Definition of "lydite" []

• In petrography, Lydian stone, a black or dark-colored compact, hard rock composed of minute grains of quartz with carbonaceous matter. It was used by the ancients as a touchstone for testing gold. (noun)

The Century Dictionary (Public Domain)

• "Some of the fuses of yesterday's shells have been dug up to-day, and we find from the brilliant orange colour on these that lydite had been used, in some of the shells at least."
• "_ -- The statement that the Turks used gas the other day now turns out to be false, it was ordinary lydite the Lancs. mistook for one of the new fangled German devices."
• "In fact, there's a fairly thoughtful discussion about this series in the Icke forum, which contains useful links to further information (on the second page of the discussion) about such things as the types of media used to create the sculptures and tools unearthed by archaeologists - like, what's lydite, eh?"