leaf-gold

For however it may be thought all one, yet, if well considered, it will be found a quite different thing, to argue about gold in name, and about a parcel in the body itself, v.g. a piece of leaf-gold laid before us; though in discourse we are fain to substitute the name for the thing.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2007

Stretched in the sun, washing ears and paws, they watched her through indolent leaf-gold eyes.

The Falcons of Montabard Chadwick, Elizabeth 2004

_ -- Reaumur asserts, that in an experiment he made, one grain of gold was extended to rather more than forty-two square inches of leaf-gold; and that an ounce of gold, which in the form of a cube, is not half an inch either high, broad, or long, is beat under the hammer into a surface of 150 square feet.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 20, No. 575, November 10, 1832 Various

I afterwards cut out nine square pieces of gauze of the same colors with the ribbons, and having put them one after another on a hoop of wood, with leaf-gold under them, the leaf-gold was attracted through all the colored pieces of gauze, but not through the white or black.

A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume II: The Beginnings of Modern Science 1904

This glory he describes as “the leaf-gold which the devil has laid over the backside of ambition, to make it glitter to the world.”

Daniel Defoe Minto, William, 1845-1893 1879

This glory he describes as "the leaf-gold which the devil has laid over the backside of ambition, to make it glitter to the world."

Daniel Defoe William Minto 1869

Out of his box, in which were the most beautiful colours, the old man took a quantity of shining leaf-gold, while the boys had to go and fetch some white of egg, with which the sparrow was to be smeared all over; the gold was stuck on to this, and the sparrow-mother was now gilded all over.

Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen 1840

When a great number of copies of the same volume are to be lettered, it is found to be cheaper to have a brass pattern cut with the whole of the proper title: this is placed in a press, and being kept hot, the covers, each having a small bit of leaf-gold placed in the proper position, are successively brought under the brass, and stamped.

On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures Charles Babbage 1831

If the tooth has a small hole in it, it should be widened within by an instrument, and then stopped with leaf-gold, or leaf-lead; but should be extracted, if much decayed.

Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

Pray be quite easy about me: I am entirely recovered, though, if change were bad, we have scarce had one day without every variety of bad weather, with a momentary leaf-gold of sun.

The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 4 Horace Walpole 1757