Principles of Geology: Being an Inquiry how Far the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface are Referable to Causes Now in Operation

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J. Murray, 1835 - 1692 pages
 

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Page 206 - such it be) can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science here leaves us completely at a loss, or rather seems to remove farther the prospect of probable explanation. May not, he adds, a continual current of electric matter be constantly circulating in the sun's immediate neighbourhood, or traversing the planetary spaces? &c. &c.*
Page 68 - declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact; and / abandon every thing in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and, generally, all which may be contrary to the narration of Moses."* The grand principle which
Page 364 - tons weight of mud, were to sail down the river every hour of every day and night for four months continuously, they would only transport from the higher country to the sea a mass of solid matter equal to that borne down by the Ganges in the flood season.
Page 264 - at the point now reached by the falls, a circumstance which may enable it in future to offer greater resistance to the force of the cataract.* If the ratio of recession had never exceeded fifty yards in forty years, it must have required nearly ten thousand years for the excavation of the whole ravine; but
Page 253 - The river Don," observes Mr. Farquharson, in his account of the inundations, " has upon my own premises forced a mass of four or five hundred tons of stones, many of them two or three hundred pounds weight, up an inclined plane, rising six feet in eight or ten yards, and left them in a rectangular heap,
Page 404 - that ancient writings make mention of a wood a mile and a half to the east of Dunwich, the site of which must at present be so far within the sea."* This city, once so flourishing and populous, is now a small village, with about twenty houses, and one
Page 183 - of the wide ocean, while the dicotyledonous plants and other forms now most common in temperate regions would almost disappear from the earth. Then might those genera of animals return, of which the memorials are preserved in the ancient rocks of our continents. The huge
Page 108 - IF we reflect on the history of the progress of geology, as explained in the preceding chapters, we perceive that there have been great fluctuations of opinion respecting the nature of the causes to which all former changes of the earth's surface are referrible. The first observers conceived
Page 21 - others of the same treatise*, he shows himself not unacquainted with their effects. He alludes, for example, to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands previous to a volcanic eruption. " The changes of the earth," he says, " are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked
Page 123 - peninsula. He ascertained that certain genera of living testacea were grouped together at the bottom of the sea in precisely the same manner as were their fossil analogues in the strata of the hills, and that some species were common to the recent and fossil world. Beds of shells, moreover, in the Adriatic,

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