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Pumice   /pˈəməs/   Listen
Pumice

noun
1.
A light glass formed on the surface of some lavas; used as an abrasive.  Synonym: pumice stone.






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"Pumice" Quotes from Famous Books



... this time broken, and a stir and bustle commenced in front of the long line of casemates; the elephants were brought out from their stables and stood rocking themselves from side to side while their keepers rubbed their hides with pumice stone. Nessus was one of those who was appointed to make the great flat cakes of coarse flour which formed the principal food of the elephants. The other Arabs busied themselves in bringing in fresh straw, which Malchus scattered evenly over the stall; heaps ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty

... mountain is situated at the western end of the island; it is an exhausted volcano, called in books of navigation, charts, &c., Mount Misery. The summit of this mountain is 3,711 feet above the sea; it appears to consist of large masses of volcanic rocks, roasted stones, cinders, pumice, and iron-clay. The whole extent of land, to the sea-shore on either side, may be considered as the base of this mountain, as it rises with a pretty steep ascent towards it; but from the part which is generally considered the foot of the mountain, it takes a sudden rise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... accumulation of froth. Even in an 8 1/2 inch reflector I have frequently seen the outer slope of the large ring-plain on the north-western side of Vendelinus, so perforated with these objects that it resembled pumice or vesicular lava, many of the little holes being evidently not circular, but square shaped and very irregular. The interior of Stadius and the region outside abounds in these minute features, but the well-known crater-row between this formation and Copernicus seems rather to consist of a number ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... the south side a long line of perpendicular cliffs commences, which exposes a section of the geological nature of the country. The strata are of sandstone, and one layer was remarkable from being composed of a firmly-cemented conglomerate of pumice pebbles, which must have travelled more than four hundred miles, from the Andes. The surface is everywhere covered up by a thick bed of gravel, which extends far and wide over the open plain. Water is extremely ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... those crossed by us on our route from the Murray. In these bare hills and on the open grassy plains, old vesicular lava abounded; small loose elongated fragments lay on the round hills, having a red scorified appearance and being also so cellular as to be nearly as light as pumice. We this day crossed several fine running streams and forests of box and bluegum growing on ridges of trappean conglomerate. At length we entered on a very level and extensive flat, exceedingly green and resembling an English park. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... Pumice moistened with concentrated sulphuric acid may be used in place of the calcium chloride, and is essential in special cases; but for most purposes the calcium chloride, if renewed occasionally and not allowed to cake together, is ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... tooth powders or pastes to be used with the brush, the simplest are the best. Plain camphorated chalk, with or without a little finely powdered pumice stone or burnt hartshorn, is a popular and excellent tooth powder. It is capable of exerting sufficient friction under the brush to ensure pearly whiteness of the teeth without injuring the enamel, whilst the camphor in it tends to destroy the animalcula in the secretions ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... rose where soundings now give a depth of water of over 1,300 feet. A sudden break up of the mountain probably produced this abyss, and formidable eruptions have led to the pouring forth of immense quantities of pumice-stone. The three islets mentioned above would be the remains of the old central cone, and a bed of pumice-stone from 98 to 131 feet thick is spread over the whole of their surface, telling of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... astonished at the remains of this city; I had no conception of anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea of the mode of its destruction was this: First, an earthquake shattered it, and unroofed almost all its temples, and split its columns; then a rain of light small pumice-stones fell; then torrents of boiling water, mixed with ashes, filled up all its crevices. A wide, flat hill, from which the city was excavated, is now covered by thick woods, and you see the tombs ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... finished arranging the material in its frame, was about drawing with pumice the pattern of the cope, joined in the conversation and said: "These first warm days of spring are sure to give me ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... cleaning elegant chimney pieces, or other articles made of alabaster, is to reduce some pumice stone to a very fine powder, and mix it up with verjuice. Let it stand two hours, then dip into it a sponge, and rub the alabaster with it: wash it with fresh water and a linen cloth, and dry it with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... they merely observed, that sharks were too vicious to ride; and asked me to accompany them to their town, an invitation which I gladly accepted. As I walked along I observed that the island was composed of white porous pumice stone, without the least symptoms of vegetation; not even a piece of moss could I discover—nothing but the bare pumice stone, with thousands of beautiful green lizards, about ten inches long, playing about in every part. The road was steep, and in several parts the rock ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... rains. No more than four years have passed since the formation of the bank began. It is now a shrubbery made by the incessant and tireless sea from materials hostile, insipid, and loose-sand, shells, and coral debris, with pumice from some far-away volcano. On this newly made, restricted strip one may peep and botanise without restraint, discovering that though it does not offer conditions at all favourable to the retention of moisture, plants of varied ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... quality of surface that appears more or less in works of marble is produced by rubbing with fine sand or pumice-stone and other substances, and the ancients appear to have completed this part of their work by a process which is called 'circumlitio,' and may mean not only rubbing or polishing, but applying some composition, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... off the varnish, not in rubbing it on, as in French polishing. To polish varnish, rub with a felt pad, powdered pumice-stone and water. Rub till the surface is smooth, unpitted and even, being careful not to rub thru the edges. Wipe clean with a wet sponge and chamois skin. This gives a dull or "egg-shell" finish. For polishing varnish, a simple method is to rub with ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... the helpless one, whose existence was so dear. What did take place we know with an exactness very remarkable. That distant mountain which reared its awful head on the shore of the bay, Vesuvius, was troubled that same night with an eruption, and threw into the air such clouds of pumice-stones that the streets and squares of Pompeii became filled, and gradually the stones grew higher and higher, until they reached the level of the windows. There was no chance of escape then by the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... had evidently been convulsed by subterranean force. Here and there stray blocks, numerous debris of basalt and pumice-stone, were met with. In isolated groups rose fir-trees, which, some hundred feet lower, at the bottom of the narrow gorges, formed massive shades almost impenetrable to the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... copper of a convenient size are carefully planished and polished with powdered pumice stone. The sensitive mixture is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various

... that mess worse than it is," said Meldon, "and covering your own fingers all over with ink in such a way that it will take days of careful rubbing with pumice-stone to get them clean, perhaps you'll go on telling me why you call this fellow Simpkins a meddlesome ass. I was up early this morning, owing to the baby's being restless during the night. Did I mention to you that she's got whooping-cough? Well, she ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... old writer from uncleannesses that cause him now to be a name only where he should be a power. Dr. Francklin has understood his work in that way better than Dr. Bowdler did. He does not Bowdlerise who uses pumice to a blot, but he who rubs the copy into holes wherever he can find an honest letter with a downstroke thicker than becomes a fine-nibbed pen. A trivial play of fancy in one of the pieces in this volume, easily removed, would have ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... along till he came to the gate post, and bending down, he cautiously peeped round to see if he could detect anyone idling, or talking, or smoking. There was no one in sight except old Jack Linden, who was rubbing down the lobby doors with pumice-stone and water. Hunter noiselessly opened the gate and crept quietly along the grass border of the garden path. His idea was to reach the front door without being seen, so that Linden could not give notice of his approach to those ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... English Historie, those particular vanities, that with their Frostie vapours, nip the blossomes of euery braine, from attaining to his intended perfection. As pleasant as profitable, being a right Pumice stone, apt to race out idlenesse with delight, and folly with admonition. By Robert Greene, In artibus Magister. Omne tulit punctum. London, Printed by William Stansby for Iohn Smithwicke, and are to bee sold at his Shop in Saint Dunstanes Churchyard in Fleete-streete ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg

... out pumice, ashes, and sulphureous vapours. In the great crisis of 1812, indeed, the volcano was quiet, leaving the Souffriere of St. Vincent to do the work; but since then he has shown an ugly and uncertain humour. Smoke by day, and flame by night—or probably that light reflected from below which ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... profound night, only broken by the blue and sulphurous flashes which darted from the pitchy cloud. Soon the thick rain of thin, light ashes, almost imperceptible to the touch, fell upon the land. Then quickly succeeded shower of small pumice stones and heavier ashes, and emitting stifling eruptic fumes. After a time the sounds of approaching torrent were heard, and soon streaming rivers of dense black mud poured slowly but irresistibly down the mountain sides, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... epistle points out the bookseller's shop opposite the Julian Forum where his works may be obtained "smoothed with pumice stone and decorated with purple." Seneca mentions books ornamented "cum imaginabus." Varro is related by the younger Pliny to have illustrated his works by pictures of more than seven hundred illustrious persons. Martial dwells on the edition ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... torrent of mud consisting of ashes and cinders mixed with water. The mass which covers it, so far from being less favorable to the preservation of objects, is much more favorable than that which covers Pompeii. Pompeii was partially covered with hot ashes and pumice stones, which burnt or damaged the works of art. As it was not wholly covered, moreover, the inhabitants returned and dug up some of their greatest treasures. Herculaneum, on the other hand, had its actual life, arrested at the highest point, securely preserved from depredation, to a depth ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... so much calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and all the phenomena of that dreadful scene. He was now so close to the mountain that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumice stones, and black pieces of burning rock: they were in danger too not only of being aground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled down from the mountains, and obstructed all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... in extremo est antrum nemorale necessu, "Arte laboratum nulla, simulaverat artem "Ingenio natura fuo nam pumice vivo, "Et lenibus tophis nativum duxerat arcum "Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidas