Sling stone

“ Other stones, such as ‘fired’ zircon, white sapphire, white topaz, and rock-crystal, may dazzle with brilliancy of light reflected from the surface or emitted from the interior, but none of them, like diamond, glow with mysterious gleams. No hint of colour, save perhaps a trace of the blue of steel, can be tolerated in stones of this category; above all is a touch of the jaundice hue of yellow abhorred. It taxes all the skill of the lapidary to assure that the disposition of the facets be such as to reveal the full splendour of the stone. ”

“ The brick-earth is of great thickness, in places fully 50 feet, and overlies the Chalk. The upper portion of the beds is much contorted, and has in it occasional seams of flint gravel or tenacious clay, in which cream-coloured or brownish palæolithic implements occur. In the gravel, brown, ochreous, slightly abraded implements and flakes are found, and at the base in many cases is the old land-surface or "Palæolithic floor" resting on and surmounted by brick-earth. In one pit were three heaps of flints brought by hand in Palæolithic times from flint-bearing beds either above or in the Chalk. ”

“ On the bed of clay under the great stones have been found an iron clinker 3 inches long, remains of pine poles partly burnt, a lock of hair chestnut coloured, &c. The numerous clusters of charcoal show that the dead had been burned on the layer of clay, and the bones have been collected in an urn not yet found. ”

“ Krylov waved a fat hand smoothly.
"By a series of hydrogen bomb explosions, placed at intervals along the leading face. We have already begun. The bombs are here comrade. The thrust of each bomb is known, each will slow the moonlet to a certain extent. The last one, which you will time, will slow it too much and it will begin to fall. And then," Krylov grinned, "the hand of God."
Diavilev removed his glasses, wiped them slowly. Futile to fight, futile to oppose. ”

“ The grinding-stones met with in Denmark and Scandinavia are gene- rally of compact sandstone or quartzite, and are usually of two forms—flat slabs, often worn hollow by use, and polygonal prisms smallest in the middle, these latter having frequently hollow facets in which gouges or the more convex-faced hatchets might be ground, and sometimes rounded ridges such as would grind the hollow part of gouges. ”

“ Diavilev, with the inbred habit of years, gave his congratulations. Krylov stood looking at him closely, half-smiling, rubbing again at his cheek. There was something infinitely chilling in the moment, but Diavilev was able to smile back.
"This station has been in existence," said Krylov, "for slightly more than a week. There are not fifty people in the entire world who know of it. You have become one. You are therefore most important." ”

“ This stone is in great request for hearth-stones, and the beds of ovens; and in lining of lime-kilns it turns to good account, for the workmen use sandy loam instead of mortar, the sand of which fluxes, and runs by the intense heat, and so cases over the whole face of the kiln with a strong vitrified coat-like glass, that it is well preserved from injuries of weather, and endures thirty or forty years. When chiseled smooth, it makes elegant fronts for houses, equal in colour and grain to Bath stone; and superior in one respect, that, when seasoned, it does not scale. ”

“ Flint, chert, chalcedony, jasper, quartz, argillite, and other materials of flint-like character occurred in regular veins, or in nodules or in ordinary boulders or pebbles in the drift. Aboriginal man, therefore, mined in a quarry or he dug in the drift, or he picked up from the surface, or he worked in a limestone stratum to extract the nodular flint. ”

“ It rests on an irregular surface of chalk, occasionally running down into pipes, and thins out towards the sides, ceasing altogether rather more than half way down the hill. In places, there is chalk rubble or gravel in a chalky matrix at the base. The gravel consists principally of subangular flints, a few Tertiary pebbles, and blocks of sandstone, and contains a larger proportion of Upper Green sand chert than the Bemerton gravel—the whole mixed with a variable proportion of sand and stiff clay, and for the most part deeply stained by iron. ”

“ The safest and indeed the most common indication of an implement being really genuine is the alteration in the structure of the flint which has taken place over the greater part, if not the whole, of its surface, and the discoloration it has undergone. In ochreous beds of gravel the specimens are frequently much stained of a yellow, buff, or brown colour; where less iron is present they become grey, especially at the angles, and often more so on one face than the other. ”

“ Below the limestone in the Aldstone moor section the following other sandstones may deserve notice.
1. The whetstone sill, a fine grained micaceous sandstone, which may be seen at this day at Burtreeford.
2. The iron-stone sill, a ferruginous sandstone, containing iron pyrites in abundance.
3. Firestone, a porous line grained sandstone, used for the construction of furnaces, and varying from 5 to 6 fathoms in thickness.
4. Pattison's sill, a very hard grey sandstone with specks of mica.
5. The coal sills, many of them resembling the last. ”

“ The igneous rocks themselves furnish desirable building stones, such as granite, diorite, porphyry, diabase, etc. With the exception of granite and the nearly related diorite, these have not as yet been extensively utilized in North America. Certain of the igneous rocks have been altered to serpentine, which on account of its pleasing green colour and the ease with which it can be cut and 332 polished furnishes a stone valuable for interior uses. It is also employed, usually with a rough surface, in the construction of exterior walls of dwellings, gateways, etc. ”

“ Thus the water is thrown off by the operation of the centrifugal force, and two tons of clay can be dried in five minutes.
The remarkable contrast between the extreme hardness and softness of the same primitive rock is a curiosity of geology well worth notice. ‘A stone,’ says the author of ‘Cornwall and its Mines,’ ‘is primevally fused and cooled into as hard a substance as nature affords; so hard that it paves our streets in long enduring slabs and blocks. Tens of thousands of feet passing daily over it make no impression upon it. Years of travel only see it smooth and shining. ”

“ Limestone, granite, and sandstone were used for building at a very remote period in much the same way as wood, large blocks, fresh from the quarry, of all manner of different shapes, being piled up horizontally or stood on edge, no cement being employed, though in certain cases crushed stone was used to fill up the spaces between the blocks. ”

“ Those who have seen the modern Arabs in excavation work move huge blocks with wooden levers and palm-leaf rope will realize that for the building of the dolmens little was needed except numbers and time.
The other method of moving the stones is as follows: a gentle slope of hard earth covered with wet clay is built with its higher extremity close beside the block to be moved. As many men as there is room for stand on each side of the block, and with levers resting on beams or stones as fulcra, raise the stone vertically as far as possible. ”

“ On the eastern slope of Sill How are the remains of raised banks of earth and stones running in different directions, apparently for a similar purpose to those in Sale Bottom—defence against the attacks of horsemen or chariots. Crowning the hill, not far from the stone circles is a mound which, on being opened, was found to contain in the centre a small chamber formed by four flat stones set edgewise, making a cavity about eighteen inches by ten and six deep; this contained a quantity of ashes and charred bones; over it was laid a rude limestone slab about three feet long by two. ”

“ In a regular stone properly cut a templet is nearly parallel to a pavilion, and an upper to a lower cross facet. The contour of the girdle is usually circular, but occasionally assumes less symmetrical shapes, as for instance in drop-stones or pendeloques, and the facets are at the same time distorted. The number of facets may with advantage be increased in the case of large stones. An additional set of eight star facets is often placed round the culet, the total number then being 66. It may be mentioned that the largest stone cut from the Cullinan has the exceptional number of 74 facets. ”

“ In places, the gravel is from 12 to 16 feet in thickness, [65] the largest stones, as usual, occurring towards its base, in which part of the gravel the greater number, but by no means all, of the flint implements occur, as some are dispersed throughout the whole thickness of the mass. Occasionally they have been found in pipes of gravel, let down into the chalk by means of water charged with carbonic acid eroding its upper surface. ”

“ They are never formed of flint; the principal materials of which they are made being slate and compact greenstone, porphyry, and other felspathic rocks, and madreporite. Their usual length is from 6 inches to 9 inches, and the breadth from 3 inches to 5 inches; their thickness is rarely more than 1/2 inch in the middle, and sometimes not more than 1/10 of an inch. They are usually polished all over, and ground to an edge all round. ”

