The Earth in Past Ages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
America animals beautiful beds bird skeletons bones bottom broken built called cave cents chalk CHAPTER cliffs coal coal forests continents coral covered cracks creatures curious Dead Sea earth earth's crust Elements of Geology feet filled Fingal's Cave fire fish footprints forests formed geyser Giant's Causeway glacier glass sponges globe gold Greenland growing guess HOLBORN HEAD Hooker's Mineralogy Hugh Miller hundred insects IRISH ELK iron islands kind lakes land lava layers of rock lifted limestone living look Lyell's Elements marsupial mass melted stone miles Mineralogy and Geology minerals mountains ocean plants polyps reign reptiles river Jordan rivers salt sand sandstone sea-bottom sea-weed seen settled shell-fish shells sink skeletons Sketches of Creation slowly snow solid sometimes surface swamps tail things thousands to-day trees valley volcanoes washed Webster's Winchell's Sketches wonderful wrinkles
Popular passages
Page 179 - And you shall understand that the river Jordan runs into the Dead Sea, and there it dies, for it runs no further; and its entrance is a mile from the church of St. John the Baptist, toward the west, a little beneath the place where Christians bathe commonly. A mile from the river Jordan is the river of Jabbok, which Jacob passed over when he came from Mesopotamia. This river Jordan is no great river...
Page 56 - ... white and glassy substance that, as it settles, builds a cup for itself; when the water overflows the cup, it naturally runs out at the lowest place. Here the solid rim is built up by the glassy silica till that gets higher ; the water then shifts and flows over the lowest places in the rim, until, instead of a cup, it makes a high tube with a mound of silica all around it. Sometimes the water will lie quiet in the tube for a good while, but the fires beneath are turning water into steam and...
Page 179 - That sea is in length 580 furlongs, and in breadth 150 furlongs, and is called the Dead Sea, because it does not run, but is ever motionless. Neither man, beast, nor anything that hath life may die in that sea ; and that hath been proved many times by men that have been condemned to death who have been cast therein, and left therein three or four days, and they might never die therein, for it receiveth nothing within...
Page 56 - ... of Versailles is as child's play and a penny squirt in comparison." A geyser begins by being a little hot spring; it ends by being a natural fountain. Geyser water has been put into a basin and allowed slowly to dry up. It is then found that the settlings in this water are not on the bottom, but as the water dried it left a solid rim around the basin, and as it sank the rim broadened downward. In the geyser water there is a white and glassy substance that, as it settles, builds a cup for itself...