unda "Margine ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... may be restored to their original whiteness by rubbing with sandpaper and emery; mineral soap or pumice stone may be used for the same purpose. Nice table cutlery packed away for a season may be kept from rusting by covering the metal portion with a thin coating of paraffine. Rust may be removed from steel by scouring ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... but soon Rosa also arrived, and after tea I put all my books in order, redressed my dolls, got rid of the ink on my hands with pumice-stone, and in between each task, took a turn in the garden on the passing of any coach-but always with the same result! Would they ever arrive? Then came supper-time. Catalina had been up and dressed all day and would not hear of going ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... Cork without flaws or holes, bored through with a hot Iron, and a Quill of a fit proportion put into it; then pared into a pyramidal Form, or in the fashion of a small Peare, to what bigness you please, and ground smooth with a Grindstone or Pumice; this ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... Challenger expedition into the nature of the sea-bottom show, that the whole of the land debris brought down by rivers to the ocean (with the exception of pumice and other floating matter), is deposited comparatively near to the shores, and that the fineness of the material is an indication of the distance to which it has been carried. Everything in the nature of gravel ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... without hope of escape or strength to fight; but, with Indian stoicism, all sat waiting their inevitable doom from freebooters whom they had disappointed of their prey. As the emperor and his nobles sat here witnessing the destruction of their pumice-stone palaces and mud-built huts, and the filling up of their canals, they consoled themselves with the reflection that their gold and their wealth were all at the bottom of these canals, and that the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... what had become of Bompard, and with lips dry as pumice stone she began to climb till she reached the point where she had sat that morning. If the mud had taken Bompard, had he cried out? If so, La Touche would have heard his cries, for the caves were not so ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... worthy of a stronger term than "moderate," was very obvious. Although at a distance, as we have said, of four miles, the glare of its fires on the three figures perched near the top of Rakata was very intense, while explosion after explosion sent molten lava and red-hot rocks, pumice, and dust, high into the thickening air—clouds of smoke and steam being vomited forth at the same time. The wind, of which there was very little, blew it all away from the position occupied by the ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... stuck it out for a month at the mill I'd have known that he had the right stuff in him somewhere and have taken him back into the office after a good rub-down with pumice-stone. But he turned up the second day, smelling of violet soap and bone-meal, and he didn't sing his list of grievances, either. Started right in by telling me how, when he got into a street-car, all the other passengers sort of faded out; and how his landlady insisted on serving his meals ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... minerals into their component elements, i.e. their analysis; but he sought by synthesis, i.e. by combining the separate elements and forming substances similar to those constructed by nature, to prove the accuracy of his processes and the correctness of his conclusions. Thus he formed, for instance, pumice-stone, feldspar, mica, iron ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... the gasometer is so calculated that the acetylene produced by a single one of the compartments, F, may be stored up therein upon its exit from the gasometer through the pipe, K. The acetylene traverses a purifying column, I, filled with pumice stone saturated with a solution of sulphate of copper and surmounted by a thin layer of carbide of calcium. The object of the sulphate of copper is to free the gas from phosphorus and arseniuret of hydrogen. The layer of carbide ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various

... question, to the latter part of the twelfth century. Whoever wrote this story of Dante must have been at the economical pains to erase carefully the ecclesiastical script, thus curiously avenging so many palimpsests of Greek poets and Latin poets, whose lyrics have been scrubbed away with pumice-stone to make room for homilies and liturgies and hagiologies. If the writer of the story be indeed Lappo Lappi, it would be quite in keeping with his character, as we know it, to imagine him enjoying very greatly this process of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a cloth or brown paper under the edges and bringing it over them. In cleaning the tops, let the covering fall down over the boot; wash the tops clean with soap and flannel, and rub out any spots with pumice-stone. If the tops are to be whiter, dissolve an ounce of oxalic acid and half an ounce of pumice-stone in a pint of soft water; if a brown colour is intended, mix an ounce of muriatic acid, half an ounce of alum, half an ounce of gum Arabic, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... June, two small birds were caught; they proved to be the Java swallow (Hirundo esculenta), the nest of which is esteemed as a great delicacy, and is an article of trade between the Malays and Chinese. Large quantities of pumice-stone were also seen floating on the water; on one piece was found a sea centipede (Amphinome sp.), about four inches long, covered with fine bristly hair; it was feeding upon two barnacles (Lepas anatifera) which had ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... were going to make such a denial," remarked coach coolly, "I'd be sure to have a piece of pumice stone, and I'd use it often to take away ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... island is very rocky, except the part we landed at, and here I picked up many pieces of pumice-stone. On the part of the main next to us were several sandy bays, but at low-water they became an extensive rocky flat. The country had rather a barren appearance, except in a few places where it was ...
