outward, and the “tread” carpeted with slippery wet moss still half frozen. It is seldom what one can see that gives pause, but the fear of the unseen. ”

“ We find in many places the peculiar strata of sand, gravel, and masses of stone in proper position to change into conglomerate, which requires the action of water highly charged with iron and lime or silica. ”

“ But if a stone the gentle scene divide, Swift ruffling circles curl on every side, And glimmering fragments of a broken sun, Banks, trees, and skies, in thick disorder run.' 'But, as I said, it is not a doubt that agitates your mind—that is well represented by the "stone," that subsides and leaves the pool clear, it maybe, but stagnant as before. ”

“ Broken masses of stone are heaped in the wildest confusion on every side, and all up the craggy slopes, a wilderness of grey stone, of which the aspect is painfully desolate, and, so to speak, ruined. ”

“ Think how they beat and tear, and drive and drag, until even the hardest rock, like basalt, becomes honeycombed into strange galleries and passages—Fingal's Cave, for instance—and the softer parts are crumbled away. ”

“ Rocks.—Every one knows that the crust of the earth is composed of very various substances, some of which are hard and crystalline in texture, like granite; others less indurated and non-crystalline, such as sandstone, chalk, shale, &c.; while yet others are more or less soft and incoherent masses, as gravel, sand, clay, peat, &c. ”

“ After a little they turned off toward a tremendous rock of solid granite that had been cleft smoothly in twain by some gigantic force of nature, and, walking between the towering walls of stone, came out on the farther side upon a small level space, where immense ferns and flags grew thickly in the rich soil, held in place and kept damp by the great cool masses of stone. ”

“ The rocks are velvet with lichens and mosses, that anchor their roots into a mass of granite, grappling with a substance which, when struck with steel, tears up its tempered grain and dashes out the spark. ”

“ All alternate beds of shale or any softer earth than the rock, particularly broken shales when found mixed with sand and clay and the lias shales, and rock should be regarded as treacherous and liable to slip. ”

“ By one of her beams, which streamed upon the great granite column, to which they now approached, they discovered a form, apparently human, but of a size much less than ordinary, which moved slowly among the large grey stones, not like a person intending to journey onward, but with the slow, irregular, flitting movement of a being who hovers around some spot of melancholy recollection, uttering also, from time to time, a sort of indistinct muttering sound. ”

“ If we descend into the Crust of the Earth we may trace this building even from the foundations, which are laid upon the solid granite, up through each successive stage of limestone, and sandstone, slate, conglomerate, and clay, until we come to the surface, where new strata, composed of the same elements, and exhibiting the same general characteristics, are slowly growing up before our eyes. ”