Crossword-Solution: MELANITE 8 letters, 6 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 10

Smokeless powders came into use, the explosive properties of picric acid were discovered, and melanite, ballistite, and cordite appeared in the last quarter of the century, so that by 1890 nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin-base powders had generally replaced black powder as a propellant.

The chief of this class is the melanite, sometimes dull, yet often vitreous; it is mostly found in volcanic rocks, such as tuff; this variety is very popular with jewellers for mourning ornaments, for as it is a beautiful velvet-black in colour and quite opaque, it is pre-eminent for this purpose, being considerably less brittle than jet, though heavier.

The abundance of melanite is very unusual in igneous rocks, though some syenites, leucitophyres, and aegirine-felsites resemble borolanite in this respect.

There would be a pair of them, would there not? What an explosive power there was in him! for in the mind, as in your melanite, force packs small." "And Shelley? Where is Shelley?" "Where the bee sucks, I suspect; for he is the very Ariel of our company; ever, even here, in search of the unattainable! But he is a great favourite with all of us, he is so lovable." "And the poet who has delighted my own generation," I inquired.