— A Narrative Of The Mutiny, On Board His Majesty's Ship Bounty; And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew, In The Ship's Boat • William Bligh

... enquir'd why it was so exceeding light a body? my Microscope could presently inform me that here was the same reason evident that there is found for the lightness of froth, an empty Honey-comb, Wool, a Spunge, a Pumice-stone, or the like; namely, a very small quantity of a solid body, extended into ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... suggested by Morel, but it is a question whether its action on the impurities would not be too violent and whether it would be free from action on the acetylene itself. The use of arsenious oxide dissolved in a strong acid, and the solution absorbed in pumice or kieselguhr has been protected by G. F. Jaubert. The phosphine is said to combine with the arsenic to form an insoluble brownish compound. In 1902 Javal patented a mixture of 1 part of potassium permanganate, 5 of "sulphuric acid," and 1 of water absorbed in 4 parts of infusorial earth. ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... Refreshed with gentle winds, and brown with shade, The chaste Diana's private haunt, there stood Full in the centre of the darksome wood A spacious grotto, all around o'ergrown 20 With hoary moss, and arched with pumice-stone. From out its rocky clefts the waters flow, And trickling swell into a lake below. Nature had everywhere so played her part, That everywhere she seemed to vie with art. Here the bright goddess, toiled and chafed with heat, Was wont to bathe her in the cool retreat. ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... tempestuous, the volcanic. He liked words—big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling, thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound, but not otherwise. He loved to stand up before a dazed world, and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and pumice-stone into the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and shake himself with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes. If he consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... elevations which are now parts of a continent were once islands next its shore. In the deeper seas far removed from the margins of the continents the islands are made up of volcanic ejections of lava, pumice, and dust, which has been thrown up from craters and fallen around their margin or are formed of coral ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... favours the action, but does not alter its character; Sir Humphry Davy's incandescent platina wire being the same phenomenon with Doebereiner's spongy platina. They show that all metals have this power in a greater or smaller degree, and that it is even possessed by such bodies as charcoal, pumice, porcelain, glass, rock crystal, &c., when their temperatures are raised; and that another of Davy's effects, in which oxygen and hydrogen had combined slowly together at a heat below ignition, was really dependent upon the property of the heated glass, ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... season from November to April, dry season from May to October; little seasonal temperature variation Terrain: five volcanic islands with rugged peaks and limited coastal plains, two coral atolls (Rose Island, Swains Island) Natural resources: pumice, pumicite Land use: arable land: 10% permanent crops: 5% meadows and pastures: 0% forest and woodland: 75% other: 10% Irrigated land: NA km2 Environment: typhoons common from December to March Note: Pago ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... thousand feet the ocean bottom is sheeted with red or chocolate colored clay. It is the insoluble residue of seashells, of the debris of submarine volcanic eruptions, of volcanic dust wafted by the winds, and of pieces of pumice drifted by ocean currents far from the volcanoes from which they were hurled. The red clay builds up with such inconceivable slowness that the teeth of sharks and the hard ear bones of whales may be dredged in large numbers from the deep ocean bed, where they ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... burning pitch scattering here and there, the palanquin bobbing up and down, the mountain sloping up to the clouds behind, and down into darkness before. We descended this time into the old crater—a great plain of dust and pumice-stone. All was gloomy around; but the lights of Naples and Portici could be distinguished in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... blue-grey, leaden ice lay full of water, while as for the ice itself, it was blinding in its expansive glitter, even though in places it had come to be either cracked or bulbous, or had ground itself into powder with its own movement, or had become heaped into slushy hummocks of pumice-like sponginess and the consistency of broken glass. And everywhere around me I could discern the chilly, gaping smile of blue crevices which caught at my feet, and rendered the tread of my boot-soles unstable. And ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... coral and sand, thickly covered with trees at one part, and scattered bushes at another. The low woody portion of this island is strewed with flat blocks of the same kind of recent coral conglomerate that occurs in situ on the beach, also with quantities of pumice twelve feet above high-water mark of spring tides. There is little underwood, the trees overhead forming a shady grove. Herbaceous plants are few in number—of the others I shall only mention a wild nutmeg, Myristica cimicifera, not, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... different part of New Holland, on the eastern coast, when Flinders was exploring Pumice-stone River, near Moreton Bay, he was by no means successful in striking the natives with awe and astonishment. A hawk having presented itself to view, he thought this afforded a good opportunity of showing his new friends, the inhabitants of the Bush, a specimen of the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... his room, "Pumice stone! Pumice stone! Pumice stone! Go to the chemist's and get some pumice stone.... Very well then, sir, don't stand there ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... and my vein of genius not too rich. No Hercules will reward my travail, so do not expect of me the birth-pangs that are torturing Virgil. I have time to look abroad on life and to correct tears by wine and laughter while my hands are busy with the file and pumice-stone. Before you know it, the billboards of the Sosii will announce the completed work, and the dedication shall show Rome who is ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... a saline taste. The ground has been dug out near the fountain by the natives, in order to extract the salt it contains. It is situated among rocks of syenitic porphyry in broad dikes, and