"Gneiss" Quotes from Famous Books
... a most striking object from its artificial dome- like appearance. It is composed of granite resting on an elevated plateau of soft friable gneiss. This last in mouldering away, leaves numerous rounded boulder-like masses of granite on the surface, which from their hardness, resist the action of the atmosphere amidst the surrounding ... — Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... especially in pavements or steps, where it is subject to great wear; also in plinths and quoins of buildings where it is desired to preserve a good face and sharp arris. The order of strength and hardness of stone is—(1) Basalt, (2) granite, (3) limestone, (4) sandstone. Granite, seinite, and gneiss take the first, place for strength, hardness and durability, but they will not stand a high temperature. "Stones which are of a fine, uniform grain, compact texture and deep color are the strongest; and when the grain, color, and ... — Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... had got by some years cooler and wiser than when I wrote No. 33, describing however the undulation of the gneiss rocks, which, 'where they are, seem, to form the world,' in terms more fanciful than ... — Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... work is exclusively the province of the women. There are no circular hand-mills, as among Oriental nations; but the corn is ground upon a simple flat stone, of either gneiss or granite, about two feet in length by fourteen inches in width. The face of this is roughened by beating with a sharp-pointed piece of harder stone, such as quartz, or hornblende, and the grain is reduced to flour ... — The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... he had to build barracks for his workmen on the Isles of Tyree and Mull, and then to begin the foundation of the tower on the only one of the gneiss rocks of the reef which was broad enough for the purpose, and this is but barely so, for at high water little remains around the tower's base but a narrow band of a few feet of rugged rocks, washed into gullies by the sea, which ... — Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... This is the Chaos, so-called and justly. The side of the mountain overhead appears to have broken off bodily and fallen into the valley, and its ruins almost choke the bottom. Huge masses of granite and gneiss are scattered everywhere in savage confusion, and the road barely twines a painful way through the labyrinth. Scarcely a blade of grass, a tint of green, is to be seen about us; the tract is given ... — A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix |