lapidific

Updated: May 31, 2025

Another opinion might have been added, that some throe of nature has forced up parts which had been the bed of the ocean. But have we any better proof of such an effort of nature, than of her shooting a lapidific juice into the form of a shell?

Thomas Jefferson - Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1

No such convulsion has taken place in our time, nor within the annals of history: nor is the distance greater, between the shooting of the lapidific juice into the form of a crystal or a diamond, which we see, and into the form of a shell, which we do not see, than between the forcing volcanic matter a little above the surface, where it is in fusion, which we see, and the forcing the bed of the sea fifteen thousand feet above the ordinary surface of the earth, which we do not see.

Thomas Jefferson - Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1