gneiss tilted on edge, and having a strike to the N.E. There are many specimens of half-formed pumice, with greenstone and lava. Some of the sandstone strata are dislocated by a hornblende rock and by basalt, the sandstone nearest to the basalt being converted ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... forest. It only lasted half an hour, but it was a deluge. In a shower of the same kind at Tezcuco, a day or two before, rain to the amount of 1-1/10 inches fell in the hour. By dusk we reached the highest habitation in North America, the place where the sulphur used to be sublimed from the pumice brought down from the crater. This place was shut up, for the undertaking has been abandoned; but in a rancho close by we found some Indian women and children, and there we took up our quarters. The rancho was a circular hut, built and thatched ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... disturbances in this same year, 1783. We are told by Lyell and Geikie, that there were great volcanic eruptions in and near Iceland. A submarine volcano burst forth in the sea, thirty miles southwest of Iceland, which ejected so much pumice that the ocean was covered with this substance, to the distance of 150 miles, and ships were considerably impeded in their course; and a new island was formed, from which fire and smoke and ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... a dozen straw huts. Thence the road for a long distance winds through vast deposits of volcanic debris, the only sign of vegetation being hedges of aloe and cactus. Arid hills and dreary plains, covered with plutonic rocks and pumice dust, tell us we are approaching the most terrible volcano on the earth. Crossing the sources of the Pastassa, we entered Latacunga,[16] situated on a beautiful plain at the foot of Cotopaxi, seven hundred feet higher ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... interference from camphor, the following treatment is suggested by H. Zaunschirm (Chem. Zeit., xiv., 905). Dissolve a weighed quantity of the celluloid in a mixture of ether- alcohol, mixed with a weighed quantity of washed and ignited asbestos, or pumice-stone, dry, and disintegrate the mass, and afterwards extract the camphor with chloroform, dry, and weigh: then extract with absolute methyl-alcohol, evaporate, weigh, and examine the ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... scene we have no definite information; but numerous flints and stone-weapons have been found among the black pumice breccias of the Campagna mixed with remains of the primitive bison, the elephant, and the rhinoceros. Human eyes must therefore have gazed upon the volcanoes of the Roman plain. Human beings, occupying the outposts of the Sabine Hills, must have seen that plain broken up by the sea into a complicated ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... subito commota Columba, Cui domus, et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi, Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis Dat tecto ingentem—mox aere lapse quieto, Radit iter ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... enthusiasms, "in those great deeds to have had some little part"; and is it not a sort of poor anti-climax for a world that has gone through such noble excitement to have sunk back to this level of every day! Alas! all those lava-like moments of human exaltation—what are they now, but, so to say, the pumice-stone of history. They have passed as the summer flowers are passing, they are ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... quarters, three races (Italian, Slav and Austrian), and three winds (Sirocco, Bora, and Contraste)." One brilliant man of letters had been connected with the town, namely Marie-Henry Beyle, better known by his pen name, Stendhal, [273] who, while he was French Counul here, pumice polished and prepared for the press his masterpiece, La Chartreuse de Parme, which he had written at Padua in 1830. To the minor luminary, Charles Lever, we have already alluded. Such was the town in which the British Hercules was set to card wool. The Burtons occupied ten rooms at the top of a block ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... the subject of fire-proof structures, I will add a few words upon fire-proof safes. These are all constructed with double casings of wrought iron, the interstices being in some filled with non-combustible substances, such as pumice stone and Stourbridge clay, and in others with metal tubes, that melt at a low temperature, and allow a liquid contained in them to escape, and form steam round the box, with the intention of preventing the heat from injuring the contents. Such safes I have never found ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... 4,000 feet above the level of the sea; Haboob about 4,500.] the country is well wooded, and watered by innumerable small streams. The soil is formed of the detritus of the volcanic rocks, specially of feldspar; pumice abounds in the ravines. The channels of the rivulets are the only roads for the traveller. This mountain chain is, on the whole, a pleasant spot, more delightful for the reason that it rises between the arid shores of the Red Sea and the flat, hot, and level plains of the Soudan. The province ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... of a prior was so abominable that it could not be borne, and then came the very difficult and very delicate business of getting him deposed: a process which was by no means easily managed, as appeared in the instance of Simon Pumice, Prior of Worcester, in 1219, and in many ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... the horns firmly somewhere and attack first with rasp, then file, scrape with glass, fine sandpaper, finer sandpaper, powdered pumice stone, putty powder. Finish with oiled rag. Old bison horn, weathered on the prairies till they resemble old roots, can be made to look like polished ebony by the above formula. Don't forget to add the elbow ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... wanted it to be real white," said Sarah, sure that he would understand, "so I used a cucumber and buttermilk and a lemon and I scrubbed it afterward with pumice stone." ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... as big as the "Sword of Bunker Hill," were used to scrape down the rough body coats of paint, and a smooth surface, on which to stamp the geometrical figures in colors, was fetched after long and laborious polishing with bricks and pumice stone. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... Anaxagoras, that the circumambient aether is of a fiery substance, which, by a vehement force in its whirling about, did tear stones from the earth, and by its own power set them on fire, and establish them as stars in the heavens. Diogenes thinks they resemble pumice stones, and that they are the breathings of the world; again he supposeth that there are some invisible stones, which fall sometimes from heaven upon the earth, and are there quenched; as it happened at Aegos-potami, where a stony star resembling ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... on the opposite side of the sheet. The ink placed upon such erasures has a peculiar bluish tinge. It happens at times that a whole page is taken out, either by scratching or rubbing with pumice (which was the practice in the eleventh century, when a parchment became so valuable that it was common to keep up the supply by erasing the writing on old parchments) or ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... governed; Each with his Lamb about the Mountaines skip, O're Hills they lightly trip. By these a spacious brooke doth slowly glide, Which with a spreading tyde Through bending Lilyes, banks of Violets From th'hollow Pumice sweats. ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski

