Landscape in History, and Other Essays

These remarks lead me naturally to the concluding section of my subject, in which I propose to inquire how far the discoveries of science have affected the relation of scenery t...

In the fifth place, let me plead for the virtue of Patience. In a scientific career we encounter two dangers, for the avoidance of which patience is our best support and guide....

(3) As another but less reliable source of information regarding alterations in the surface of the country, I would make brief allusion to the subject of local tradition. In the...

We thus see that in the philosophy of Hutton, out of which so much of modern geology has been developed, the vastness of the antiquity of the globe was deduced from the structur...

Now I am quite sure that those science students who have passed even a single session in Mason College can see for themselves the utter fallacy of such statements and the injury...

[90] October 1904. Since this Address was given the subject of radio-activity has assumed high importance in reference to questions connected with the evolution of the cosmos. T...

_Ossian_ fascinated some of the greatest men of the time. These Celtic poems, in the words of Matthew Arnold, passed 'like a flood of lava through Europe.' In the deliberate jud...

But it is not, in my opinion, by the extent or value of his original contributions to geology that the importance of Hugh Miller's scientific labours and writings should be meas...

'How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While admiration, feeding at the eye, And still...

In the meantime, much might be done in this attractive department of local geology by a far more detailed study than has yet been attempted of the surroundings of the Campagna....

But it may be argued that all kinds of terrestrial energy are growing feeble, that the most active denudation now in progress is much less vigorous than that of bygone ages, and...

During the voyage he had written long letters to his friends descriptive of what he had seen and done. He likewise forwarded considerable collections of specimens gathered by hi...

The insular position of these islands, which we are apt to regard as an essential and aboriginal feature, is merely accidental, and has not always been maintained. The intimate...

The discoveries of William Smith, had they been adequately understood, would have been seen to offer a corrective to this rigidly uniformitarian conception, for they revealed th...

It was a fundamental doctrine of Hutton and his school that this globe has not always worn the aspect which it bears at present; that, on the contrary, proofs may everywhere be...

The landscapes of Burns are marked by some curious limitations. Though he was born within sight of the picturesque mountain group of Arran, it does not come within his poetic ou...

The more marked features on the surface of the land have from early times awakened the curiosity and stimulated the imagination of men. Mountainous regions with their peaks and...

The most cursory traveller, even as he drives rapidly along this valley, can hardly fail to observe that three distinct rocks enter into the composition of the landscape, each d...

The deeply-eroded post-Carboniferous land of Britain was eventually screened from further degradation, either by being reduced through denudation to a base-level or by being pro...

But while Nature was his first and best teacher, he has told us in grateful words how much he owed to two uncles--hard-working, sagacious, and observant men, by whom his young e...

Not less important than the stratigraphical is the palæontological evidence in favour of the general quietude of the geological processes in the past. The conclusions drawn from...

From the layers of lacustrine or fluviatile deposits in the tuff and also from cavities and fissures in the limestone-hills, which then as now rose abruptly from the edge of the...

The present volume consists of a collection of Essays and Addresses which have appeared at intervals since the publication of my _Geological Essays at Home and Abroad_. Half of...

As intercourse with the West made the volcanic phenomena of that region more familiar, the mythological interpretation underwent gradual modification. On the one hand, it was ob...

While it is thus easy to realise, as one traverses the Campagna, how its main topographical characteristics have been evolved, there is a special fascination in pursuing the inv...