Popular Geology: A Series of Lectures Read Before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, with Descriptive Sketches from a Geologist's Portfolio |
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Common terms and phrases
amid Ammonites ancient animal beds Belemnite beneath bone boreal boulder-clay boulders British Brora Caithness Carboniferous character clay climate Coal Measures cone contains creature Cromarty crust curious cuttle-fish deep deposits depth diurnal motion earth elevation equatorial ring existing feet fish forests formation fossil fragments Frith furnished ganoid geological geologist glacial glacier gneiss granitic gravel grooved Gulf Stream hills hollow Hugh Miller hundred igneous island lake land least Lias Loch lower mark mass miles molluscs moraine Morayshire mosses neighborhood northern occupied occur ocean old coast line Old Red Sandstone Oolite organisms pebbles peculiar period plants Pleistocene plutonic portion precipices present remains reptile resemble rise rocks sand scarce Scotland Scottish seems seen shells shores side Silurian Sir Roderick species specimens stone strata stratum stream submerged surface Tertiary thick thousand tide tion trap trees upheaval upper valley vast vegetable waves
Popular passages
Page 329 - Created hugest that swim the ocean stream : Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays...
Page 283 - Arcadian plain. Pure stream, in whose transparent wave My youthful limbs I wont to lave ; No torrents stain thy limpid source, No rocks impede thy dimpling course, That sweetly warbles o'er its bed, With white round polished pebbles spread...
Page 138 - The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring, And float amid the liquid noon ; Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily-gilded trim, Quick-glancing to the sun.
Page 280 - Gray birch and aspen wept beneath ; Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock ; And higher yet the pine-tree hung His shattered trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrowed sky.
Page 131 - I never saw aught like to them, Unless perchance it were Brown skeletons of leaves that lag My forest-brook along; When the ivy-tod is heavy with' snow, And the owlet whoops to the wolf below That eats the she-wolf's young.
Page 137 - Pretty ! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms ! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.
Page 119 - ... Traced like a map, the landscape lies In cultured beauty stretching wide ; There, Pentland's green acclivities ; There, Ocean, with its azure tide ; There, Arthur's seat ; and gleaming through Thy southern wing, Dunedin blue ! While, in the orient, Lammer's daughters, A distant giant range are seen, — North Berwick Law, with cone of green, And Bass amid the waters.
Page 233 - Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears?
Page 266 - Galawater; and in that direction you see Teviotdale and the braes of Yarrow, and Ettrick stream winding along, like a silver thread, to throw itself into the Tweed.' He went on thus to call over names celebrated in Scottish song, and most of which had recently received a romantic interest from his own pen. In fact...
Page 280 - Here eglantine embalmed the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there ; The primrose pale and violet flower Found in each cliff a narrow bower...