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Shale   /ʃeɪl/   Listen
Shale

noun
1.
A sedimentary rock formed by the deposition of successive layers of clay.



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"Shale" Quotes from Famous Books



... irregularly above, and generally quite shallow, being governed very much in contour and depth by the quality of the rock. The work of excavation has not been an extremely great one, even with the imperfect implements that must have been used, as the shale is for the most part soft ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... intrusive felspathic porphyry and ashes. The same formation occurs just within the county border at Cerrig-y-Druidion, Langum, Bettys-y-coed and in the Fairy Glen. Northwards from the Ceiriog to the limestone fringe at Llandrillo the Wenlock shale of the Silurian covers the entire mass of the Hiraethog and Clwydian hills, but verging on its western slopes into the Denbighshire grit, which may be traced southward in a continuous line from the mouth of the Conway as far as Llanddewi Ystrad Enni ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... of a horse this evening in the road near our camp which the indians supposed to be a Shale spye. we killed a prarie hen with the short and pointed tail she had a number of young ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... himself. "Well, there's another way out. The Producers & Developers Shale and Oil Company have a suite of offices that run into the Rockford Building. They've built an alley to connect between the two buildings. It's on ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... matter of observation that military service on the Continent tends to induce a habit of body which is not the most suitable for doubtful climbing. The mountain seemed to be composed, in this part, of horizontal layers of crumbling shale, with a layer now and then of stone, about the thickness of an ordinary house-tile. The stone layers project from the looser masonry, and afford an excellent foot-hold; but a slip might be unpleasant. Every one who has done even a small amount of climbing has met with an abundance ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... rolling prairies stretch away for hundreds of miles, gradually ascending on the side towards the mountains, where the highlands are sparsely covered with pinyon and cedar. The lofty banks through which the Arkansas occasionally passes are of shale and sandstone, rising precipitously from the water. Ascending the river the country is wild and broken, until it enters the mountain region, where the scenery is incomparably grand and imposing. The ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... and to the southeast is uninterrupted. Mountain range rises beyond mountain range, until only the snowy summits are visible in the great distance, and one knows that beyond the last of them lies the open sea. The near-by peaks and ridges, red with granite or black with shale and gullied from top to bottom with snow and ice, the broad highways of the glaciers at their feet carrying parallel moraines that look like giant tram-lines, stand out with vivid distinction. A lofty peak, that we suppose is Mount Hunter, towers above the lesser summits. The two arms of the ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck

... slide down on top of the unwary Indian riding ahead and the one that the Chief's horse directly behind would bump me off the trail. It was a cheerful situation. The Canyon walls closed in upon us, and the trail grew worse, if that could be possible. The firm rock gave way to shale that slipped and slid under the feet of the horses. It was so narrow that one slip of a hoof would send the horse crashing on the rocks hundreds of feet beneath. Still this is the only path it has been possible to make ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... christening), the waiting relatives, the inevitable decanter, and the thick cuts of indigestible bun. The minister, I say, trudged home with his treasure-trove of petrified ferns and foot-marked shale—a greater fossil than any under his own cases of glass. His memory was stirred by his wife's catechising, but it was too ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... of the rocks was a steep declivity of loose shale sprinkled over with large and small boulders of radically different formations, and in no manner resembling the friable, uncertain bed ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... strata of Patagonia, Chiloe and Concepcion, without the possible identity ever having occurred to me. At last there was no resisting the conclusion. I could not expect shells, for they never occur in this formation; but lignite or carbonaceous shale ought to be found. I had previously been exceedingly puzzled by meeting in the sandstone, thin layers (few inches to feet thick) of a brecciated pitchstone. I strongly suspect the underlying granite has altered such beds into this ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... they were composed of a species of quartz or mineral, but observing one of them within reach at his side, he reached upward with his knife and extracted it from the shale in ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... day, to be walking along its Southern edge, when, suddenly, several pieces of rock and shale were dislodged from the face of the cliff immediately beneath me, and fell with a sullen crash through the trees. I heard them splash in the river at the bottom; and then silence. I should not have given this incident more than a passing thought, had not Pepper at once begun ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... by the fact that in the "dirt-bed" of the Isle of Portland and the neighbouring shores, stumps of trees allied to the modern sago-palms are found as they grew in the soil, which, with them, has been covered up in layers of freshwater shale and limestone. A tropic forest has plainly sunk beneath a lagoon; and that lagoon, again, beneath ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... give the reason. Dean gathered from what she could tell that a gas of some sort was formed, perhaps by the decomposing vegetation. Perhaps it combined with the sparkling white shale. But all this was of no consequence compared with his own problems. He did not argue the matter but ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... Picking out the main tunnel and keeping a close watch for rattlers with electric torches, the two men went cautiously ahead. In places earth had fallen and had to be cleared away, but the formation for the most part was a soft rock and shale. They went slowly, for fear of ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg

... Firio turned toward the eastern range until he came to a narrow tongue of shale almost as hard to the hoofs as asphalt, that ran like a shoal across that sea of sand. Rest had given the great equine trio renewed life. P.D., reduced in rank to second place, could not think of allowing ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... the ancient demon of water-force had excelled himself in enchantments. The slopes of the alluvial soil were dotted with little buttes of mingled sandstone and shale, varying from five to twenty feet in height, many of them bearing a grotesque likeness to artificial objects. There were columns, there were haystacks, there were enormous bells, there were inverted jars, there were junk ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... many great deposits, requiring a vast length of time for their accumulation, are entirely destitute of organic remains, without our being able to assign any reason: one of the most striking instances is that of the Flysch formation, which consists of shale and sandstone, several thousand, occasionally even six thousand feet in thickness, and extending for at least 300 miles from Vienna to Switzerland; and although this great mass has been most carefully searched, no fossils, except a few ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... spoke, the hounds yelped sharply and Scott spurred forward. The hunters were threading a grove of quaking asp and the dogs had come up with the bear on an opening of shale rock surrounded by down timber. Throwing his reins and advancing cautiously on foot, Stanley, followed by his companions, who spread themselves in a wide semicircle, took his place, the others, as they best ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... But sometimes glimpses make more vivid memories than longer acquaintance. At the end of our hour we left Vence and hurried down the broad road of red shale past meadows thick with violets. We went through the deep pine-filled ravine over which we had crossed on the viaduct. Then the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... urged in commercial circles that the Government should secure men with laboratory experience, plus a complete absence of practical knowledge, to report on shale deposits."—Australian Paper. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various

... a madman," said the sheriffe, "Thou sholdst have had a knightes fee; But seeing thy asking hath beene soe bad, Well granted it shale be." ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards

... sprang on to the rocks, and at once set about the tedious task of breasting the hill. Hill climbing, under the vertical sun of North Australia, is by no means an enjoyable undertaking, more particularly when the loose shale and rock gives way at every stride, bringing down an avalanche of rubbish on the heads of the rearmost of the party. Encumbered with our carbines, we made but slow progress, and it was nearly six o'clock before we attained the summit, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... prompt and profound. It seemed to him but a few minutes after he had laid his head on the pillow when Jack Shale's voice again resounded in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... ninety feet high, narrowing, gradually, to a summit twelve feet broad. As the whole embankment was to be twelve hundred feet long at the top, this gave some idea of the bulk of the materials to be used: those materials were clay, shale, mill-stone, and sandstone of looser texture. The engineer knew Grotait, and brought him a drawing of the mighty cone to be erected. "Why, it will be ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... this obstacle to their progress, the winds urging the waves that come rolling in from the vast Atlantic, gathering force as they increase in speed, like one rushing at a leap; and at last leap they do, upon the great black mass of shale, tons upon tons in weight, seeming as if they would sweep it clear away, and rush on in mad ruin to tumble the fishing luggers together and shatter them like eggs as they lie softly rubbing together ...
— A Terrible Coward • George Manville Fenn

... responded the ancient, "that such a kind-hearted gent may never meet with it. Ah, I do trust that you never may, which is to say, so to speak, as I do trust as you'll never meet that black doctor. If ever a man, had the evil eye, that black doctor's got it, and old Mother Shale what lives in the cottage on the heath down against the windmill, she warned me, she did, three days after he come here. 'Mr. Corder,' she says, 'that black doctor has the evil eye!' And never was a truer word spoke. He's been the ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... place, I do not know where I can more conveniently describe this little group of small islands. The lowest bed is a sandstone with ferruginous veins; it weathers into an extraordinary honeycombed mass; above it there is a dark-coloured argillaceous shale; above this a coarser sandstone—making a total thickness of about sixty feet; and lastly, above these sedimentary beds, there is a fine conformable mass of greenstone, in some parts having a columnar structure. All the strata, as well as the surface of the land, dip at an ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin

... Frazer, and the hour was past the turn of night. Mackenzie answered, the sound of a horse under way immediately following. Dad came riding down the hill with loose shale running ahead of him, in such a hurry that he took ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... masses of this kind (half an acre in area) have been found in such situations. They are masses which have been dislodged, by fissures and landslides, from the crater's walls and have tumbled into the cavity. Pieces of sandstone, limestone and shale occur in the agglomerates mixed with volcanic materials, and very often have been baked and partly recrystallized by contact with the hot igneous rocks and the gases discharged by the volcano. At Vesuvius such blocks of altered limestone ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... ascent. In some spots they contract to an arm's length of space, outside of which limit they drop sheer away; elsewhere they stand up on end, zigzag in lacets each more hair-raising than the last, or fill to demoralization with loose boulders and shale. A fall on the part of your horse would mean a more than serious accident; but Western horses do not fall. The major premise stands: even the casual tourist has no real reason for fear, however scared he ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... hill, zigzagging back and forth to make easier work for the pony, until he was high above the live-oak belt and coming into shale rock and rubble that made hard going for the horse. He dismounted, led the pony to a shelving, rock-made shade, and tied him there. Then, with canteen and food slung over his shoulder, Johnny climbed to the peak and sat down puffing on the shady ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... slow work. The incline was steep, of soft earth and loose shale. But Blinky knew where to feel his way, and eventually they reached the flat, to find easier progress. Blinky made a detour, and finally, as they gradually approached several lamplights, far apart, he whispered: "You wait heah. I ain't so darn shore ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... of the finest which I saw was in the beautiful valley of Fond du Foret, above Chaudefontaine, not far from the village of Magnee, where one of the rents communicating with the surface has been filled up to the brim with rounded and half-rounded stones, angular pieces of limestone and shale, besides sand and mud, together with bones, chiefly of the cave-bear. Connected with this main duct, which is from 1 to 2 feet in width, are several minor ones, each from 1 to 3 inches wide, also extending to the upper country or table-land, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... one side. "Trouble to-night, Dave, looks like. At Jackpot Number Three. We're in a layer of soft shale just above the oil-bearin' sand. Soon we'll know where we're at. Word has reached me that Doble means to rush the night ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... shoreward out of the darkness, breaking with a thin, splashing sound against the shale at their feet. Somewhere in the night a restless heron croaked and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... locations. One group was planted under the canopy of a locust grove, another on an exposed hilltop which faces the prevailing westerly winds. The third is on a broad hilltop field which does not have the best drainage since the top soil is clay underlaid with sandstone shale. All of these groups grow on land abandoned some years ago. The soil fertility is generally low. Volunteer native growth of cheery, ash, dogwood ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... well enough what he was standing on—a little ledge of shale not over five or six feet in length and two feet wide—for in lower water I had often from its advantage cast a fly down below the big boulder. But I knew it to be surrounded by water fifteen feet deep. It was impossible to wade to the spot, impossible to swim ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... creek in all its windings, in order to detect water in one of its rocky water-holes. The rock was shaly, of a greyish colour, like the clay shale of Newcastle above the layers of the coal, but more indurated. Patches of vine brush grew along the banks, and their verdure led me frequently to expect the presence of water. We met, however, only with salt-water, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... the/ that no creature can locke the out/ and with which thou shalt goo in and out/ and finde pasture and fode euery where. And yf these lesons be not writtten in thyne herte/ then is all the scripture shutt vpp/ as a cornell in the shale/ so that thou mayst read it and comen of it and reherse all the stories of it and dispute sotilly and be a profounde sophister/ and yet ...
— The prophete Ionas with an introduccion • William Tyndale

... height, and stole, Nimrod with a carbine, I with the rifle, along a treacherous, shaly bank which ended, twenty feet below, in the steep rocky bluffs that formed the face of the cliff. Every step was an agony of uncertainty as to how far one would slide, and how much loose shale one would dislodge to rattle down over the cliff and startle the antelope we hoped were there. To move about on a squeaking floor without disturbing a light sleeper is child's play compared with our ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... on and, happening to slide on a piece of shale at that moment, I sat down unexpectedly and the horse put ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of shale obtained in 1955 by Mr. Russell R. Camp from a Pennsylvanian lagoon-deposit in Anderson County, Kansas, has yielded in the laboratory a skeleton of the small amphibian Hesperoherpeton garnettense Peabody (1958). This skeleton provides new and surprising information ...
— A New Order of Fishlike Amphibia From the Pennsylvanian of Kansas • Theodore H. Eaton

... face of the cliff, and my repeated warnings fell upon deaf ears. A task that would have appeared impossible when viewed in daylight, lost half of its terrors because we only vaguely apprehended the dangers that threatened us when a layer of shale crumbled beneath our feet. Our descent became a wild toboggan. Slipping and sliding, clutching wildly at every little projection that would decrease the speed at which we were travelling, we rolled with bruised and bleeding bodies on to a small ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... fringe the northern boundary and appear on the south-eastern boundary as a narrow strip of hilly ground near Woore. The oldest rock exposed in the county is the small faulted anticline of Carboniferous limestone at Astbury, followed in regular succession eastward by the shale, and thin limestones and sandstones of the Pendleside series. These rocks extend from Congleton Edge to near Macclesfield, where the outcrop bends sharply eastward and runs up the Goyt valley. Some hard quartzites ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... causeway, and over the bridge, to catch her on the other side. We had our eyes on her as we ran, for we feared that she might catch, or capsize; and we were so intent upon our ship that we noticed nothing else. Now when we came to the end of the causeway, and turned to the right, along the shale and rubble tipped there from the quarry, we saw a man coming down the slope to the water, evidently bent on catching the Snail when she arrived. We could not see his face very clearly, for he wore a grey slouch-hat, and the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... 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 Wallace, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... now why some one in the coach had spoken of the Miette Plain as Sunshine Pool. Where-ever she looked the mountains fronted her, with their splendid green slopes reaching up to their bald caps of gray shale and reddish rock or gleaming summits of snow. Into this "pool"—this pocket in the mountains—the sun descended in a wonderful flood. It stirred her blood like a tonic. She breathed more quickly; a soft glow coloured her cheeks; her eyes ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... upper plain, then drops at the falls into a narrow gorge through which it courses seven miles to the escarpment, the crest of which is a bed of limestone—60 ft. thick at the falls. The water plunges into a deep basin hollowed out of soft shale, which, as well as the escarpment, is being constantly worn away. The site of the cataract retreats upstream and the gorge is lengthened at a rate of about five ft. a year. It is evident that the whole gorge has been dug out by the river, and many attempts have been made to determine the ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... reached one end of the many small valleys into which the larger vale was divided. They had been following the trail of the cattle that had been driven off—it was plain enough until they reached a rocky and shale-covered defile between two small hills. Then, for some reason or other, all "sign" came to an abrupt end. There were no further marks of hoofs in the earth, and none of the ordinary marks to indicate that cattle and horses had ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... the marks his shoes made in the shale," said Trapper Jim, pointing to the ground in front, which sloped ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie

... from a hole in the wall projected the muzzle of an extremely well-cared-for gun—the only gun in the State that could shoot. Namgay Doola had narrowly missed a villager just before we came up. The Standing Army stood. It could do no more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire, and blood-curdling yells of defiance were the only answers ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... coal fields are found to be converted into coal, then the only difference between coal shale, and coal will consist in the very small proportion of vegetable matter ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... he liked going in where the water-wheel hung dripping in its dark cave, and quivering streaks of sunlight came in through the cracks to play on the green slime and the spotted jewel-weed growing in the shale. The mill was a place of sharp contrasts; bright sun and deep shade, roaring sound and heavy, dripping silence. He remembered how astonished he was one day, when he found Mr. Royce in gloves and goggles, cleaning the millstones, and discovered what harmless looking ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... same result. For example, the Flysch-formation is a formation of several thousand feet in thickness (as much as 6000 in some places), and it extends for at least 300 miles from Vienna to Switzerland; moreover, it consists of shale and sandstone. Therefore, alike in respect of time, space, and character, it is just such a formation as we should expect to find highly rich in fossils; yet, "although this great mass has been most carefully searched, no fossils, except ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... species were clear and precise. In his paper on the coal mines of the mountains of Cevennes (Choix de Memoires d'Hist. Nat., 1792) he made the first careful study of the coal formation in the Cevennes, including its beds of coal, sandstone, and shale. A. de Jussieu had previously supposed that the immense deposits of coal were due to sudden cataclysms or to one of the great revolutions of the earth during which the seas of the East or West Indies, having been driven as far as into Europe, had deposited on its ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... When the slopes gave a southern exposure they were covered with grape-vines, planted with the utmost precision and regularity. Every corner and cranny among the rocks was utilized. The original planting must have been difficult, for the soil was covered with slabs of shale. The cultivator should develop excellent lungs in scaling those hillsides. The leaves had fallen and the bare vines varied in hue from sepia brown to wine color, with occasional patches of evergreen to set off the whole. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... of the whole, as it radiated from the central mass, whence the carved trunk proceeded, somewhat resembled that of an enormous coach-wheel divested of the rim. Unfortunately we cannot yet complete our description of this strange plant. A specimen, traced for about forty feet across a shale bed, was found to bifurcate atop into two great branches,—a characteristic in which, with several others, it differed from most of the tree-ferns,—a class of plants to which Adolphe Brogniart is inclined ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... have produced this singular-looking, black, inflammable rock? How many times was this question asked before Science could return an answer? This she can now do with confidence. Coal was once growing vegetable matter. On the surface of the shale, immediately above the coal, you will find innumerable impressions of leaves and branches, as perfect as artist ever drew. But how could this vegetable matter ever accumulate in such masses as ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... impassable torrents, and marshes bottomless abysses. Pits of quicksand develop in most unexpected places. Driven from smooth lake margins, the trailers' ponies are forced to climb ledges of rock, and to rattle over long slides of shale. In places the threadlike way itself becomes an aqueduct for ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... occurring in the Catoctin Belt is the sedimentary series. It is all included in the Cambrian period and consists of limestone, shale, sandstone and conglomerate. The two border zones of the Catoctin Belt, however, contain also rocks of the Silurian and Juratrias periods. In general, the sediments are sandy and calcareous in the Juratrias area, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... the town now, the road crossing a railroad-track, where the hill, chopped apart for the grade, left bare the black stratum of coal, tinged here and there with a bloody brown and whitish shale. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... greatest, and the longest diameter of the body sets axial. On the other hand, when the body was suspended so that the laminae were vertical, the longest diameter set equatorial. Now, we know that the crust of the earth is composed of laminae, just as the piece of shale in Doctor Tyndal's experiments, and that these layers are disposed horizontally. And whatever force originally arranged the land and water on our globe, it is evident that the continents are longest from north to south, ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... for the unfortunate horse still struggled feebly, while the gurgle continued, and she was devoutly thankful when they continued their journey. The traveling was, if possible, more arduous than before. At times they forced a passage through climbing forest, and again over slopes of treacherous shale where a snow slide had plowed a great hollow in the breast of the hill. The puffs of snow which once more met them grew thicker until Millicent was sheeted white all over. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... life? Don't worry about me, Mrs. Pindar,—I get twenty five dollars a week at the Shale Works making barb wire to trip up the Huns with,—enough to get nice clothes—(she glances down at her dress) and buy good food, and have a good time ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the problem of petroleum oil for the Navy, considering the best policy to insure the future supply of fuel oil and prevent the threatened drainage of naval oil reserves. Legislative action is required to carry on experiments in oil shale reduction, as large deposits of this type have been set aside for the use ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... light. This time it burned suddenly clear and large and very bright, away off to the left of him where he had by daylight noticed a bare shale slide. The light seemed to stand in the very center of the slide, no more ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... the conch off Oomoa was lying on the shale, and those who had come in it were on the stones cooking breadfruit. The village, half a dozen rude straw shacks, stretched along a rocky stream. Beyond it, in a few acres enclosed by a fence, were a tiny church, two wretched wooden cabins, a tumbling kiosk, five or six ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... pretty kettle of 'em lately, William. I heard of it yesterday on the Bench. Lord Shale, our new Lord-Lieutenant, brought it down. A trick they played the fellow 'bout a Dauphin. Serve him right. You heard anything 'bout ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... by the Zunians in the manufacture of pottery is a dark, bluish, carbonaceous, clayey shale found in layers usually near the tops of the mesas. Several of these elevated mesas are situated near Zuni, from which the natives obtain this material. This carbonaceous clay is first mixed with water and then kneaded as a baker kneads dough until it reaches the proper ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson

... ask for the funds needed for energy research and development activities. I have established a goal of 1 million barrels of synthetic fuels and shale oil production per day by 1985 together with an incentive program to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Suspension Bridge under the Falls at the level of the water. It is 6700 yards long, and of a horseshoe section, 19 feet wide by 21 feet high. It has been cut 160 feet below the surface through the limestone and shale, but is arched with brick, having rubble above, and at the outfall is lined on the invert or under side with iron. The gradient is 36 feet in the mile, and the total fall is 205 feet, of which 140 feet are available for use. The capacity of the tunnel is 100,000 horse- power. In the lands ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... (which has been plumped over and sleeked by the flesh of the valley) juts forth, like the scrags of a skeleton, and crumbles in low but rugged cliffs into the flat domain of sea. Here the landing is bad, and the anchorage worse, for a slippery shale rejects the fluke, and the water is usually kept in a fidget between the orders of the west wind ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... cow's milk so rich, and we had some good views of the hills. That named Mam Tor was one of the "Seven wonders of the Peak," and its neighbour, known as the Shivering Mountain, was quite a curiosity, as the shale, of which it was composed, was constantly breaking away and sliding down the mountain slope with a sound like that of falling water. Bagshawe Cavern was near at hand, but we did not visit it. It was so named because it had been found on land ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... thick seams, with other rock-layers between, telling each its history of centuries long past. In one place no less than sixteen such beds of coal are found, one below another, each divided from the next above and the next underneath by beds of clay or sand or shale. The forests could not have grown in the sea, and the earth-layers could not have been formed on land, therefore many land-risings and sinkings must have taken place. Each bed probably tells the tale of a succession ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... from the town, and rode down the crest of long, gently-sloping ridges, which seemed interminable. The rock over which we passed was red sandstone, mottled and streaked with green, red shale, and occasional patches of conglomerate. Crossing a little stream by a pretty bridge, we made an abrupt ascent, and soon saw the little town, Cuaquitepec, at the base of ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... the grey-bearded Commander in charge of the base. The King's Messenger climbed into his carriage and the journey was resumed. Along the shores of jade-tinted lochs, through far-stretching deer forest and grouse moor, past brawling rivers of "snow-brew," and along the flanks of shale-strewn hills, the "Navy Special" ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... soon as Walter's guard had been smashed down by a most unconventional attack, and Walter himself had been knocked senseless by a swing on the side of the jaw, Bill Shale leaped gaily forth ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... exceedingly difficult. A dense forest growth of cedar and tamarack pushed to the very edge of the water, and the rare open beaches were composed of smooth rocks too small to afford secure footing, and too large to be trodden under. The girl either slipped and stumbled on insecure and ankle-twisting shale, or forced a way through the awful tangle of a swamp. As the canoeing at this point was not at all difficult, her utmost efforts could not keep her abreast of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... the three R's; but occasionally a newcomer who had somewhere picked up a smattering of algebra, Latin, or astronomy stirred the wonder, if not also the suspicion, of the neighborhood. Schoolbooks were few and costly; crude slates were made from pieces of shale; pencils were fashioned from varicolored soapstone found in the beds of small streams. No frontier picture is more familiar or more pleasing than that of the farmer's boy sitting or lying on the floor during the long winter evening industriously tracing by firelight or by candlelight the ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... explanation the corpus delicti of the Clyde Mystery. We stare at it and ask what are these slate spear heads engraved with rude ornament, and certainly never meant to be used as "lethal weapons"? What are these many-shaped perforated plaques of slate, shale, and schist, scratched with some of the old mysterious patterns that, in almost every part of the world, remain inscribed on slabs and faces of rock? Who incised similar patterns on the oyster-shells, some old and local, some fresh—and American! Why ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang

... for general crop production are on limestone, basalt, dolemite, dolerite, diorite and gabbro formations, whereas sandstones, aplites, granites, pierre shale, cretacious rocks and volcanic formations weather into inferior soils. Gneiss can be sometimes good, sometimes unfavorable ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various

... moment a wave receded. They ran dizzily forward in the shifting, wet gravel of the beach. When the next incoming comber was beginning to curl down from the top, Jean dashed to the bluff. Shielding the little fellow below her, she clung to the uneven shale of its base, presenting her back to the billow that crashed with a deafening ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... beds of the streamlets conveying it, and on the stones, red or brown oxide of iron. All water of this kind ought to be avoided in dyeing and similar operations. The iron in water from old coal pits and shale deposits is usually present as sulphate due to the oxidation of pyrites, a sulphuret or sulphide of iron. Water from heaths and moorlands is often acid from certain vegetable acids termed "peaty acids." This ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... which comes from wells bored deep down in the ground in Pennsylvania, in the south of Russia, in Burma, and elsewhere. Also it is distilled in Scotland from oil shale, from which paraffin oil and wax and similar substances are produced. When the oil is brought to the surface it contains many impurities, and in its native form is unsuitable for motor engines. The crude oil is composed of a number of different ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton

... he could work hardly at all, their pleasant home was assured to the family; and at Sir Henry's death the nephew who succeeded him left the Rocketts undisturbed. But, under this new lordship, things were not quite as they had been. Sir Edwin Shale, a middle-aged man, had in his youth made a foolish marriage; his lady ruled him, not with the gentlest of tongues, nor always to the kindest purpose, and their daughter, Hilda, asserted her rights ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... that a great sea was roaring below in the darkness. He could hear the waves, the boom and burst of them, the suck-back of the billows tearing the shrieking shale to their hearts, the profound and sonorous roar of leagues of coast. Imagination could do anything with that sound except figure the reality of it or paint the tremendous forest bending to the wind in ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... is still the chief source of this valuable salt, is the gas-works, where it is obtained as one of the bye-products in the manufacture of gas. It is also obtained to a lesser extent from shale, iron, coke, and carbonising works. Bones, horn, leather, and certain other animal substances rich in nitrogen, when subjected to dry distillation, as is the case in certain manufactures, such as the manufacture of bone-charcoal for use in sugar-refineries, and ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... them from the bank, where they were scattered, he saw something else there which was neither beautiful nor fragrant, but over which he bent with earnest scrutiny. An ordinary looking piece of shale or stone it would have seemed to an inexperienced eye, a thing with irregular veins of a greenish appearance, and the green dotted plainly with yellow—so plainly as to show even in the moonlight the ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... precipices. The result ... has been to produce an indescribable scene of desolation. Everywhere the hillsides facing the valley have been stripped bare from crest to base, and the seams of coal and partings of shale could be seen running in and out of the irregularities of the cliffs with a sharpness and distinctness which recalled the pictures of the caons of Colorado. At the bottom of the valley was a piled-up heap of dbris and broken trees, while the old stream had been obliterated and the stream ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... (of Brongniart) a fern which occurs in a stratum of ironstone at Newcastle, and in one of the same mineral on the southern coast, also in sandstone in the valley of the Hunter, and abundantly in the shale near ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... wildly, first saw the break in the trees ahead. He gave a muffled cry of delight, and in a few minutes they were all rushing, like men possessed, up a bare slope of broken shale. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... higher and higher for a couple of miles. Pausing to rest for a moment, we could turn and see the entire valley outspread below us. Gradually the trail grew steeper, in spots pitched almost at a 50-degree angle, and was scattered with gravel, loose rock and shale, so that we placed our feet carefully, leaning forward to catch at handholds and steady ourselves against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I thought—was behind me, ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... case, exoskeleton, shale; carapace, plastron; cockle, conch, periwinkle, cowrie, whelk, mitre shell, abilone shell; exuviae (cast-off); conchite (fossil). Associated Words: conchology, conchologist, malacology, testaceous, cockled, mollusk, conchiferous, conchiform conchometer, conchometry, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... were at first into something else—by heat, pressure, or chemical action. All kinds of rocks can be changed. The result is a new crystalline