... figs for his daily repast; a third who cut his hair only on Easter Sunday, who never washed his clothes, who never changed his tunic till it fell to pieces, who starved himself till his eyes grew dim, and his skin like a pumice stone.... For six months, it is said, St. Macarius of Alexandria slept in a marsh, and exposed his naked body to the stings of venomous flies.... His disciple, St. Eusebius, carried one hundred and fifty pounds of iron, and lived for three years in a dried-up well.... ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... many other additions may be mentioned: ox-gall or derivatives therefrom (for carpet-cleaning soap), alkali sulphides (for use of lead-workers), aniline colours (for home-dyeing soaps), pumice and tripoli (motorists' soaps), pine-needle oil, in some instances together with lanoline (for massage soaps), pearl-ash (for soap intended to remove oil and tar stains), magnesia, rouge, ammonium carbonate, chalk (silversmiths' soap), powdered orris, precipitated ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... ignorant of Arabic; so I could not tell them in what way I wished to be treated, and they handled me as roughly as if I had been a Moor inured to hardship. Kneeling with one knee upon the ground, each took me by a leg and began rubbing the soles of my feet with a pumice stone. After this operation on my feet, they put their hands into a small bag and rubbed me all over with it as hard as they could. The distortions of my countenance must have told them what I endured, but they rubbed on, smiling at each other, and sometimes giving me an encouraging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... using graded emery, as will be explained, but, in general, it is unnecessary to attempt a finer surface than can be got with washed flour emery. A superficial and imperfect polish may be given by grinding for a short time with powdered pumice stone. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... family in a place not far from Pompeii. His adopted son, the younger Pliny, a youth of eighteen, spirited, quick, and talented, was also with him. Vesuvius broke into eruption on August 24 in the year 79, and in a few hours Pompeii and two other towns were buried under a downpour of pumice and ashes, and streams of lava and mud. Among the victims ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... dono lepidum novom libellum Arida modo pumice expolitum? Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas Meas esse aliquid putare nugas, Iam tum cum ausus es unus Italorum 5 Omne aevum tribus explicare chartis Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis. Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli, Qualecumque, quod o patrona virgo, Plus uno ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... wild conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the shrinking city.[656] The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to marble, is the substance composing the bank in which ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... collection of cave-dwellings all artificial, the Balmes du Montbrun, a volcanic crater of the Coiron, near S. Jean le Centenier in the Vivarais. The crater is 300 feet in diameter and 480 feet deep; and man has burrowed into the sides of porous lava or pumice to form a series of habitations, a chapel, and one that is traditionally said to have served as a prison. This rock settlement was occupied till the close of ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... of low gossips. She loathed the sight of the effeminate young fops who tried to win her smiles by presenting themselves for a polite call each morning, polished and furbelowed, and rubbed sleek and smooth with Catanian pumice. Her mother disgusted her so utterly that she began to entertain the most unfilial feeling toward the worthy woman. Cornelia would not or could not understand that in such hot weather it was proper to wear lighter rings than in winter, and that each ring must be set carefully ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... remember one part where the ragged cliffs and cone-like bluffs, partly washed away by the rains, and partly crumbled down by the frosts, seemed to be composed of earths of a mineral kind, of clay of different colours and of red pumice stone. The clay was white, brown, yellow and deep blue; while the pumice stone, lit up by the sunbeam, was red like vermilion. The loneliness, the wildness and romantic beauty of the scene I ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... water, then they shampoo you with fresh layers of soap, and then douche again. They give you iced sherbet, and tie towels dipped in cold water round your head, which prevent you fainting and make you perspire. They scrub your feet with pumice- stone, and move you back through all the rooms gradually, douche you with water, and shampoo you with towels. You now return to the large hall where you first undressed, wrap in woollen shawls, and recline on a divan. The place is all strewn with flowers, incense is burned around, and a ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... matters the other way? Has she been tried and found wanting? Is she impotent, or deformed; or is Cho[u]bei making fools of us?" Answered Cho[u]bei slowly—"No; she is a little ugly. The face round and flat, shining, with black pock marks, making it look like speckled pumice, rouses suspicion of leprosy. This, however, is not the case. At all events she is a woman." All were now roaring with laughter—"A very beauty indeed! Just the one for Cho[u]bei's trade! Too honied was his speech. He would market anything. But in this market it is ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... especially when I observed that the water was covered with greenish yellow objects, which at a first hasty glance I took for spawn of some kind. We soon had buckets and nets over the side, and fished up some of the floating particles, which