Essay on the Theory of the Earth

[138] The person named Satyavrata plays the same part as Noah, by saving himself with fourteen saints. See Sir W. Jones, Calcutta Memoirs, vol. i. p. 230. 8vo edition;--also in...

[279] I am indebted for the knowledge of this animal to the Count de Bournon; and as I have not described it in my great work, I have given a figure of it here. See Plate II. fi...

Great masses of water moving rapidly, have a marked transporting power. Striking examples of this power have but too often been seen in Holland, by the breaking down of the dike...

[31] My work has, in fact, proved how far this inquiry was yet new when I commenced it, notwithstanding the excellent labours of Camper, Pallas, Blumenbach, Merk, Sömmering, Ros...

They would, therefore, have to search in the heavens for an apparent sign of its return, and they imagined they had found this sign when the sun returned to the same position, r...

In 1799, a cave, remarkable for its situation, was discovered, which connects in some measure those of the _Hartz_ with those of _Franconia_. It is the Cave of _Glücksbrun_, in...

When I assert that human bones have never been found among fossil organic remains, (I must be understood to speak of fossils or petrifactions, properly so called), or, in other...

Mr Chamisso, who accompanied Kotzebue in his voyage, has published interesting observations on this subject. He informs us that the low islands of the South Sea and Indian Ocean...

Ice effects the transportation of rocks and debris, with a power which nothing can resist. This is no where more conspicuous than among the glaciers of the Alps, by the falling...

It was upwards of five and twenty feet long; its large jaws were armed with very strong conical teeth, a little arcuate, and marked with a ridge, and it had also some of these t...

There is a fourth species still (_Rh. minutus_), furnished, like the second, with incisors, but of a much smaller size, and scarcely larger than a hog[307]. It was undoubtedly r...

The chronology of none of the western nations can be traced in a continuous line farther back than 3000 years. None of them afford us, previous to that period, nor even two or t...

In my work on Fossil Bones, the object which I proposed was to discover to what animals the osseous remains, with which the superficial strata of the globe are filled, may have...

We even find the first productions of these mollusca and zoophytes appearing in small numbers, and scattered at greater or less distances, in the last strata of these primitive...

The strata which cover the bones of elephants are not of very great thickness, and they are scarcely ever of a rocky nature. They are seldom petrified, and there are only one or...

The greater quantity of the sand is drifted into the river, and its effects have been very remarkable. Many years ago the mouth of the river having become blocked up with sand,...

By applying the idea of easting to the small zodiac of Esne, the solstices would be found between the Twins and the Bull, and between the Scorpion and Sagittary; they would even...

But, at the present day, M. Savigny, who has observed, in a living state, and more than once dissected our white numenius, the bird which every thing concurs to prove to have be...

How should it be thought, after this, that the huge _mastodons_ and gigantic _megatheria_, whose bones have been discovered under ground in North and South America, still exist...

In our own times, men of still bolder imaginations have exercised their minds upon this great subject. Some writers have revived and greatly extended the ideas of Demaillet. The...

A learned man of an order different from that of Manetho, the astronomer Eratosthenes, discovered and published, in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, about 240 years before Christ...

4. That, even when the deposites, which border these valleys or these ravines, are composed of transportable matter, the waters which at present flow in them could not have scoo...

This reasoning is confirmed by well known facts. Although the ancients never passed the mountains of Imaus, or crossed the Ganges, in Asia; and, although they never penetrated v...

In the north of Holland, Germany, and the countries bordering on the Baltic, enormous fragments of granite and syenite are scattered within certain limits. According to Humboldt...

The appearance of what are called fresh water shells, in alternate beds with marine animals, being sometimes observed in newer flœtz rocks in great abundance, seems to indicate...

Hitherto we have only spoken of the _proximate_ influence of rocks upon plants; but it cannot be denied, that the _remote_ effects which they produce, (inasmuch as vegetable soi...

+-----------------------+-------------+------------+----------------+ | | Skeleton of |Skeleton of |Saccara Ibises. | | Parts. |an Ibis from |the Curlew. +-------+--------+ | |...

About the middle of the last century, a controversy took place among the natural philosophers of the north of Europe, regarding the alleged gradual lowering of the level of the...

Such are the islands on this coast, in their present state, now rendered permanent by the degree of perfection at which the art of dike-making is arrived. But, in former times,...

But there is also an order in the disposition of these bones with regard to each other; and this order further announces a very remarkable succession in the appearance of the di...

The existence of fat or adipocire in the shaft of one of the bones mentioned by Archdeacon Maunsell, and which I saw in his possession, is a thing for which it is extremely diff...

The inhabitants of Adria have formed exaggerated pretensions, in many respects, as to the high antiquity of their city, though it is undeniably one of the most ancient in Italy,...

This fresh water formation, the oldest which has been distinguished in our neighbourhood, and which supports all the formations which we have just enumerated, is itself supporte...

Geology, now deservedly one of the most popular and attractive of the physical sciences, was, not many years ago, held in little estimation; and even at present, there are not w...

All these calculations, even admitting that the division marks the solstice, would still be susceptible of many modifications; and, at first, it appears that their authors have...

If it be remarked, that these blocks, which are sometimes very large, heaped up above one another, and mixed with clayey mud, have their angles perfectly fresh, and are of the s...

The bones of small animals, mentioned by Esper, are now no longer met with; and, in the collections of Esper and Frischmann, Dr Goldfuss saw only a few dozen of the glutton (Gul...