Wells's First Principles of Geology: A Text-book for Schools, Academies and CollegesIvison, Phinney & Company, 1864 - 333 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
abundant accumulations action agency animals and plants appear Azoic beds bones bowlders calcareous carbonate of lime Carboniferous Carboniferous system chalk character chemical clay coal coast color condition constitute contain coral Cretaceous crust crystalline deposits depth Devonian system Drift earth earth's surface earthquakes elevation Eocene epoch eruption evidence existence extensive extinct feet feldspar fishes formation fossil geological geologists glaciers globe gneiss granite gravel groups heat hornblende Hugh Miller igneous rocks inches islands lakes lamination land lava layers limestones magnesia marine mass mastodon materials matter Mesozoic metamorphic mica miles mineral Miocene mountains North America occur ocean Oolitic organic origin oxyd of iron Paleozoic period petrifaction portion present produced Prof quartz QUESTIONS.-What remains represents reptiles rivers salt sand sandstones schist shales shells silica Silurian Silurian system slate species specimens stone strata stratified rocks structure substances temperature termed Tertiary thickness tion trap Triassic valleys varieties vegetable volcanic
Popular passages
Page 320 - But this connection is not the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of different ages. There is nothing like parental descent connecting them. The fishes of the Palaeozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does man descend from the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature ; and their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming...
Page 49 - Gravel is the term applied to the water- worn fragments of rocks, when the pebbles or particles vary from the size of a pea to that of a hen's egg. It is generally composed of fragments of the harder and more silicious rocks — as these longest resist the process of attrition.
Page 320 - The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature; and their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim, in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which Geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce Man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended, from the first appearance of the first...
Page 235 - ... are overhung. The roof is covered as with a canopy of gorgeous tapestry, enriched with festoons of most graceful foliage, flung in wild, irregular profusion over every portion of its surface. The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables, with the light ground-work of the rock to which they are attached.
Page 310 - ALLUVIUM. Earth, sand, gravel, stones, and other transported matter which has been washed away and thrown down by rivers, floods, or other causes, upon land not permanently submerged beneath the waters of lakes or seas.
Page 296 - The former are from three or four inches to a foot and a half long, from a quarter of an inch to two or three inches in diameter, and of variable thickness.
Page 319 - the recognition of an ideal Exemplar for the Vertebrated Animals proves that the Knowledge of such a being as Man must have existed before Man appeared. For the Divine mind which planned the Archetype also foreknew all its modifications.
Page 160 - Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments; yet what will that tell against the accumulated labour of myriads of architects at work night and day, month after month? Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of a polypus, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering the great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which neither the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature could successfully resist.
Page 112 - A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations : the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid ; — one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.
Page 235 - ... of their primeval life ; their scaly stems and bending branches, with their delicate apparatus of foliage, are all spread forth before him, little impaired by the lapse of countless ages, and bearing faithful records of extinct systems of vegetation, which began and terminated in times of which these relics are the infallible historians...