Outlines of Geology

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John Murray, 1829 - 234 pages
 

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Page 41 - Thus in the whole machinery of springs and rivers, and the apparatus that is kept in action for their duration, through the instrumentality of a system of curiously constructed hills and valleys, receiving their supply occasionally from the rains of heaven, and treasuring it up in their everlasting storehouses to be dispensed perpetually by thousands of never-failing fountains, we see a provision not less striking than it is important.
Page 210 - ... of changes, and alternately wasted away and renovated. In the same manner, as the present mineral substances derive their origin from substances similar to themselves ; so, from the land now going to decay...
Page 8 - But her hour is come, she is wiped away from the face of the earth, and buried in everlasting oblivion. But...
Page 12 - I think it is more to be admired, that he has laid down an hypothesis, whereby he has explained so many wonderful and before inexplicable things in the great changes of this globe, than that some of them should not easily go down with some men; when the whole was entirely new to all. He is one of those sort of writers, that I always fancy should be most esteemed and encouraged: I am always for the builders, who bring some addition to our knowledge, or at least some new things to our thoughts.
Page 161 - ... and simplicity of style which it possesses ; still the prolonged length, the twilight gloom, half concealing the playful and varying effects of reflected light, the echo of the measured surge as it rises and falls, the transparent green of the water, and the profound and fairy solitude of the whole scene, could not fail strongly to impress a mind gifted with any^sense of beauty in art or in nature.
Page 233 - The Author of nature has not given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction.
Page 13 - Let a number of leaves of paper, of several different sorts or colours, be pasted upon one another; then bending them up together into a ridge in the middle, conceive them to be reduced again to a level surface, by a plane so passing through them, as to cut off all the part that had been raised; let the middle now be...
Page 8 - What does not fade ? the tower that long had stood The crash of thunder and the warring winds, Shook by the slow, but sure destroyer, Time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base ; And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass Descend ; the Babylonian spires are sunk ; Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Page 13 - ... large tracts of mountainous countries, together with the parts adjacent, throughout the whole world. From this formation of the earth it will follow, that we ought to meet with the same kinds of earths, stones, and minerals, appearing at the surface in long narrow slips, and lying parallel to the greatest rise of any large ridge of mountains ; and so, in fact, we find them.
Page 187 - Just, is wrought eighty fathoms in length under the sea, below low-water mark, and the sea in some places is but three fathoms over the back of the workings, insomuch, that the tinners underneath hear the break, flux, ebb, and reflux, of every wave, which, upon the beach overhead, may be said to have had the run of the Atlantic Ocean, for many hundred leagues, and consequently are amazingly powerful and boisterous. They also hear the rumbling noise of every nodule and fragment of rock, which are...

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