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Silurian   Listen
adjective
Silurian  adj.  (Geol.) Of or pertaining to the country of the ancient Silures; a term applied to the earliest of the Paleozoic eras, and also to the strata of the era, because most plainly developed in that country. Note: The Silurian formation, so named by Murchison, is divided into the Upper Silurian and Lower Silurian. The lower part of the Lower Silurian, with some underlying beds, is now separated under the name Cambrian, first given by Sedwick. Recently the term Ordovician has been proposed for the Lower Silurian, leawing the original word to apply only to the Upper Silurian.






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"Silurian" Quotes from Famous Books



... ore deposits are of Silurian age, but they received their metalliferous impregnation much later, probably in the Tertiary, and subsequent to the period of disturbance in which they were elevated and metamorphosed. This is proved by the fact that in places where the rock has ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... wants, knows where it is to be found, and goes thither to take it, he is not wandering. Moreover, I have no thought of removing myself or my goods from Prague. I live here. It is a city for old men. It is saturnine. The foundations of its houses rest on the silurian formation, which is more than can be said for any other capital, as far as ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... Sleuth possessed no notepaper. She would have expected him to have made that one of his first purchases—the more so that paper is so very cheap, especially that rather dirty-looking grey Silurian paper. Mrs. Bunting had once lived with a lady who always used two kinds of notepaper, white for her friends and equals, grey for those whom she called "common people." She, Ellen Green, as she then was, had always resented the fact. Strange she should remember it now, stranger ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... life, and to which he himself attached the greatest importance. In Wales he took up the question of the age of the rocks in the neighbourhood of Dolgelly, and after much study of their fossils proposed the now accepted classification of the Lingula flags of the Lower Silurian system into the Maenturog flags and slates, the Festiniog flags, and the Dolgelly slates. The collecting of lepidoptera was his chief amusement in Brazil, where he made his first acquaintance with the teeming life of the torrid zone and laid the foundation for those observations on tropical ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... one other geological term, bequeathed to us by a great authority, and which cannot be changed for the better: I mean that of Geological Horizon, applied by Humboldt to the whole extent of any one geological division,—as, for instance, the Silurian horizon, including the whole extent of the Silurian epoch. It indicates one level in time, as the horizon which limits our view indicates the farthest extension of the plain on which we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the name applied to series of stratified fossiliferous and igneous rocks that were formed during the Devonian period, that is, in the interval of time between the close of the Silurian period and the beginning of the Carboniferous; it includes the marine Devonian and an estuarine Old Red Sandstone series of strata. The name "Devonian" was introduced in 1829 by Sir R. Murchison and A. Sedgwick to describe ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... in which are imbedded angular fragments of older strata, possibly sandstone, converted into schist, which, though carried along in the molten mass, still retain impressions of plants of a low order, probably the lowest—Silurian—and distinct ripple marks and raindrops in which no animal markings have yet been observed. The fewness of the organic remains observed is owing to the fact that here no quarries are worked, no roads are made, and as we advance north the rank vegetation ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... Finland, and the northwest of the British area, and to have extended thence through boreal and arctic latitudes into North America. Of the height and mass of this primeval land some idea may be formed by considering the enormous bulk of the material derived from its disintegration. In the Silurian formations of the British Islands alone there is a mass of rock, worn from the land, which would form a mountain-chain extending from Marseilles to the North Cape (1800 miles), with a mean breadth of over thirty-three miles, and an ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... "greensands" of the geologist were largely made up of casts of a similar character, and proved the existence of Foraminifera at a very ancient geological epoch, by discovering such casts in a greensand of Lower Silurian age, which occurs near ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... profit, the evenings of several Saturdays. I formed, at this time, my first acquaintance with the Palaeozoic shells, as they occur in the rock—an acquaintance which has since been extended in some measure through the Silurian deposits, Upper and Lower; and these shells, though marked, in the immensely extended ages of the division to which they belong, by specific, and even generic variety, I have found exhibiting throughout a unique family type or pattern, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... structure than in any of the forms we have hitherto considered. Forms closely related to it occur among the earliest remains of vertebrata that are to be found in the geological record. Since the immeasurably remote Silurian period, sharks and dog-fish have probably remained without any essential changes of condition, and consequently without any essential changes of structure, down to the present day. Then, as now, they dominated the seas. They probably branched off from ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... part of its range in Kentucky and Indiana, is due in a great measure to this cause, together with the solvent and eroding effects of water charged with carbonic acid. The 'rock-houses' frequently encountered both in this formation and in the limestones of Silurian date, are produced by similar causes; the more easily disintegrated beds gradually crumbling away, while the more durable remain in overhanging ledges. By the oxidation of other elements, sulphates of oxide of iron and alkalies result, which, by double decomposition, ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen

... Shackleton also found in lat. 85deg. 15' S. beds of limestone, which he regards as underlying and being older than the sandstone. In the limestone, which is also on the whole horizontally bedded, only radiolaria have been found. The limestone is probably of older Palaeozoic age (? Silurian). It is, therefore, tolerably certain that the underlying older formation of gneisses, crystalline schists and granites, etc., is of Archaean age, and belongs ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... of this continent, north-west of Minnesota, and known as the Saskatchewan district, is estimated by English authorities to comprise 368,000 square miles. North-west from Otter Tail Lake, the geographical centre of Minnesota, extends a vast silurian formation, bounded on the west along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains by coal measures. Such a predominance of limestone implies fertility of soil, as in the north-western States, and the speedy colonisation ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... division between Canada and the States was the first American land lifted above the ocean. That land belongs to the Azoic period, and contains no trace of life. Along the base of that range of hills lie the deposits of the next great geological period, the Silurian; and the State of New York, geologically speaking, belongs almost entirely to this Silurian period, with its lowest Taconic division, and the Devonian period, the third in succession of these great epochs. I need hardly remind those of my readers who have travelled through New York, and have visited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... invader. Before the dawn of history, Heaven knows what shadowy Belgae and Iceni enslaved it. But historical time will serve our purpose. The Roman enslaved it, but left Caledonia and Hibernia free, the Cambrian, the Silurian, the Cornishman half-subjugated. The Saxon and Anglian enslaved the east, but scarcely crossed over the watershed of the western ocean. The Dane, in turn, enslaved the Saxon in East Anglia and Yorkshire. The Norman ground ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... time and space to describe some of the beautiful bacteria and gigantic worms that formerly inhabited the earth. Such an aggregation of actual, living Silurian monsters, any one of which would make a man a fortune to-day, if it could be kept on ice and exhibited for one season only. You could take a full grown mastodon to-day, and with no calliope, no lithographs, no ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... attending one of Buckland's lectures—the whole language you hear is geological and philosophic. About a dozen men, with little tables before them, are dispersed over the latter part of the ascent, and keep tempting you with "fossiliferous specimens of the oolite formation," "tertiary," "silurian," "saurian," "stratification," "carboniferous." It was quite wonderful to hear such a stream of learning, and to see, at the same time, the vigour of these terrene philosophers in polishing their specimens upon a whetstone, laid upon their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... United States revenue stamps were printed on a paper which had a few bits of silk fibre scattered through it. The paper called granite or silurian has a quantity of colored threads mixed with the pulp. In Switzerland blue and red threads were used, giving the paper a slightly grayish tone. In Servia only red threads were used but in sufficient quantity to make the paper ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff

... geologist under such circumstances would have studied the nature of the rocks that we were passing. I am sure I did trouble my head about them. Pliocene, miocene, eocene, cretaceous, jurassic, triassic, permian, carboniferous, devonian, silurian, or primitive was all one to me. But the Professor, no doubt, was pursuing his observations or taking notes, for in one of our halts he said ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... anatomy; men skinned and galvanized, not men alive and in action. In the same way in landscape, do you think Turner would have painted the strata in an old quarry, or done Ben Cruachan more to the quick, had he known all about geology, gneiss, and graywacke, and the Silurian system? Turner might have been what is called a better-informed man, but we question if he would have been so good, not to say a better representer of the wonderful works of God, which were painted on his retina, and in his inner chamber—the true Camera lucida, the chamber of imagery ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... covered by a sheet of Old Red Sandstone (Fig. 64), but, just to the north-east of the position laid down for the originating fault (indicated by the straight broken line), is the well-known Woolhope anticlinal, by which Silurian beds are brought to the surface. The anticlinal axis runs approximately north-west and south-east, and is thus roughly parallel to the earthquake-fault. Moreover, the thinning-out and occasional disappearance of some of the ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... problems that it presents one might mention the petrological questions connected with the intrusion of the great masses of granite, and their relation to the slates and associated metamorphic rocks. Of fossiliferous systems there is a fine display of material ranging in age from Silurian to Upper Trias, and additional interest is added by the long-continued volcanic eruptions of the "Panjal trap." Students of recent phenomena have at their disposal interesting problems in physiography, including a grand display of glaciers, and the extensive deposits ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... case just cited, that he has himself in past times been misled by trusting to lithological evidence; yet his reasoning all through Siluria, shows that he still thinks it natural to expect formations of the same age to be chemically similar, even in remote regions. For example, in treating of the Silurian rocks of South Scotland, he says:—"When traversing the tract between Dumfries and Moffat, in 1850, it occurred to me, that the dull reddish or purple sandstone and schist to the north of the former town, which so resembled the bottom ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... an era of fire was followed by an era of water. At first there was ocean everywhere. Then, during the Silurian period, the tops of mountains gradually appeared above the waves, islands emerged, disappeared beneath temporary floods, rose again, were fused to form continents, and finally the earth's geography settled into what we have today. Solid matter had wrested from liquid matter some ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... continued to trot out the members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... borne out by later experience. He says:—"While, however, there are not apparent signs of mechanical disturbances, during the long period that elapsed from the cooling of the earth's surface to the deposition of the Silurian and Cambrian systems, it is to be presumed that the internal igneous activity of the earth's crust was in full force, so that on the inner side of it, in obedience to the laws of specific gravity, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... a place called absurdly enough Paris, from the quantity of gypsum with which the neighbourhood abounds; and fine specimens of silurian fossils of the trilobite family and of madrepores, millepores, and corallics, are found here. Love's Hotel is the best in the village, and a good ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... same kind may be found in every sub-kingdom. The 'Globigerina' of the Atlantic soundings is identical with that which occurs in the chalk; and the casts of lower silurian 'Foraminifera', which Ehrenberg has recently described, seem to indicate the existence at that remote period of forms singularly like those which now exist. Among the corals, the palaeozoic 'Tabulata' ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley

... in New York from early times to the present. Here you will see a beautiful panorama of what it looked like two hundred million years ago right where we are sitting and standing now when the seas overlay the area during the Devonian and Silurian times. We have reconstructed the little sea creatures that lived in the rocks in their ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various



Words linked to "Silurian" :   Paleozoic, geological period



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