A Century of Science in America: With Special Reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918Yale University Press, 1918 - 458 pages |
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Academy Agassiz American geology American Journal animals appeared Asa Gray atomic weights Benjamin Silliman Berzelius biological botany Cambrian chemical chemist chemistry connection contributions Cretaceous crust Dana deposits described discovery early earth editor Edward Hitchcock electric electron elements embryology erosion ether Europe evolution experimental exploration fact faunas field formations fossils Geol geological Geological Survey geologists glacial glaciers granite groups heat Hitchcock igneous rocks important interest investigation Journal of Science knowledge known laboratory land later Louis Agassiz magnetic Marsh metamorphic methods mineralogy minerals motion mountain Museum natural history observed Ordovician organic origin paleontology Paleozoic papers period Permian petrography petrology phenomena physical present principle Professor progress publication published recent regard region relations remarkable scientific sediments showed Silliman Silurian Society species strata structure temperature Tertiary theory tion to-day Triassic United valleys vertebrates volume Yale Yale College zoology
Popular passages
Page 210 - Survey, and the classification of the public lands and examination of the Geological Structure, mineral resources and products of the national domain...
Page 199 - The public surveys shall extend over all mineral lands ; and all subdividing of surveyed lands into lots less than one hundred and sixty acres may be done by county and local surveyors at the expense of claimants ; but nothing in this section contained shall require the survey of waste or useless lands.
Page 135 - I think we cannot account for these appearances, unless we call in the aid of ice along with water, and that they have been worn by being suspended and carried in ice, over rocks and earth, under water.
Page 113 - WILL, while we have no knowledge of any other primary cause of force, it does not seem an improbable conclusion that all force may be will-force ; and thus, that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the WILL of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence.
Page 381 - This characteristic of modern experiments that they consist principally of measurements, - is so prominent, that the opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.
Page 198 - ... invalid) of the same act, hundreds of leases were granted to speculators in the Lake Superior copper region, which was, from 1843 to 1846, the scene of wild and baseless excitement. The bubble burst during the latter year ; the issue of permits and leases was suspended as illegal, and the act of 1847, authorizing the sale of the mineral lands, and a geological survey of the district, laid the foundation of a more substantial prosperity.
Page 129 - We may consider the level of the sea to be a grand base-level, below which the dry lands cannot be eroded ; but we may also have, for local and temporary purposes, other base levels of erosion, which are the levels of the beds of the principal streams which carry away the products of erosion.
Page 395 - It is hard to imagine why at the end of the eighteenth century, and at the beginning of the nineteenth...
Page 132 - ... the vallies between them ; their entire difference, in many cases, from the rocks in the country where they lie — • rounded masses and pebbles of primitive rocks being deposited in secondary and alluvial regions, and vice versa; these and a multitude of similar facts have ever struck us as being among the most interesting of geological occurrences, and as being very inadequately accounted for by existing theories."* At a later date Silliman published a letter signed
Page 107 - On the land the story of the climatic changes is different, but in general the equability of the temperature simulates that of the oceanic areas. In other words, the lands also had longenduring times of mild to warm climates. Into the problem of land climates, however, enter other factors that are absent in the oceanic regions, and these have great influence upon the climates of the continents. Most important of these is the periodic warm-water inundation of the continents by the oceans, causing...