"Earth's crust" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hydraulic principles, and quite different things from geyser action, which try to explain it as you will, always runs into a volcanic groove. Yet the periodicity of a geyser's action cannot be said to be entirely due to volcanic agency. For the mere action of heat on the solids of the earth's crust, or even of heat in simple conjunction with water, according to either Mackenzie or Tyndall's theories, [Footnote: Sir G. S. Mackenzie's 'Travels in Iceland,' in 1810, p. 228. Prof. Tyndall 'On Heat,' p. 126.] even did they suffice to give a satisfactory explanation ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... by floods, or on rafts, or in roots of large trees, or the germs of one plant or animal attached to or in the stomach of some other animal, or by the intervention (in most cases the most probable means) of other islands since sunk or destroyed. It may be remarked that when one part of the earth's crust is raised it is probably the general rule that another part sinks. Let this island go on slowly, century after century, rising foot by foot; and in the course of time we shall have instead a small mass of rock{403}, lowland and highland, moist woods and dry sandy spots, various soils, marshes, ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... shall have good reason to suppose that, though the past of the earth is very prolonged, its future will probably be far more so. As for life—and we must think not only of human life, but of life as a planetary phenomenon—that is necessarily much more recent than the formation even of the earth's crust, the existence of water in the liquid state being necessary for life in any of its forms. And human life itself, though the extent of its past duration is seen to be greater the more deeply we study the records, is yet a relatively recent thing. The utmost, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... first place, assume a general equality between elevation and subsidence during any given period, because if the elevation over any extensive continental area were not balanced by some subsidence of approximately equal amount, an unsupported hollow would be left under the earth's crust. Let us now suppose a continental area to sink, and an adjacent oceanic area to rise, it will be seen that the greater part of the land will disappear long before the new land has approached the surface of the ocean. This difficulty will not be removed by supposing ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the globe. According to the first of these hypotheses, living beings, such as now exist, have existed from all eternity upon this earth. We tested that hypothesis by the circumstantial evidence, as I called it, which is furnished by the fossil remains contained in the earth's crust, and we found that it was obviously untenable. I then proceeded to consider the second hypothesis, which I termed the Miltonic hypothesis, not because it is of any particular consequence whether John Milton seriously entertained it or not, but because it is stated ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of the barrier character of mountains, a fact of immense importance to the distribution of man and his activities is the rarity of abrupt, ungraded forms of relief on the earth's surface. The physiographic cause lies in the elasticity of the earth's crust and the leveling effect of weathering and denudation. Everywhere mountains are worn down and rounded off, while valleys broaden and fill up to shallow trough outlines. Transition forms of relief abound. Human intercourse meets therefore few absolute barriers on the land; but these few reveal ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... origin and their destiny." (Mac was beginning to enjoy himself. The Boy was beginning to be bored and to drum softly with his fingers.) "Now, gentlemen, Buffon says that the poles were the first portions of the earth's crust to cool. While the equator, and even the tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn, were still too boiling hot to support life, up here in the Arctic regions there was ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... mine is located, this whole valley is sedimentary rock, probably for a depth of several hundred feet. Even the foothills are the same kind of rock. They were moved upward from what is now the valley during a shift in the earth's crust. The faults in ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... who knew more than their elders, were forced to take cover. Dr. Quain, whose learning exceeded even theirs—so the elders sarcastically ventured to surmise—was not ashamed to believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament; he could reconcile the chronology of the earth's crust with the first chapter of Genesis; he had a satisfactory explanation of the Johannine gospel; and his mere existence was an impregnable fortress from which the adherents of the banner of belief could not be dislodged. On this Sunday morning he ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... soil and the salt of the sea. They are largely silicates—that is, they contain silicon and oxygen. (Silicon is a nonmetallic element, always found in combination with something else. It is second only to oxygen as the chief elementary constituent of the earth's crust.) ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... OF THE DEPOSIT.—In a general way, the ore-deposits of the order under discussion originate primarily through the deposition of metals from gases or solutions circulating along avenues in the earth's crust.[*] The original source of metals is a matter of great disagreement, and does not much concern the miner. To him, however, the origin and character of the avenue of circulation, the enclosing rock, the influence of the rocks on the solution, ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... that, in the last resort, on account of "the rights of those who dug the material from the ground and converted it into a pen"? Was not that material, iron-ore, "created by God," equally with any other portion of the earth's crust that we may please ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... overlook the Pacific, and great longitudinal and transversal channels and fjords run right through the heart of the range, cutting it generally in a direction more or less oblique to its axis, the result of movements of the earth's crust. