> as lemmas

1847 H. Howe Hist. Coll. Ohio 569 It was a saw mill, with a small pair of stones attached, made of boulders, or ‘nigger heads’, as they are commonly called.

1854 Pioneer (San Francisco) Feb. 100 After some pretty careful navigation among the..rocks and ‘nigger-heads’ that made off from the reef,..we at last effected a safe landing.

1876 J. Moresby Discov. New Guinea 3 A crowd of ‘nigger heads’, black points of coral rock, peep up in places.

1877 R. W. Raymond Statistics Mines & Mining 56 The bowlders, composed of quartz, ‘nigger heads’, and micaceous schists, are not large.

1898 E. E. Morris Austral Eng. Nigger-head, name given in New Zealand to hard blackstones found at the Blue Spur and other mining districts.

1901 Chambers's Jrnl. Sept. 634/1 He tightened his grip on the reins as he caught the dim outline of a treacherous nigger-head stone.

1908 E. J. Banfield Confessions of Beachcomber i. ii. 57 Nothing was left of the big ship save some distorted fragments of iron jammed in among the nigger-heads of coral.

1916 C. Sandburg Chicago Poems 41 A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the end of the nose [of a statue].

1948 E. N. Dick Dixie Frontier 4 Bears rolled ‘nigger head’ stones over and ate the grubs and field mice.

1971 Islander (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) 14 Nov. 10/2 When a fir tree is cut down leaving a stump of three or four feet above ground..new wood grows to encircle the old... Woodsmen..call such stumps niggerheads.

1979 R. Miller Sugarbird Lady 64 After drifting for three days it was wrecked on a coral ‘niggerhead’ about a mile from Bernier Island.