United States or Faroe Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Alexander, who was witty, said the French had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk and wooden spurs, because they rode unarmed in slippers and sent couriers before them to select their quarters. It remained to be seen that the achievements of this conquest could be effaced as easily as a chalk mark is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden spurs are broken.
In some ways, however, Thanet, under the Romans, must have shared in the general advance of the country. Solinus says it was 'glad with corn-fields' felix frumentariis campis but this could only have been on the tertiary slope facing Kent, as agriculture had not yet attempted to scale the flanks of the chalk downs.
She ran away in terror with the dog hanging to the end of her arm, which he held between his teeth. At daybreak she arose, almost beside herself, and ran to the chalk pit. He was yelping, yelping still; he had yelped all night. She began to sob and called him by all sorts of endearing names. He answered her with all the tender inflections of his dog's voice.
Quite a tide was washing past the cliff faces of the ice; it all looked very white, like chalk, while the sun was near the northern horizon, but later in the afternoon blue and green shadows were cast over the ice, giving it a softer and much more beautiful appearance.
Beside the skeleton was placed a vase containing red chalk, to be used for painting the body in the new world it was supposed to be about to enter. We could quote similar discoveries in Sicily, Belgium, and the southern Pyrenees. Beneath the tumulus of Plouhennec, in Brittany, bones were strewn about in the greatest disorder.
We must not close this account of the art efforts of the men of the Stone age without mentioning the remarkable discovery by M. Siette, of flints covered with lines and geometrical designs colored with red chalk. These are the very earliest examples of the art of painting which have hitherto come to our knowledge.
And thus, while the differences between the living creatures of the time before the chalk and those of the present day appear startling, if placed side by side, we are led from one to the other by the most gradual progress, if we follow the course of Nature through the whole series of those relics of her operations which she has left behind.
You can almost see the warrior as he lies there 'in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; his spear against his arm; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and men.
He broke off, struck silent by a wholly unexpected display of energy on the part of Tots, who had suddenly hurled a piece of chalk at him from the other end of the room. It hit him smartly on the shoulder, leaving a white patch to testify to the excellence of Tots's aim. "I beg your pardon," said Tots mildly. "But you really shouldn't talk such rot, particularly in the presence of my fiancée."
Had it been declared that we are living in the Eocene epoch, the idea would not be so extravagant, for the great reptiles of the Upper Chalk, the Mosasaurus, Pliosaurus, and Pterodactyle, and many others, as well as so many genera of chambered univalves, had already disappeared from the earth, and the marine fauna had made a greater approach to our own by nearly the entire difference which separates it from the fauna of the Cretaceous seas.
Word Of The Day