structure, the formation of new minerals, or a change in the rock's texture. Slate was once shale. Marble came from limestone. Gneiss (pronounced ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... the cove was being formed. The rocks are probably Silurian; and if so, of quite immeasurable antiquity. But instead of being hard, as Silurian rocks are wont to be, they are mere loose beds of dark sand and shale, yellow with sulphur, or black with carbonaceous matter, amid which strange flakes and nodules of white quartz lie loose, ready to drop out at the blow of every wave. The strata, too, sloped upward and outward toward the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... out upon the central plaza, where stood a large church of typical colonial design and construction, and with a single lateral bell tower. The building was set well up on a platform of shale, with broad shale steps, much broken and worn, leading up to it on all sides. Jose stepped out and mingled with the crowd, first regarding the old church curiously, and then looking vainly for the little girl, and sighing his disappointment when ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... shape floundered out of the churned water, lumbered over the shale of the beach, its supple neck outstretched, its horned nose down for a gore-threatening charge. Ross had not realized that the salkars could operate out of what he thought was their natural element, but this wild-eyed dragon was plainly bent ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... appeare, he may then be assured that the Corne is fully ripe, and ready for the Sickle, so that instantly he shall prouide his Reapers, according to the quantitie of his graine: for if hee shall neglect his Rye but one day more then is fit, it is such a hasty graine, that it will shale forth of the huske to the ground, to the great losse of the Husbandman. When hee hath prouided his shearers, which he shall be carefull to haue very good, he shall then looke that neither out of their wantonnesse nor emulation, they striue which shall goe ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... creaking stairway told her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost desert landscape, of rock and shale and sand and cactus, with eyes from which the light had fled, and a new, strange trouble biting at her girlish heart. Confound ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... time started half a dozen other stones. In a moment a rock avalanche was roaring down the steep. The great stone led the way. In a series of gigantic leaps, each longer than the last, it thundered downwards, at each jump starting fresh tons of the loose shale which covered ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... we set off for Athabasca Landing, accompanied by a little fleet of trippers' and traders' canoes, and passed during the day immense banks of shale, the tracking being very bad and the water still high. We noted much good timber standing on heavy soil, and on the 14th passed a curious hump-like hill, cut-faced, with a reddish and yellow cinder-like look, as if it had been calcined by underlying fires. Near ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... vanished. It is not necessary to believe in ghosts; but I'll go bail that story is true. We are but two stones' throw from the gaunt hulk of a Franciscan Church; a file of dusty cypresses marks the ruins of a painful Calvary cut in the waste and shale of the hill-side. Below, as in a green pasture, Florence shines like a dove's egg in her nest of hills; I can pick out among the sheaf of spears which hedge her about the daintiest of them all, the crocketed pinnacle of Santa Croce, grey on blue; and then the lean ridge of a shrine ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... HENDON as Sir Rupert de Malvoisie (the Crusader) suggested, by his accent and gestures, that he must have come from the East—how far East, it boots not to inquire. Miss FLORENCE DARLEY was a good Lady Alice, and Mr. J. A. SHALE an efficient "Craven." Later on an operatic performance is threatened. If the thrilling series of arrangements on the back of the Programme is to be accepted as authentic, the members of the Club will be invited to have Patience. It would ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... but on one of these visits he was captured. There were six or seven other buildings near the large stone building where we took our meals, so arranged that they made a short street, the upper row being built against a cliff of rock and shale, the other row being placed halfway between this row and the river. These buildings were all of rock, of which there was no lack, plastered with adobe, or mud. One, we were told, had been Lee's stronghold, it was a square building, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... in the spring and early summer. These were the only lines of poetry and prose Father wrote. They are still very legible on the face of the landscape and cannot be easily erased from it. Gathered out of the confusion of nature, built up of fragments of the old Devonian rock and shale, laid with due regard to the wear and tear of time, well- bottomed and well-capped, establishing boundaries and defining possessions, etc., these lines of stone wall afford a good lesson in many things besides wall building. They are good literature and good philosophy. They smack of the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs



Words linked to "Shale" :   sedimentary rock



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