Incentives to the Cultivation of the Science of Geology: Designed for the Use of the YoungGreeley & McElrath, 1846 - 189 pages |
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abundant action Agriculture alluvial ancient animal and vegetable appear aqueous beds beneath calcareous carbonic carbonic acid carboniferous causes chymical clay coal composed consists consolidated containing cretaceous crust crystalline deposites depth diluvial diluvium earth earth's surface elevated epoch evidence excavation existing species extensive Farmers feet fissures forces formation formed fossiliferous fossils fragments fusion Genesee river geological geologists German language globe gneiss gradually granite gravel GREELEY & MCELRATH heat hypersthene igneous igneous rocks inhabited lakes land limestone Lyell marine masses materials miles mineral mountains nature Niagara Niagara river numerous observes occupied ocean old red sandstone Oolite operation organic remains origin period phenomena plants portion present primary produced Professor race region revolutions rivers sand secondary strata sedimentary shales shells Silurian soil solid strata stratified rocks Strophomena subterranean succession terrestrial tertiary strata thickness tion traces unstratified upheaved valleys various vast volcanic whole York
Popular passages
Page 27 - By these researches into the state of the earth and its inhabitants at former periods, we acquire a more perfect knowledge of its present condition, and more comprehensive views concerning the laws now governing its animate and inanimate productions. When we study history, we obtain a more profound insight into human nature, by instituting a comparison between the present and former states of society. We trace the long series of events which have gradually led to the...
Page 105 - I was truly astonished, now that I had entered the hydrographical basin of the Ohio, at beholding the richness of the seams of coal, which appear everywhere on the flanks of the hills and at the bottom of the valleys, and which are accessible in a degree I never witnessed elsewhere. The time has not yet arrived, the soil being still densely covered with the primeval forest, and manufacturing industry...
Page 18 - The ruins of an older world,' said Hutton, 'are visible in the present structure of our planet, and the strata which now compose our continents have been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of the waste of pre-existing continents. The same forces are still destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechanical violence, even the hardest rocks, and transporting the materials to the sea, where they are spread out, and form strata analogous to those of more ancient date.
Page 64 - The soil therefore, is continually diminished, its parts being delivered from higher to lower levels, and finally delivered into the sea. But it is a fact, that the soil, notwithstanding, remains the same in quantity, or at least nearly the same, and must have done so, ever since the earth was the receptacle of animal or vegetable life. The soil therefore is augmented from other causes, just as much, at an average, as it is diminished by...
Page 187 - If these views of the powers and the results of geological investigation are alarming to feeble minds, they tend to exalt that science in the estimation of those who neither fear to seek TRUTH, nor dread it when found...
Page 100 - Rocks, also, produced by subterranean fire in former ages, at great depths in the bowels of the earth, present us, when upraised by gradual movements, and exposed to the light of heaven, with an image of those changes which the deep-seated volcano may now occasion in the nether regions. Thus, although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to number worlds beyond the unassisted ken...
Page 71 - Nature has not given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not permitted in His works any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as he no doubt gave a beginning, to the present system, at some determinate period...
Page 64 - ... now mentioned ; and this augmentation evidently can proceed from nothing but the constant and slow disintegration of the rocks. In the permanence, therefore, of a coat of vegetable mould on the surface of the earth, we have a demonstrative proof of the continual destruction of the rocks...
Page 89 - That the ancient seams of coal were produced for the most part by terrestrial plants of all sizes, not drifted, but growing on the spot, is a theory more and more generally adopted in modern times ; and the growth of what is called sponge in such a swamp, and in such a climate as the Great Dismal, already covering so many square miles of a low level region bordering the sea, and capable of spreading itself indefinitely over the adjacent country, helps us greatly to conceive the manner in which the...
Page 67 - ... at a great distance from one another, and these again subdivided into an infinity of smaller ramifications, it becomes strongly impressed upon the mind, that all these channels have been cut by the waters themselves; that they have been slowly dug out by the washing and erosion of the land; and that it is by the repeated touches of the same instrument, that this curious assemblage of lines has been engraved so deeply on the surface of the globe.