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

Front Cover
Little, Brown,, 1855 - 655 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 25 - The upper valve is almost invariably wanting, though occasionally found in a perfect state of preservation in the white chalk at some distance. In this case, we see clearly that the sea-urchin first lived from youth to age, then died and lost its spines, which were carried away. Then the young Crania adhered to the" bared shell, grew and perished in its turn ; after which, the upper valve was separated from the lower, before the Echinus became enveloped in chalky mud...
Page 628 - Astronomy had been unable to establish the plurality of habitable worlds throughout space, however favourite a subject of conjecture and speculation; but geology, although it cannot prove that other planets are peopled with appropriate races of living beings, has demonstrated the truth of conclusions scarcely less wonderful, — the existence on our own planet of so many habitable surfaces, or worlds as they have been balled, each distinct in time, and peopled with its peculiar races of aquatic and...
Page 118 - T/UC., eos, dawn, and irau-or, 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 55 - German geologists, streichen signifying to extend, to have a certain direction. Dip and strike may be aptly illustrated by a row of houses running east and west, the long ridge of the roof representing the strike of the stratum of slates, which dip on one side to the north, and on the other to the south.
Page 374 - ... of earthy matter in such cases. Thus in the large submerged tract called the " Sunk Country," near New Madrid, forming part of the Western side of the valley of the Mississippi, erect trees have been standing ever since the year 1811-12, killed by the great earthquake of that date ; Lacustrine and swamp plants have been growing there in the shallows, and several rivers have annually inundated the whole space, and yet have been unable to carry in any sediment within the outer boundaries of the...
Page 62 - 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...
Page 373 - ... of their identity in character with the deposits of modern deltas has increased in proportion as they have been more closely studied. They usually display a vast thickness of stratified mud and fine sand without pebbles, and in them are seen countless stems, leaves, and roots of terrestrial plants, free for the most part from all intermixture of marine remains, circumstances which imply the persistency in the same region of a vast body of fresh water. This water was also charged like that of...
Page 384 - 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.

Bibliographic information