"Earth's surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say, 'Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth's surface.' He will estimate with approximate accuracy that five hundred thousand tons of water fall with their full weight a distance of a hundred feet each minute—thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... among the Pachydermata, I have now left behind me the ponderous and unwieldy forms which inhabit the wild and wooded tracts of the earth's surface, and come to the group called Solipeda, from the one round and horny hoof which encircles all the feet; one toe is apparent; and two points on each side, under the skin, represent lateral toes; besides which there is, underneath, a soft pad, or what is generally ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... about 2 P.M. The heat by this time was most severe, and the air so dense as to occasion pains in my ears. The Dead Sea is 1,300 feet below the Mediterranean, and without doubt the lowest part of the earth's surface. I attribute the oppression I felt to this fact and to the sultriness of the day, rather than to any exhalation from the sea itself. Francois remarked, however, that had the wind—which by this time was ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... us if we can transmit this ardour, not as we received it, but added to by ourselves; and nothing will add to it more than this hypothesis of evolution, which goads us to question with an ever severer method and ever increasing zeal all that exists on the earth's surface and in its entrails, in the depths of the sea and expanse of the sky. Reject it, and what can we set up against it, what can we put in its place? There is but the grand confession of scientific ignorance, aware of its knowing ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... world, and books that have gladdened my heart. Yet in its virginhood, before pain or joy or achievement had entered there, before spade struck the ground which was to send up food, my holding on the earth's surface made me feel prince ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... only to man. Was the element of fire and the material for clothing given for any but man's use? This enables him to inhabit every clime. But the capacity to produce all the necessaries and luxuries of life is given only to a certain portion of the earth's surface; and its peculiar motions give the fructifying influences of the sun only to the middle belt of the planet. The use of this organization is evidenced in the production of this belt, and these productions must be the result of intelligently ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... side. Steamers were hourly traversing the translucent waters of the great Mississippi; steam and electricity were carrying people with the rapidity of lightning in every direction; gigantic buildings appeared on the earth's surface, visible in either direction as far as the eye could reach; on every corner was a proud descendant of Erin's nobility, clad in gorgeous raiment, who had been branded "St. Paul's finest" before leaving the shores of his native land. ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... and broad. I believe two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water. What people inhabit this water has always been a subject of curiosity to the inhabitants of the land. Strange creatures come from the seas at times, and perhaps in the ocean depths are many, more strange than mortal ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... countries, and I remember that Mr. Stevenson did not place the sentiment of patriotism at the top of the list of human virtues, for he believed that to concentrate one's affections and interest too closely upon one small section of the earth's surface, simply on account of the accident of birth, had a narrowing effect upon a man's mental outlook and his human sympathies. He was a citizen of the world in his capacity to understand the point of view of other men, of whatsoever race, colour, or creed, and it was this catholicity ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... the first seat should achieve the right of snubbing all before him, whether friends or foes, he, according to the feelings of Sir Timothy, would have gained an Elysium of creaminess not to be found in any other position on the earth's surface. No man was more warmly attached to parliamentary government than Sir Timothy Beeswax; but I do not think that he ever ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... beginning, middle, and end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children—not Helen, when she would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that evil day when she was born—not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her days—not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... toy-like fortifications of which Paris was proud in the 'fifties; there was the black tangle of barbed wire, and the trace of trenches (a mere depression on the earth's surface, as if a serpent had laid its heavy length on a great, green velvet cushion) with which Paris had hoped to delay the German wave. Only a little way on, we shot through the sleepy-looking village of Bourget where Napoleon stopped a few ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... 14: "Spain has doubtless conquered more of the Earth's surface than any other modern nation; and her peculiar national character has also caused her to make the worst use of them. It was always easier for the Moor to conquer than to make a good use of his conquests; and so it ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... much better off: the earth's surface will be hideous everywhere, save in the uninhabitable desert; Art will utterly perish, as in the manual arts so in literature, which will become, as it is indeed speedily becoming, a mere string of orderly and calculated ineptitudes and passionless ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... here by the scarcity of ferocious game, I was more fortunate in another enthusiasm which attacked me at almost the same time. For however unpropitious the hunting is on any given part of the earth's surface, there is everywhere and always an abundance of good hidden-treasure-seeking to be had. The garden, the attic, the tennis lawn all suffered. And my initiative was strengthened by the discovery of an incomparable book all about a dead man's chest, and not only digging for gold in a secret island, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... attained in the interior, about forty-five miles from where he had encamped on the watercourse he called Eyre's Creek, now a watering place for stock on a Queensland cattle run: "Halted at sunset in a country such as I verily believe has no parallel upon the earth's surface, and one which was terrible in its aspect." Sturt's views are only to be accounted for by the fact that what we now call excellent sheep and cattle country appeared to him like a desert, because his comparisons were made with the best alluvial lands he had left near the coast. Explorers as a