[f. prec.]
1. trans. To furnish with, or surround like, a zone or girdle; to gird, encircle.
1795. Monthly Rev., Dec., 542. Her population … had zoned every bill with vines and with olive-trees.
1795. Anna Seward, Lett. (1811), IV. 105. Our road zoned the midway of the Alpine steeps which overhung it.
1813. Scott, Trierm., II. iv. Art she invokes to Nature’s aid, Her vest to zone, her locks to braid.
1818. Keats, Endym., II. 569. I could hear he lov’d Some fair immortal, and that his embrace Had zoned her through the night.
1853. Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxviii. (1856), 237. The southeastern horizon is zoned with a mellow uniform band of light.
2. Nat. Hist. To mark with zones, rings, or bands of color. (Only in pa. pple.)
1792. Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 2), III. 433. Auricularia papyrina…. Annual, membranaceous, soft, zoned.
1854. Dana, Min. (ed. 4), II. 148. Egyptian Jasper is zoned with colors, and forms nodules.
1871. Darwin, Desc. Man, II. xiv. 131. A variety of the common pigeon with the wing-bars symmetrically zoned with three bright shades.
3. Geol., etc. To divide into zones; to distribute or arrange in zones: see ZONE sb. 7.
1904. Edin. Rev., Jan., 222. The Ordovician and Silurian rocks have been zoned by means of their graptolites.
Hence Zoning vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1819. Keats, Fall Hyperion, I. 312. Not so much air As in the zoning of a summer’s day.
1853. Alex. Smith, Life Drama, ii. When first they clasped a Son of God … In zoning heaven of their milky arms.
1865. Tennyson, On a Mourner, v. When the zoning eve has died.
1888. Nature, 5 July, 225. What Mr. Lockyer has called the zoning of colour in the heavens.
1904. Edin. Rev., Jan., 220. The zoning of the strata.