“ Of the terrible difficulties of the excavations, where such large pieces of stone are met with, only those can have any idea who have been present at the work and have seen how much time and trouble it takes, especially during the present rainy weather—first to get out the small stones round one of the many immense blocks, then to dig out the block itself, to get the lever under it, to heave it up and roll it through the mud of the channel to the steep declivity. ”

“ The gravel consists mainly of subangular flints, mixed with some rolled chalk, a considerable number of quartzite pebbles, and rolled fragments of other old rocks, derived from the Glacial Beds higher up the river. It is in a very sandy matrix, more or less ochreous at different spots. In places, the sand predominates.
The Drift-beds rest upon the Gault clay, and not, as in most of the cases already described, upon the Chalk. The implements found here occur usually towards the base of the gravel, and as a rule are rolled and waterworn. ”

“ One thing alone is clear, that in certain places, such as Malta and Sardinia, the megalithic people were not averse to reproducing in the solid rock the forms which they more usually erected with large stones above ground. The finest instance of this is the Halsaflieni hypogeum in Malta, where the solid rock is hewn out with infinite care to imitate the form and even the details of surface building. ”

“ There was an outer circle of about thirty worked upright stones of square section (Fig. I) . On each pair of these rested a horizontal block, but only [17] five now remain in position. These 'lintels' probably formed a continuous architrave (Pl. I) . The diameter of this outer circle is about 971⁄2 feet, inner measurement. The stones used are sarsens or blocks of sandstone, such as are to be found lying about in many parts of the district round Stonehenge.
Well within this circle stood the five huge trilithons (a-e) , arranged in the form of a horseshoe with its open side to the north-east. ”

“ The floor of the vast chamber, which is entirely excavated, is the natural rock. A number of large stones, which have remained in the Treasury, make on travellers the erroneous impression that there is still a great deal of débris left.
From the fourth course of stones upwards there are visible in each stone two bored holes, and in many of these can still be seen remnants of bronze nails which, according to Sir W. Gell ("Argolis") , contain 88 per cent. of copper and 12 per cent. ”

“ They are always perpendicular in the strata of calcinable matters, as chalk, marle, marble, &c. but are more oblique and irregularly placed in vitrifiable substances, brown freestone, and rocks of flint, where they are frequently adorned with [49] chrystals, and other minerals. In quarries of marble or calcinable stone, the divisions are filled with spar, gypsum, gravel, and an earthy sand, which contains a great quantity of chalk. ”

“ Barring quartz rock, which does not look well, almost any kind of natural stone may be made use of to the best [Pg 16] advantage. Artificial stone should be shunned like the plague. Limestone and sandstone are good materials; granite is better. Granite, however, does not stratify, and if stratified effects are desired, another stone must be selected. A good plan is to use more than one kind, but to keep them properly apart. Weather-beaten granite is excellent material, and, in general, it is well to have the rock look anything but newly quarried. ”

“ In some places, as at Laugerie-haute, surface-chipping is found on the flint arrow-heads, and cup-shaped recesses have been worked in other hard stones than flint, though no other stones have been used for cutting purposes.
3. That in the Neolithic or Surface Stone Period of Western Europe, other materials besides flint were largely used for the manufacture of hatchets; grinding at the edge and on the surface was generally practised, and the art of flaking flint by pressure from the edge was probably known. The stone axes, at least in Britain, were rarely perforated. ”

“ The so-called “Lincoln stone” is largely used in our churches; whilst the “Ancaster quarries,” which also belong to this formation, are famous. The commissioners appointed in 1839 to report on the building stones of England, for the new houses of Parliament, stated that “many buildings constructed of material similar to the Oolite of Ancaster, such as Newark and Grantham churches, have scarcely yielded to the effects of atmospheric influences.” (“Old Lincolnshire,” vol. i., p. 23.) The well-known Colly-Weston slates are the lowest stratum of this rock. ”