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he put his collections in order, despatching part of them to Europe, and most thoroughly examined some rocks, with a view to ascertaining of what materials the earth's crust was here composed. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... know of some seventy elements present in the earth's crust, it is practically made up of only some sixteen. These sixteen are—oxygen, silicon, carbon, sulphur, hydrogen, chlorine, phosphorus, iron, aluminium, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, fluorine, manganese, and barium.[61] Of these, oxygen is by far the largest constituent, forming, roughly ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... electricity passing through the earth's crust and on its surface along the lines of least resistance has long been an established fact. Experiments conducted at Harvard, U.S.A., by Professor Trowbridge have proved beyond a doubt that, by means of such delicate apparatus as the telephone and ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... it was as if a large slice had been cut out of the earth's crust, leaving a tapering cavity not unlike the shape of a battleship; fortunately, however, the floor was fairly flat and even. The engineers immediately seized upon the nullah and proceeded to transform it into a gigantic ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... the earth's crust stretching for many miles below them had been the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean when its blue waves still lapped the shores of continents, and that little lake, far down in the earth's bosom, was the pitiful remainder of that once mighty sea. Far to the north-west, ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... Thurston stood on the brink of a chasm where some movement of the earth's crust had rent the rocks asunder. Beside him was a mining engineer, whose fame for skill was greater than his reputation for integrity. Both men had donned coarse overalls, and Melhuish, the mining expert, held his candle so that its light fell upon his companion as well as upon the dripping ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... doubtless gradually acquiring solidity and becoming metamorphosed into a chalky limestone. Thus, you see, it is quite possible in this way to preserve unmistakable records of animal and vegetable life. Whenever the sea-bottom, by some of those undulations of the earth's crust that I have referred to, becomes upheaved, and sections or borings are made, or pits are dug, then we become able to examine the contents and constituents of these ancient sea-bottoms, and find out what manner of ...
— The Past Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... any considerable extent) is the Wealden: so that our inquiry need not go any farther back in the history of the world than the later secondary ages. Before that time, and for long aeons afterward, the portion of the earth's crust which now forms Sussex had probably never emerged from the ocean. Britain was then wholly represented by the primary regions of Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall, forming a small archipelago or group of rocky islands separated at some distance by a wide passage from the nucleus of the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... modify the view above expressed. Since hydrogen is theoretically incapable of being permanently retained in the free state by the earth, its presence in the atmosphere indicates either that there is an influx from space or that it emanates from the earth's crust. In a similar way it may be assumed that atmospheric gases can be given off from the crust of the moon, thus, to a greater or less extent, supplying the place of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... I am now reading a wonderfully interesting book—O. Fisher's "Physics of the Earth's Crust." It is really a grand book, and, though full of unintelligible mathematics, is so clearly explained and so full of good reasoning on all the aspects of this most difficult question that it is a pleasure to read it. It was especially a pleasure ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... closing of some volcanoes, and the opening up of fresh earth-vents, we have gone a long way towards establishing the probability that there are even now slow and ponderous movements taking place in the heat stored in the earth's crust, whose effects are appreciably communicated to the outside of the thin rind of solid earth upon ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... is a joy forever." But if, miraculously, it happens in Chicago, it can, despite the poet's word, "pass into nothingness." The old Field Museum, seen beneath a summer moon, when the mist is on the lake, is as beautiful as anything on the earth's crust. Not to preserve the exterior were a sin against Beauty, which is the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... improvement of chronometers. He had carefully studied the theory of pendulums, and had learned how to use them in his experiments in the Cornish mines. This knowledge he afterwards utilized very effectively at the Harton Pit in comparing the density of the Earth's crust with its mean density; and it was very useful to him in connection with geodetic surveys and experiments on which he was consulted. And his mechanical knowledge was ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... three hills, if you are not flattened by the intolerable pilgrimage from Florence, is fine. Hints of what is to come greet you in the frittered shale of the grey country-side broken abruptly by little threatening hill-towns. The scar juts out of the earth's crust, rising sheer, and there on a fretted peak hovers a fortress-village, steep red roofs, an ancient bell-tower or two with a lean barrel of a church beyond; all the lines cut sharp to the clean sky; a bullock-cart creaking ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett |
