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 appearance Arthur Seat beds Belemnite beneath bottom boulder-clay boulders Brora Caithness Carboniferous caves Chalk character clay Coal Measures Coccosteus color cone contains creature Cromarty curious cuttle-fish deposits depth earth elevation existing extinct feet fish flora forests formation fossils fragments Frith furnished ganoid geological geologist glacier gneiss granitic gravel grooved Highlands hills hollow Hugh Miller hundred inches island lake land least Lias Loch lower mark masses miles molluscs moraine Morayshire mosses neighborhood northern occupied occur ocean old coast line Old Red Sandstone Oolite organisms peculiar period plants Pleistocene portion precipices present quarry remains reptiles resemble ridge rising river rocks Roderick Murchison sand scarce scenery Scotch Scotland Scottish seems seen shells shores side Silurian Sir Roderick species specimens stone strata stratum surface Tertiary thick thousand tide tion tract trap trees upper valley vast vegetable waves
Popular passages
Page 351 - Created hugest that swim the ocean stream : Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam The pilot of some small night-founder'd 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 270 - Yarrow but a river bare, That glides the dark hills under ? There are a thousand such elsewhere As worthy of your wonder.
Page 197 - Now, upon SYRIA'S land of roses Softly the light of eve reposes, And, like a glory, the broad sun Hangs over sainted LEBANON ; Whose head in wintry grandeur towers, And whitens with eternal sleet, While summer, in a vale of flowers, Is sleeping rosy at his feet.
Page 284 - With boughs that quaked at every breath, Grey 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 shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung, Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky.
Page 133 - 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 139 - Shakespeare's name. Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms; 170 The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.
Page 271 - It may be partiality," said he, at length; "but to my eye, these gray hills and all this wild border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. 1 like the very nakedness of the land ; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh...
Page 153 - Then, awed to silence, they trode the strand Where furnaced pillars in order stand, All framed of the liquid burning levin, And bent like the bow that spans the heaven, Or upright ranged in horrid array, With purfle of green o'er the darksome gray. Their path was on wondrous pavement of old, Its blocks all cast in some giant mould, Fair hewn and grooved by no mortal hand, With countermure guarded by sea and by land.
Page 284 - Or mosque of Eastern architect. Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dewdrop sheen, The brier-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.
Page 270 - Our ramble took us on the hills commanding an extensive prospect. "Now, "said Scott, "I have brought you, like the pilgrim in the Pilgrim's Progress, to the top of the Delectable Mountains, that I may show you all the goodly regions hereabouts. Yonder is Lammermuir, and...