The New Geology: A Textbook for Colleges, Normal Schools, and Training Schools; and for the General Reader

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Pacific Press publishing association, 1923 - 726 pages

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Page 246 - There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands ; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
Page 526 - You will observe by these remains The creature had two sets of brains — One in his head (the usual place), The other at his spinal base. Thus he could reason a priori As well as a posteriori.
Page 592 - But never in the history of science did a stranger hallucination arise than that of Cuvier and the modern school, when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foundation of accurately ascertained fact. Never was a system devised in which theory was more rampant; theory, too, unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly erroneous.
Page 526 - Twas rescued by the one behind: And if in error he was caught He had a saving afterthought. As he thought twice before...
Page 308 - But that particular and essential bit of the theory of evolution which is concerned with the origin and nature of species remains utterly mysterious. We no longer feel as we used to do, that the process of variation, now contemporaneously occurring, is the beginning of a work which needs merely the element of time for its completion; for even time can not complete that which has not yet begun.
Page 584 - We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared ; and it is, no doubt, a much better world for us now they have gone.
Page 592 - Werner and his school, when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foundation of accurately-ascertained fact. Never was a system devised in which theory was more rampant ; theory, too, unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly erroneous. From beginning to end of Werner's method and its applications, assumptions were made for which there was no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demonstrable facts. The very point to be proved was taken for granted, and...
Page 531 - ... these creatures is a marvel of mechanical design; the bones of the vertebral column are of the lightest possible construction consistent with strength, the bony material being laid down only where stresses arise, and reduced to a minimum at other points. The assembled skeleton reminds one forcibly of a cantilever bridge borne on two massive piers — the limbs — between which the trunk represents the shorter channel span, and the long neck and tail the spans leading to the shores. Over the...
Page 419 - At this period of our history, some terrible catastrophe involved in sudden destruction the Fish of an area at least a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps much more. The same platform in Orkney as at Cromarty is strewed thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted, curved, the tail in many instances is bent round to the head; the spines stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in fish that die in convulsions...
Page 419 - Pterichthyes of the Lower Old Red Sandstone are to be found. We read in the stone a singularly preserved story of the strong instinctive love of life, and of the mingled fear and anger implanted for its preservation — " The champions in distorted postures threat.

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