A Manual of Elementary Geology: Or, The Ancient Changes of the Earth and Its Inhabitants as Illustrated by Geological Monuments

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J. Murray, 1855 - 655 pages
 

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Page 99 - ... people the antipodes, or which now coexist in the arctic, temperate, and tropical zones. It appears, that from the remotest periods there has been ever a coming in of new organic forms, and an extinction of those which pre-existed on the earth ; some species having endured for a longer, others for a shorter, time ; while none have ever reappeared after once dying out.
Page 243 - Kotzebue, stating that the inhabitants of the Radack Archipelago, a group of lagoon islands in the midst of the Pacific, obtained stones for sharpening their instruments by searching the roots of trees which are cast upon the beach.
Page 639 - This has been accomplished without violation of the laws now governing the organic creation, by which limits are assigned to the variability of species. The succession of living beings appears to have been continued, not by the transmutation of species, but by the introduction into the earth from time to time of new plants and animals...
Page 279 - ... daylight, substantially as I had supposed it to be. It was not so large, however, as it had seemed to me by the aid of the moon, though its general character was the same. The basin in which the ship lay might have covered a hundred and fifty acres in extent, the belt of land which encircled it, varying in breadth from a quarter of a mile to three miles. Most of the island was an open grove, lying at an elevation of from ten to thirty feet above the ocean ; and we ascertained there were several...
Page 116 - TJWC, eos, dnwn, and •.-aivoc, cainos, recent, because the fossil shells of this period contain an extremely small proportion of living species, which may be looked upon as indicating the dawn of the existing state of the testaceous fauna, no recent species having been detected in the older or secondary rocks.
Page 396 - Horizontal galleries may be driven everywhere at very slight expense, and so worked as to drain themselves, while the cars, laden with coal and attached to each other, glide down on a railway, so as to deliver their burden into barges moored to the river's bank...
Page 327 - ... was quite active. Their limbs and strong claws are admirably adapted for crawling over the rugged and fissured masses of lava which everywhere form the coast. In such situations, a group of six or seven of these hideous reptiles may oftentimes be seen on the black rocks, a few feet above the surf, basking in the sun with outstretched legs.
Page 327 - Sometimes," says Dr. Buckland, " scarcely a single bone or scale has been removed from the place it occupied during life ; which could not have happened had the uncovered bodies of these saurians been left, even for a few hours, exposed to putrefaction, and to the attacks of fishes, and other smaller animals at the bottom of the sea...
Page 387 - Ganges, in the basin of which the fall of rain is much heavier, and where nearly all comes down in a third part of the year, so that the river is more turbid than if it flowed in temperate latitudes. In reference to the Ganges, also, it may be well to mention, that its delta presents in one respect a striking parallel to the Nova Scotia coal-field ; since at Calcutta, at the depth of eight or ten feet from the surface, buried trees and roots have been found in digging tanks, indicating an ancient...
Page 60 - An epoch still more remote presented itself, when even the most ancient of these rocks, instead of standing upright in vertical beds, lay in horizontal planes at the bottom of the sea, and was not yet disturbed by that immeasurable force which has burst asunder the solid pavement of the globe. Revolutions still more remote appeared in the distance of this extraordinary perspective. The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of...

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