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Clay, strictly speaking, is a mixture of silex or flint with a large proportion, usually about one fourth, of alumina, or argil; but in common language, any earth which possesses sufficient ductility, when kneaded up with water, to be fashioned like paste by the hand, or by the potter's lathe, is called a CLAY; and such clays vary greatly in their composition, and are, in general, nothing more than mud derived from the decomposition or wearing down of rocks.
A table in the centre exhibited curiosities of the rarest description: the shell of a Cauchoise cap, two argil urns, medals, and a phial of opaline glass. An upholstered armchair had at its back a triangle worked with guipure. A piece of a coat of mail adorned the partition to the right, and on the other side sharp spikes sustained in a horizontal position a unique specimen of a halberd.
It was no slight task, before pasting on the labels, to know the names of the rocks; the variety of colours and of grain made them confuse argil and marl, granite and gneiss, quartz and limestone. And the nomenclature plagued them.
There are observed, in the same hollow, small portions of quartz incrusted with an impure salt, and nodules of clay extremely compact. Near the edge of the valley there lie scattered on the sand considerable portions of flinty slate; and amid the common clay, which forms the basis of the soil, are perpendicular layers of a lamellated brown argil, assuming, as it were, the slaty structure. Dr.
Quoth Jules to Alphonse, 'My friend, we will land; we will call a fiacre; we will drive to the local Three Provincial Brothers; we will eat a succulent repast, and then for a few happy hours we will forget Blackland and these ignoble blacks. So they toiled up the stiff and slippery slope, and found a scatter of crate-huts crowning a bald head of yellow argil.
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