Principles of Geology: Being an Inquiry how for the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface are Referrable to Causes Now in Operation, Volume 3

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John Murray, 1835 - Geology
 

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Page 40 - In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless...
Page 350 - Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt ; yet faithful how they stood, Their glory wither'd : as when Heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath.
Page 348 - The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful ? Thither let us tend...
Page 146 - I mean such transported matter as has been thrown down, whether by rivers, floods, or other causes, upon land not permanently submerged beneath the waters of lakes or seas, — I say permanently submerged, in order to distinguish between alluviums and regular subaqueous deposits.
Page 245 - ... what might have been the course of nature at a remote period, rather than in the investigation of what was the course of nature in their own times. It appeared to them more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past, than patiently to explore the realities of the present, and having invented theories under the influence of such maxims, they were consistently unwilling to test their validity by the criterion of their accordance with the ordinary operations of nature. On the contrary,...
Page 41 - Reaumur has proved that in five generations one aphis may be the progenitor of 5,904,900,000 descendants ; and it is supposed that in one year there may be twenty generations.* Mr.
Page 188 - From an examination of Lloyd's lists from the year 1793, to the commencement of 1829, it has appeared that the number of British vessels alone lost during that period amounted, on an average, to no less than one and a half daily *, a greater number than we should have anticipated, although we learn from Moreau's tables that the number of merchant vessels employed at one time in the navigation of England and Scotland, amounts to about twenty thousand, having one with another a mean burden of one hundred...
Page 280 - ... mentioned. It is evident that where such accidents occur the want of continuity in the series may become indefinitely great, and that the monuments which follow next in succession will by no means be equidistant from each other in point of .time. If this train of reasoning be admitted, the...
Page 247 - ... requisite mineral ingredients. All are now agreed that it would have been impossible for human ingenuity to invent a theory more distant from the truth; yet we must cease to wonder, on that account, that it gained so many proselytes, when we remember that its claims to probability arose partly from its confirming the assumed want of all analogy between geological causes and those now in action. By what train of investigation were all theorists brought round at length to an opposite opinion, and...
Page 61 - Some have complained that inscriptions on tomb-stones convey no general information, except that individuals were born and died — accidents which happen alike to all men. But the death of a species is so remarkable an event in natural history, that it deserves commemoration ; and it is with no small interest that we learn from the archives of the University of Oxford, the exact day and year when the remains of the last specimen of the Dodo, which had been permitted to rot in the Ashmolean Museum,...

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