proved to be bits of pumice-stone, rounded by the action of the waves, and covered with barnacles from the size of a pin's head upwards. So thickly were they encrusted that it was almost impossible to recognise the original substance at all. The barnacles, with their long cirri projecting and retracting quickly ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... nothing that was wanting. Then were added all the graces of belles lettres—all the approved rules of being delighted with music, painting, and poetry—and last of all came the tour of the continent; travelling being generally considered a sort of pumice stone, for rubbing down the varnish, and giving the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... dono lepidum novom libellum arida modo pumice expolitum? Corneli, tibi; namque tu solebas meas esse aliquid putare nugas iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum omne aevom tribus explicare chartis, doctis, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... fir and tamarack have spread over the once barren slopes of lava and pumice which extend back from the cliffs. In the hollows, after the lingering winter snows have melted, there are grassy meadows dotted with flowers. It is many miles from the lake to any human habitation, and all the region about remains just ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... that my entire life had been a dream, ridiculous and puerile, the falseness of which had just been disclosed. Desgenais was seated near the lamp at my side; he was firm and serious, although a smile hovered about his lips. He was a man of heart, but as dry as a pumice-stone. An early experience had made him bald before his time; he knew life and had suffered; but his grief was a cuirass; he was a materialist and ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... of the remains of many species of this order (and amongst them some Antarctic ones) in the volcanic ashes, pumice, and scoriae of active and extinct volcanoes (those of the Mediterranean Sea and Ascension Island, for instance) is a fact bearing immediately upon the present subject. Mount Erebus, a volcano 12,400 feet high, of the first class in dimensions ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... too. Things are all piled up on me." Sandford applies a fresh layer of pumice to the swiftly moving polishing wheel, with practised accuracy. "Tell Harry I'm sorry; but ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... absolute bareness of the cone became apparent the instant that I stepped out of the shadow of the pines, for I immediately plunged ankle-deep in a loose deposit of ashes and pumice-stone that yielded to my tread and slid away under me to such an extent as to make progress almost impossible. But I was determined not to be beaten; and at length, after a full hour's violent exertion, I found myself, breathless and with my clothing saturated with perspiration, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... Scotland, 600 miles away, in such quantities as to destroy the crops. During the eruption of Tomboro, in the East Indies, in 1815, so great was the quantity of dust thrown up that it caused darkness at midday in Java 300 miles away and covered the ground to a depth of several inches. Floating pumice formed a layer on the ocean surface two and a half feet in thickness, through which vessels had difficulty in ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... thousands of lives, noting at the same time, with an unshaken composure and freedom of mind, the several phenomena of the eruption. Towards night, as we approached to the foot of Mount Vesuvius, our galleys were covered with ashes, the showers of which grew continually hotter and hotter; then pumice stones and burnt and broken pyrites began to fall on our heads, and we were stopped by the obstacles which the ruins of the volcano had suddenly formed, by falling into the sea and almost filling it up, on that ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... whetstone, sometimes variegated with blacker or whiter veins, as marble; or in pieces, as brecciae; and common writing slate, as well as a coarser sort; but we saw none of them in their natural state; and the natives brought some pieces of a coarse whitish pumice-stone. We got also a brown sort of haematites, which, from being strongly attracted by the magnet, discovered the quantity of metal that it contained, and seems to belong to the second species of Cronstedt, though Linnaeus has placed it amongst his intractabilia. But its variety could not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... Uncle Jack, bounding up as if ha had been shot. "And do you think I have a heart of stone, of pumice-stone? Do you think I don't repent? I have done nothing but repent; I shall ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... people fleeing from the villages to the mountains. And even as they fled thin smoke broke from the great white peak, and then a faint flash of flame. Then the volcano began to throw up its mysterious fiery inside parts. The earth trembled; ashes and sulphur showered down; a rain of fine pumice-stone fell like snow on all the dry land. The elephants from the forest rushed up towards the peaks; great lizards thirty yards long broke from the mountain pools and rushed down towards the sea. The snows ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit

... now trailed across with the rubber hoof-marks of "the popular steed of today," was a pathless wilderness, and on the maps a blank. Striking the famous "sand-papered roads " at Framingham - which, by the by, ought to be pumice-stoned a little to make them as good for cycling as stretches of gravelled road near Springfield, Sandwich, and Piano, Ill.; La Porte, and South Bend, Ind.; Mentor, and Willoughby, O.; Girard, Penn.; several places on the ridge road between ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... two days after we stood at Pele threshold again. Now red scoria and pumice and sulphur boiled and rolled where the hard lava had frayed our boots. Within thirty-six hours Kilauea has sprung from its flameless sleep into sulphurous life and red roaring grandeur. Though Pele came but slowly, she came; and a lake of fire beat at the lofty sides of the volcanic cup. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... answers the same purpose: Take two parts of soda, one of pumice stone and one of finely-powdered chalk. Sift these through a fine sieve and mix them into a paste with water. Rub this well all over the marble and the stains will be removed; then wash it with soap and water and a beautiful bright polish will ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... behind the work-table on which his belongings were laid out: a set of small instruments in a case, a tray filled with shells and bits of onyx and other agates, a yellow ball of Cyrenian modeling-wax, pumice-stone, bottles, boxes, and bowls. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... cottony cloud. Then a regular pyramid, at this season white as snow, shows its gnomon-like point, impaling the cumuli. Hour by hour the outlines grow clearer, till at last the terminal cone looks somewhat like a thimble upon a pillow—the cumbre, or lofty foundation of pumice-plains. But the aspect everywhere varies according as you approach the island from ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... "It is pumice-stone—one of the old industries of the place. They excavate it on the hill-side yonder. Volcanic stuff. There are several suchlike indications of subterranean fires; a hot spring, for instance, which the people regard with a kind of superstitious awe. It is dedicated to Saint Elias and believed ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... hand, all the country around, far as the eye can reach, is level as the bosom of a placid lake. And otherwise unlike a volcanic crater is the concavity itself. No gloom down there, no black scoriae, no returning streams of lava, nor debris of pumice-stone; but, on the contrary, a smiling vegetation—trees with foliage of different shades, among which can be distinguished the dark-green frondage of the live-oak and pecan, the more brilliant verdure of cottonwoods, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... in the case of that catapult accident the other day the man said he discharged it merely to display its operation. Or a person might suppose a son to be an enemy, as Merope did; or that the spear really pointed was rounded off; or that the stone was a pumice; or in striking with a view to save might kill; or might strike when merely wishing to show another, as people do ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... of all sorts of preparations long before the eventful date came round. Ten days at least before it arrived the Guinea-pigs and Tadpoles were wont secretly to buy pumice-stone for their finger ends, and used one by one to disappear casually into Maltby and come back with their hair cut. Then the Fourth Senior, who were for ever getting up testimonials to their master (they gave him a testimonial on an average ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... but light woods are almost certain to become stained by polishing powders and fluid. To avoid this modern marquetry is often covered with varnish applied with friction like French polish, or laid on in several coats with a brush and polished off with pumice and rotten stone, like the Vernis Martin, being first levelled with a file or ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson

... century; this vast turbary measured in certain ravines had in many places a depth of seventy feet, and presented layers of carbonized remains of vegetation alternating with thinner layers of tufaceous pumice. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... woman. The vestibule, paved in black and white marble, with its walls painted to resemble marble, was lighted by an antique lamp with four jets. The architect had combined richness with simplicity. A narrow red carpet relieved the whiteness of the stairs, which were polished with pumice-stone. The first landing gave an entrance to the entresol; the doors to each appartement were of the same character as the street-door, but of finer ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... on ships' bottoms from the Mediterranean, West Indies, South America, Mauritius, Coast of Africa and the East-Indian Archipelago. Central Pacific Ocean. China Sea. Chusan. Sydney. Attached to pumice, various species of fuci, Janthinae, Spirulae; often associated with L. anatifera and L. Hillii, and, in a ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... and out along each of its four sides, and strings being made fast to these skewers, the skin is very tightly stretched; it is carefully scraped over as it lies on the stretch, by which means the water is squeezed out; then it is rubbed with rough stones, as pumice or sandstone, after which it is allowed to dry, the strings by which the skewers are secured being tightened from time to time. If this parchment be used for writing, it will be found rather greasy, but washing it will oxgall will probably ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... parts of the chain of Mount Atlas at the foot of which is the city of Morocco, is not, like those points, covered with perpetual snows. The Piton, or Sugar-loaf, which terminates the peak, no doubt reflects a great quantity of light, owing to the whitish colour of the pumice-stone thrown up by the crater; but the height of that little truncated cone does not form a twenty-second part of the total elevation. The flanks of the volcano are covered either with blocks of black and scorified lava, or with a luxuriant vegetation, the masses of which reflect ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... the mountains were still rising in their active volcanic state, I saw but little evidence of a marked sort of the growth of living creatures upon their loose piles of pumice. Gradually, however, I observed that spores of lichens, blown towards them by the wind, were beginning to sprout upon the more settled rocks, and to discolour the surface in places with grey and yellow patches. Bit by bit, as rain fell upon the new-born hills, it brought down from their weathered ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... precious to her for their affecting remembrancings. They were her principia, her rudiments; the elementary atoms; the little steps by which she pressed forward to perfection. "What," she would say, "could Indian rubber, or a pumice stone, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... well acquainted with the archipelago of the Lipari Islands with their mines of sulphur and pumice-stone,—a group of volcanic peaks which rise up from the depths of the Mediterranean. In these the ancients had placed Aeolus, lord of the winds; in these was Stromboli, vomiting forth enormous balls of lava which exploded ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... Galveston, San Antonio, El Paso and other Texas points after having been duly advertised in the daily press. He was elevated to the chief magistracy of the state, and the slugging matches continued—mills between brawny but unskilled boxers, who relied upon brute strength, and pounded each other to a pumice to make a hoodlum holiday. Some of these meetings were especially brutal—as matches between amateur athletes are likely to be; but "our heroic young Christian governor" saw no occasion to get his Ebenezer up. He simply sawed wood—didn't care a continental whether there was ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann



Words linked to "Pumice" :   pumice stone, rub, rock, stone



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