Conversations on Geology: Comprising a Familiar Explanation of the Huttonian and Wernian Systems : the Mosaic Geology

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S. Maunder, 1828 - 371 páginas

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Página 118 - The new bank is not long in being visited by sea-birds: salt plants take root upon it, and a soil begins to be formed ; a cocoa-nut, or the drupe of a pandanus, is thrown on shore; land birds visit it, and deposit the seeds of shrubs and trees ; every high tide, and still more every gale, adds something to the bank ; the form of an island is gradually assumed ; and last of all, comes man to take possession.
Página 153 - Potomac, in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea.
Página 262 - Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.
Página 40 - Nor ever yet The melting rainbow's vernal-tinctur'd hues To me have shone so pleasing, as when first The hand of Science pointed out the path In which the sun-beams gleaming from the west Fall on the watery cloud, whose darksome veil Involves the orient...
Página 261 - And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Página 153 - The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains, and have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that continuing to rise they have at length broken over at this spot, and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base.
Página 118 - ... salt water; and the interstices being gradually filled up with sand and broken pieces of coral washed by the sea, which also adhere, a mass of rock is at length formed. Future races of these animalcules erect their habitations upon the rising bank, and die in their turn to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of their wonderful labours.
Página 328 - The head remained, covered by the dried skin, and the pupil of the eyes was still distinguishable. The brain also remained within the skull, but a good deal shrunk and dried up; and one of the ears was in excellent preservation, still retaining a tuft of strong bristly hair. The...
Página 155 - ... running over them. Should this have been the case, there must have been a large lake behind that mountain, and by some uncommon swell in the waters, or by some convulsion of nature, the river must have opened its way through a different part of the mountain, and meeting there with less obstruction, carried away with it the opposing mounds of earth, and deluged the country below with the immense collection of waters to which this new passage gave vent. There are still remaining, and daily discovered,...
Página 118 - The care taken to work perpendicularly in the early stages, would mark a surprising instinct in these diminutive creatures. Their wall of coral, for the most part in situations where the winds are constant, being arrived at the surface, affords a shelter, to leeward of which their infant colonies may be safely sent forth ; and to this their instinctive foresight it seems to be owing, that the windward side of a reef exposed to the open sea is generally, if not always, the highest part, and rises...

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