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

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D. Appleton, 1866 - 803 Seiten

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Seite 23 - 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...
Seite 615 - Had there been even any record of their existence in the time of Pliny or Sidonius Apollinaris, the one would scarcely have omitted to make mention of it in his Natural History, nor the other to introduce some allusion to it among the descriptions of this his native province. This poet's residence was on the borders of the Lake Aidat, which owed its very existence to the damming up of a river by one of the most modern...
Seite 427 - The strata at the South Joggins are nearly three miles thick, and they are known to be also of enormous thickness in the district of the Albion Mines near Pictou, more than one hundred miles to the eastward. There appears therefore little danger of erring on the side of excess, if we take half that amount or 7500 feet as the average thickness of the whole of the coal measures.
Seite 270 - When we have once arrived at the conviction that the numraulitic formation occupies a middle place in the Eocene series, we are struck with the comparatively modern date to which some of the greatest revolutions in the physical geography of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa must be referred. All the mountain chains, such as the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, and Himalayas, into the composition of whose central and loftiest parts the nummulitic strata enter bodily, could have had no existence till after...
Seite 370 - ... was quite active. Their limbs and strong claws are admirably adapted for crawling over the rugged and fissured masses of lava which everywhere form the coast. In such situations, a group of six or seven of these hideous reptiles may oftentimes be seen on the black rocks, a few feet above the surf, basking in the sun with outstretched legs.
Seite 336 - The regular and uniform preservation of this thin bed of black earth over a distance of many miles, shows that the change from dry land to the state of a freshwater lake or estuary, was not accompanied by any violent denudation, or rush of water, since the loose black earth, together with the trees which lay prostrate on its surface, must inevitably have been swept away had any such violent catastrophe taken place.
Seite 705 - 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 called, each distinct in time, and peopled with its peculiar races of aquatic...
Seite 433 - It appears from the researches of Liebig and other eminent chemists, that when wood and vegetable matter are buried in the earth, exposed to moisture, and partially or entirely excluded from the air, they decompose slowly, and evolve carbonic acid gas, thus parting with a portion of their original oxygen. " By this means, they become gradually converted into lignite, or wood coal, which contains a larger proportion of hydrogen, than wood does.
Seite 426 - ... 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...
Seite 104 - Fig. 87, but also in No. 4, or the higher gravels, as at St. Acheul, in the suburbs of Amiens, where the old alluvium lies at an elevation of about 100 feet above the level of the river Somme. At both levels fluviatile and land-shells are met with in the loam as well as in the gravel, but there are no marine shells associated, except at Abbeville, in the lowest part of the gravel, near the sea, and a few feet only above the present high-water1 mark.

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