pisoliten.

1708 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 26 79 Pisolithus, The Pisolite, or Gland.

1788 J. H. De Magellan tr. A. F. Cronstedt Ess. Syst. Mineral. (rev. ed.) I. 76 The Stalagmites..get a mammillary form, whilst the Stalactites acquire a conic figure: the Oolithes and Pisolites belong to the same species.

1851 G. F. Richardson Introd. Geol. (1855) vi. 158 Occasionally each pisolite encloses in its centre a grain of foreign substance.

1893 Q. Jrnl. Geol. Soc. 49 127 The series for some distance above the typical Pea-grit..contains here and there aggregations of brown pisolites.

1925 National Geographic Mag. 48 313 These spherical bodies are known to geologists as pisolites and to jewelers as cave pearls.

1974 Encycl. Brit. Macropædia XVI. 466/2 Pisolites are similar to oolites and range from two to about ten millimetres (0·4 inch) in diameter.

1995 A. M. Cvancara Field Man. Amateur Geologist (rev. ed.) xvi. 201 Limestone..may consist of several constituents: organic remains such as fossil shells or coral..; carbonate rock particles; oolites or pisolites; [etc.].

1816 W. Smith Strata Identified 19 The Pisolite Freestone beneath [the Coral Rag] is softer.]

1845 J. Phillips & C. G. B. Daubeny Geol. in Encycl. Metrop. VI. 629/2 This is a nodular rock with very indistinct stratification and much irregularity of texture, occasionally with ova three-tenths of an inch in diameter, constituting what is called pisolite.

1868 J. D. Dana Syst. Mineral. (ed. 5) 679 Pisolite..consists of concretions as large often as a small pea.

1931 S. J. Shand Study of Rocks xi. 153 Oolite and pisolite are limestones built up of little spheroidal bodies resembling the roe of fishes or heaps of peas.

1962 H. H. Read & J. Watson Introd. Geol. I. v. 266 Other chemical limestones are not of much account; they include deposits from calcareous springs, such as pisolite, tufa and travertine.

1992 D. J. Mabberley Trop. Rain Forest Ecol. (ed. 2) 233 The pisolites of parts of West Africa are some 10m deep with no obvious horizons.

1913 Amer. Jrnl. Sci. 185 612 Imbedded in this ash are to be found innumerable ‘pisolites’.., which, being of aërial formation, speak even more eloquently of an ash-laden atmosphere.

1948 R. R. Shrock Sequence in Layered Rocks vi. 331 Concentrically laminated..mud pellets a centimeter or so in diameter have been observed to fall during several volcanic eruptions... They have been called ‘mud pellets’, ‘mud balls’, ‘tuff balls’, ‘mud raindrops’, ‘fossil raindrops’, ‘volcanic pisolites’, ‘volcanic hailstones’, [etc.].

1968 Classical Philol. 63 196/2 When heavy rains fall during an eruption, the ash particles often become aggregated into spherules called ‘pisolites’, or ‘eruptive rain’.