shoad

noun

1. Loose fragments (often of metal ore) mixed with earth.

   “The earliest mining consisted simply in collecting shoads — a means of gaining a livelihood not yet totally discarded.”

   “Eluvial wolfram was known from the Mount Carbine area 50 miles northwest from Cairns before 1895, but the black shoads were at first thought to be manganese (hence the name Manganese Creek for the little creek at the village).”

   “Where the fynding of these affordeth a tempting likelihood, the tynners go to work casting up trenches before them, in depth 5 or 6 foote, more or lesse, as the loose ground went, and 3 or 4 in breadth, gathering up such shoad as this turning of the earth doth offer to their sight.”

   “As mentioned above, many of the important tin streams are well away from any outcropping tin lodes, hence shoad, so Carew oversimplified his account.”

   “In search of alluvial shoad, the miners studied the landscape, the color and nature of earths, and embedded rocks beside streams and rivers.”

verb

1. To seek for a vein or mineral deposit by following a shode, or tracing them to whence they derived.

   “In shoading it is necessary to distinguish between heavy and light ores, and between friable and hard materials.”

   “Until about 1875, the ancient methods of prospecting for a deposit whose presence was suspected from evidence such as the above were still in common use. they included shoading, trenching, and hushing.”

2. To be distributed as shoads.

   “Among the fragments shoaded down the sloping surface of the ground are pieces of edgewise intraformational conglomerate.”

   “The discovery of davidite at Radium Hill was made in 1906, by Mr. A. J. Smith, who mistook the black shoaded mineral for tin ore.”

   “Several outcrops were originally pegged in the hope that the shoaded black mineral would prove to be tin ore.”

   “They are to be seen projecting in relief from the outcrops and shoaded on the surface.”