Thoughts on a Pebble, Or, A First Lesson in GeologyThe final edition of one of Mantell's most successful works, first published 13 years before with only 18 pages and stemming from the answers he gave his young son concerning a flint pebble from a nearby stream bed. |
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Common terms and phrases
6th Edit abound aggregation Ammonites ancient shingle animal beautiful bivalves bones boulders Brighton Cliffs calcareous cells chalcedony chalk and flint chambers Choanite clay colour composed Coral from chalk cretaceous cretaceous strata Cuttle-fish deep delicate deposited Echinus enclosed feet figured in Lign flint nodules Flustra Foraminifera forms Fossil animalcules fossil corals fossil remains fossil shells genera highly magnified imbedded infusorial earth inhabitants integument Isle of Wight Kemptown kinds lapidaries lens of moderate Lewes Lewes Priory limestone living marine mass Medals of Creation microscope Minute Corals moderate power mollusca Nautilus Note numerous organic body origin petrified Plate Polished sections polypes racter represented in Lign resembling Richmond earth rock Rotalia Rottingdean sand sea-beach sea-shore septa shore silex siliceous silicified siphuncle SNAKE-STONES soft specimen spines sponges stone strata substance surface tentacula Terebratula thou tube univalves Ventriculite water-worn waves Whitby white chalk WIGHT PEBBLES Wonders of Geology WOOD IN FLINT zoophyte
Popular passages
Page 29 - Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll ! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ! Man marks the earth with ruin, his control Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed...
Page 31 - Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests: in all time, Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm. Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving; — boundless, endless, and sublime; The image of eternity, the throne Of the Invisible: even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
Page 30 - Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts: not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves
Page 53 - There with its waving blade of green, The sea-flag streams through the silent water, And the crimson leaf of the dulse is seen To blush, like a banner bathed in slaughter...
Page 32 - Thy waters washed them power while they were free, And many a tyrant since; their shores obey The stranger, slave or savage; their decay Has dried up realms to deserts; — not so thou; Unchangeable save to thy wild waves...
Page 52 - Deep in the wave is a Coral Grove, Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove, Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue, That never are wet with falling dew, But in bright and changeful beauty shine, Far down in the green and glassy brine.
Page 31 - Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime, Dark heaving; boundless, endless and sublime — The image of eternity — the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.
Page 30 - Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, Calm or convuls'd — in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving ; — boundless, endless, and sublime — The image of Eternity — the throne Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone Obeys thee ; thou...
Page 53 - From coral rocks the sea-plants lift Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow ; The water is calm and still below, For the winds and waves are absent there, And the sands are bright as the stars that glow In the motionless fields of upper air...
Page 21 - Themselves, within their holy bound, Their stony folds had often found. They told, how sea-fowls...