The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 18

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Page 125 - Gift of the State of New York. 13034, 0. 5. Sixth annual report of the Regents of the University of the State of New York on the condition of the State Cabinet of Natural History, &o.
Page xxxviii - It negatives those doctrines ; for it either shows us no evidence of any such modification, or demonstrates it to have been very slight ; and as to the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever that the earlier members of any long-continued group were more generalized in structure than the later ones.
Page xxxi - ... the clue furnished by the naturalist. All who are competent to express an opinion on the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power ; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law.
Page 198 - The relative position in the silt, from which the canoes were exhumed, could help us little in any attempt to ascertain their relative ages, unless they had been found vertically above each other. The varying depths of an estuary, its banks of silt and sand, the set of its currents, and the influence of its tides in scouring out alluvium from some parts of its bottom and redepositing it in others, are circumstances which require to be taken into account in all such calculations. Mere coincidence...
Page 256 - THE GENEALOGY OF CREATION, newly Translated from the Unpointed Hebrew Text of the Book of Genesis, showing the General Scientific Accuracy of the Cosmogony of Moses and the Philosophy of Creation. 8vo. cloth, 14s.
Page xxxvii - What then does an impartial survey of the positively ascertained truths of palaeontology testify in relation to the common doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose that modification to have taken place by a necessary progress from more to less embryonic forms, or from more to less generalized types, within the limits of the period represented by the fossiliferous rocks...
Page 10 - But it would have been very much better for geology if so loose and ambiguous a word as " contemporaneous " had been excluded from her terminology, and if, in its stead, some term expressing similarity of serial relation, and excluding the notion of time altogether, had been employed to denote correspondence in position in two or more series of strata. In anatomy, where such correspondence of position has constantly to be spoken of, it is denoted by the word " homology " and its derivatives ; and...
Page 275 - White and grey crystalline limestone, with bands of shale and beds of graphite 600 feet or more. 8. Gneissose and other metamorphic beds, with bands of quartzrock and slate. Thickness unknown. The Devonian age of the upper members of this great series of beds I regard as established by their fossils*, taken in connexion with the unconformable superposition of the Lower Carboniferous conglomerate. The age of the lower members is less certain. They may either represent the Middle and Lower Devonian,...
Page xxx - ... the absolute synchronism of two strata can be demonstrated. All that geology can prove is local order of succession. It is mathematically certain that, in any given vertical linear section of an undisturbed series of sedimentary deposits, the bed which lies lowest is the oldest. In any other vertical linear section of the same series, of course, corresponding beds will occur in a similar order...
Page xxx - ... no man can say with absolute certainty that the beds in the two sections were synchronously deposited. For areas of moderate extent, it is doubtless true that no practical evil is likely to result from assuming the corresponding beds to be synchronous or strictly contemporaneous; and there are multitudes of accessory circumstances which may fully justify the assumption of such synchrony. But the moment the geologist has to deal with large areas, or with completely separated deposits, the mischief...

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