Crossword-Solution: ARGIL 5 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

Argillaceous Rocks.—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.

The marvel has been accounted for by the escape of imprisoned air unequally expanded, but "a veil of mystery hangs over the whole."[EN#18] The valley-sides of dark trap were striped with white veins of heat-altered argil; the sole with black magnetic sand; and patches of the bed were buttercup-yellow with the Handßn (dandelion), the Cytisus, and the Zaram (Panicum turgidum) loved by camels.

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.

And that the uniformity of the mixture of the original earths, as of lime, argil, silex, magnesia, and barytes, which they contain, was owing to their boiling together a longer or shorter time before their elevation into mountains.

What are the properties of Clay? Argil, or pure clay, also called _alumina_, from its being the basis of alum, is soft to the touch, adhesive, and emits a peculiar odor when moistened;--forms a paste with water, and hardens in the fire.