Peter Parley's Wonders of the Earth, Sea, and Sky

You have no doubt often heard of Volcanoes and Earthquakes, for almost everybody in all ages has felt a deep interest in them, and a curiosity to know what they are caused by. I...

If you wish to understand the manner in which it is most probable that these illusions are produced, you must closely attend to what I am going to tell you. I will make my expla...

Before the time of the Roman Emperor Trajan, Mount Vesuvius had been quiet for a great many centuries. It is known that it had had many eruptions before then, because there are...

When we were sailing through the Pacific Ocean, I saw a great many coral reefs and islands; and perhaps there is hardly one of the wonderful things which I have seen in my trave...

I will show you a picture of what creatures were once living where the town of Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, now stands, and tell you something about their structure and their hab...

The Esquimaux live in the most northern parts of America, where there is hardly anything but ice and snow to be seen from year's end to year's end. They build their houses of sn...

I have before mentioned to you the bones of Elephants, as occurring in the bone caverns; they were, however, not just like the Elephants now living in Africa and Asia. The tusks...

It seems strange that the largest animal in nature should live in these regions, where you would think everything must be starved by the cold. But so it is, and it should lead y...

"They now found themselves a second time delivered from the most imminent danger of death; but the remaining part of the night, before the Esquimaux could seek and find another...

In some parts of the world, there are rocks which are not stratified and arranged like those which I described to you some time ago, but are laid over the surfaces, and in the c...

But there is one of these Sepias, or Cuttle Fish, which I like very much, though its character rests under as severe an imputation for dishonesty and rapacity, as that of the re...

If you were to go on a long voyage, there is nothing that you would be much more pleased with, than the occasional bright appearance of the sea at night. You might see this in a...

The river Niagara runs out of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, and you may see the direction it takes if you look in the map of North America. You may likewise observe that Lake Eri...

Well! one morning when we were only a few leagues off the West Coast of Africa, to the South of the Cape Verd Islands, we thought we were going to have just such a calm as the p...

Have you ever seen the bone of a cuttle fish? It is a flat, white, very light thing, about the shape and size of a small sole, or flat fish, which may be often picked up on the...

Your old friend Peter loves to talk about the sea. Ever since he was a child, he loved everything belonging to the sea, and when he was a young man he went many long voyages, an...

If you have attended to what I have already told you, you will have seen that there must be a close connection between the causes of volcanoes, earthquakes, and hot springs, (if...

During the winter months in the Polar Regions, the sun never rises above the horizon; and during summer it performs in appearance a little circle round the pole of the Heavens,...

I shall show you a picture representing a state of things much more like the present, than the one we looked at before. It existed at a later period, though still a great many y...

One summer's evening, in the year 1743, as a farmer, named John Wren, and his servant were sitting at the door of his cottage, they saw a man with a dog furiously chasing some h...

There were a great many accounts in very early times, of stones having fallen from the sky. In China and some other eastern nations, they have long had a notion that such occurr...

I am going to tell you respecting some of the appearances produced by clouds which reflect like mirrors; and by those changes in the atmosphere which turn aside, in an irregular...

There are few of you who have not seen _falling_ or _shooting stars_, as they are called. Perhaps some of you have loved to walk out when the stars have been shining brightly in...

There are a great many very wonderful appearances in a polar sky, besides the Aurora Borealis. Perhaps the most remarkable of these are Parhelia, or "mock suns," which are often...

The shores on each side are rich and beautiful in the extreme, and the narrow strait being very deep, looks always blue and fresh. According to the best accounts of the Fata Mor...

There are on record several instances of a fall of red liquid exactly resembling blood in appearance, which has often been accompanied by a descent of aerolites. On the 15th of...

Before I tell you of some of the wonders of the sky, I should like to tell you what the sky is: it is true you know pretty nearly as much as I do about it, but you perhaps have...

In several parts of England there are great caverns in limestone and other rocks, which contain an immense quantity of the bones of such animals as are now found only in wild co...

To you, my little friends, who have always lived in a climate in which it seems as if the wind changed, and it became sun-shiny or cloudy, wet or dry, cold or hot, without any l...

I am now going to tell you, my young friends, about some of the wonderful things in the earth, sea, and sky. A great number of them I have seen myself in my travels through vari...

Chap. VIII. Some other instances of Aerial Reflection Souter Fell 291 What a Friend of Parley's saw 293 Dover Castle 293 What Humboldt saw 294 What Captain Scoresby saw 295 Appa...

Chap. III. What sort of a place once existed where the neighbourhood of Paris is now, and the animals that lived there 21 The Palæotherium 22 The Anoplotherium, &c. 25 The Dinot...