Fragments of Earth Lore: Sketches & Addresses Geological and Geographical

When the islands are first approached they present, it must be confessed, a somewhat forbidding aspect. Bare, bleak rocks, with a monotonous rounded outline, crowd along the sho...

It is well known that the sea along the inner margin of the Long Island is very deep. In many places it reaches a depth of 600 feet, and occasionally the sounding-lead plunges d...

Let me, in conclusion, give one further illustration of the close inter-dependence of the two sciences of which I am speaking. One of the subjects treated of by Physical Geograp...

The rocks that enter into the formation of this portion of the Southern Uplands have much the same character throughout. Consequently there is less variety of contour and colour...

Now let us rapidly sum up what seem to be the inferences suggested by these briefly-stated facts. We have seen that the Upper Old Red Sandstone began to be deposited in a lake w...

These conclusions seem to me to be strongly supported by the evidence of ice-action during Tertiary times. The gigantic erratics of the Alpine Eocene do not appear to have been...

Again, let us draw a section across strata which have been fractured and dislocated, and we shall see how such fractures likewise enable us to estimate the minimum amount of ero...

To the north of the Alps, the Vosges Mountains and the Black Forest, the Harz, the Erz Gebirge, the Riesen Gebirge, and the Böhmer-Wald--all had their perennial ice and glaciers...

In order to appreciate the character of the climate which must have prevailed when the lands of the globe were much more interrupted and insular than at present, we have only to...

But leaving these and other points which serve to show the weakness of the cause which Mr. Mackintosh supports with such keen enthusiasm, I may, in conclusion, draw attention to...

But the climatic changes to be accounted for were in all probability more numerous and complex than those just referred to. Competent observers have adduced unmistakable evidenc...

Look at the stones, and you shall observe that all the harder and finer-grained specimens are well-smoothed and covered with striæ or scratches, the best marked of which run par...

There is still considerable difference of opinion as to the mode of formation of this remarkable accumulation. By many it is considered to be an aqueous deposit; others, followi...

Seeing then that the Outer Hebrides are composed chiefly of gneissic rocks and schists which yield unequally to the weather, and which, in the course of time, would naturally gi...

Some reference has already been made (see p. 64) to the general appearance presented by the valleys of the Cheviots. In their upper reaches they are often rough and craggy; narr...

The probability of such frozen masses having choked up valleys and impeded the drainage during the Ice Age is not a mere plausible conjecture. In the far north of Alaska--in a r...

Of course one knows how it will all end. Ere long the unadulterated Celt will be driven or improved out of these islands, and will retire to other lands, where, mingling and int...

No one of late years has been more assiduous in the collection of facts relating to the intercrossing of erratics in the drift-deposits of England than Mr. D. Mackintosh.[U] He...

When we turn to the Alpine Lands, we find that there also the occurrence of former interglacial conditions has been recognised. The interglacial deposits, as described by Heer a...

Before the advent of the last great age of ice the Kale would seem to have flowed from Marlfield, close to the line now followed by the turnpike road as far as Easter Wooden, af...

The development of these large glaciers, therefore, forms a distinct stage in the history of the Glacial period. They were of sufficient extent to occupy all the fiords of the n...

[BS] For Scottish post-glacial glaciers see J. Geikie: _Scottish Naturalist_, Jan., 1880; _Prehistoric Europe_, pp. 386,407; Penck: _Deutsche geographische Blätter_, Bd. vi., p....

The oldest rocks that we know of are the crystalline schists and gneiss, belonging to what is called the Archæan system. The origin of these rocks is still a matter of controver...

The general conclusion, then, to which we are led by a review of the greater geographical changes through which the European continent has passed is simply this--that the substr...

Let us now look at the Arctic and Atlantic coast-lines of North America. From the extreme north down to the latitude of New York the shores are obviously those of a partially-su...

The intercalated beds are, after all, not hard to explain. If we consider for a moment the geographical distribution of the boulder-clays, and their associated aqueous deposits,...

Although it is true that the land-surface is nowhere co-extensive with the great plateau, yet the existing coast-lines may be said to trend in the same general direction as its...

The beds overlying the boulder-clay are evidently of lacustrine origin. The fine clay (No. 2), according to Mr. Williams, is simply reconstructed boulder-clay. After the disappe...

That the valleys which discharge their water-flow north and east to the Moray Firth and the North Sea have been excavated by rivers and the allied agents of erosion, is sufficie...

If we turn to North America, we find similar reason to conclude, with Professor Dana, that the general topography of that region had likewise been foreshadowed as far back as th...

There is yet another line of evidence to which brief reference may be made. I have spoken of the remarkable uniformity of climatic conditions which obtained in Palæozoic times,...

Perhaps no portion of the geological record has been more assiduously studied during the last quarter of a century than its closing chapters. We are now in possession of manifol...

If we draw a somewhat straight line from Girvan, on the coast of Ayrshire, in a north-east direction to the shores of the North Sea, near Dunbar, we shall find that south of tha...

The ridge of high ground that separates England from Scotland is not, like many other hilly districts, the beloved of tourists. No guide-book expatiates upon the attractiveness...

A still larger question which the history of these times suggests is the cause of climatic oscillations. I have maintained that the well-known theory advanced by James Croll is...

The articles in this volume deal chiefly with the history of Glacial times and the origin of surface-features. As they were not written with any view to their subsequent appeara...

There are many other points of resemblance between the glacial and fluvio-glacial accumulations of the two continents, but to these time forbids any reference. Indeed, I cannot...

It is in the Alpine Lands that we encounter the most striking evidence of glacial conditions anterior to the epoch of maximum glaciation. The famous breccia of Hötting has alrea...

Thus it will be seen that an anticlinal arch is a weak structure--a mountain so constructed falls a ready prey to the denuding agents; and hence in regions which have been expos...

I must now ask you to take a comprehensive glance at the coast-lines of the Pacific Ocean. In some important respects these offer a striking contrast to those we have been consi...