rule, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the shaft below and the fumes came up and made us all a little faint, so we decided to come to the earth's surface without going down about two hundred feet lower, which we could have done. In one long gallery we came upon a single miner working away in a cul-de-sac, with, it seemed, absolutely no air. Think ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... not effective. History seems to prove that society needs a machinery of government able to legislate and enforce its laws, and the tendency has been for a comparatively small number of states to extend their authority over more and more of the earth's surface. This has become possible through the maintenance of efficient military forces and wise local administration, aided by increasing ease of communication and transportation. Once it was a question whether the United States could enforce its law ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... slow succession of rise and fall in the plain changed and shortened. The earth's surface became lumpy, rising into mounds and knotted systems of steep small hills cut apart by staring gashes of sand, where water poured in the spring from the melting snow. After a time they ascended through the foot-hills till the plain below was for a while concealed, but came again into ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of powder, at twenty-three degrees of elevation—the highest elevation that could be given to the long guns—all varied to the right, though the day was perfectly calm. This variation appeared to be caused by a strong current of air at some height above the earth's surface; but it was so irregular that it was found impossible to make any correct allowance for it; and it was singular, that any wind perceptible on the deck of the Karteria blew in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... issues: in October 1991 it was reported that the ozone shield, which protects the Earth's surface from harmful ultraviolet radiation, had dwindled to the lowest level recorded over Antarctica since 1975 when measurements were first taken natural hazards: katabatic (gravity-driven) winds blow coastward from the high interior; frequent blizzards ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... words of three syllables, Robert had learnt the Origin of Man, and had made a vivid, somewhat fanciful picture of that personage's pathetic beginnings as a miasm floating on the earth's surface, and of his accidental, no less pathetic progression as a Survival of the Fittest. He gathered that even more than old Jaegers, Mr. Ricardo hated God Almighty and Jesus Christ, the latter of whom was intimately connected with something ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... perfect to the more perfect; the further fact that they also form a series according as they display more or less homology of structure and are formed according to similar types; and, lastly, that the fossil remains of organisms found in the various strata of the earth's surface likewise represent an ascending series from the simple to the more complex—these three facts suggested to naturalists the thought that living organisms were not always as we find them to-day, but that the more perfect had developed from simpler forms through a series of modifications. ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... rectify. Thus the Siou tribes of Assiniboia believed that the Supreme Being (whom they called Eth-tom-e) first created mankind and all living things, and then, through some oversight or mistake, caused a great flood to cover the earth's surface. So in a hurry he was obliged to make a very large canoe of twigs and branches, and into this he put a pair of every kind of bird and beast, besides a family of human beings, who were thus saved from drowning, and began the world afresh when the waters subsided. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... appliances such elements as the knowledge of the power of steam, the art of printing, and gunpowder; all which we can do under the full light of history. Stripped of these, society takes a ruder shape. But it is still not rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of the earth's surface, at the present moment, where the metals are unknown. There was, probably, a time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the influences of such a knowledge as this must be subtracted. And then come weaving and pottery, the ruder forms of domestic architecture, ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... than that, measured by the liberal scale of time-keeping of the universe, this present state of nature, however it may seem to have gone and to go on for ever, is [3] but a fleeting phase of her infinite variety; merely the last of the series of changes which the earth's surface has undergone in the course of the millions of years of its existence. Turn back a square foot of the thin turf, and the solid foundation of the land, exposed in cliffs of chalk five hundred feet high on the adjacent shore, yields full assurance ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the year, 21st of March and 21st of September, the exact half of the earth along its axis is illuminated. On these dates, therefore, any point on the earth's surface is, during the rotation of the earth on its axis, half the time in light and half the time in darkness,—that is, day and night are twelve hours each ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... wings when expanded he measures ten feet. No bird is bolder in flight. At daybreak he left his aerie, and mounting in the sky far beyond the reach of human vision, watched with telescopic eye the creatures wandering on the earth's surface. That poor zebra was seen by him probably long ago, and he knew well that he must ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... holds are as clumsy as thumbs. The demand for this kind of traveller and the opportunity for him increase as we learn more and more minutely the dry facts and figures of the most inaccessible corners of the earth's surface. There is no hope of another Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, with his statistics of Dreamland, who makes no difficulty of impressing "fourscore thousand rhinocerots" to draw the wagons of the King of Tartary's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the question which has been largely discussed by naturalists, namely, whether species have been created at one or more points of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly there are many cases of extreme difficulty in understanding how the same species could possibly have migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated points, where now found. Nevertheless the simplicity of the view that each species was first produced ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... megatherium and Irish deer and of other quadrupeds large and small which are now extinct; but most of its animals were the same species as now exist. It was marked by the great episode of the Ice Age, when considerable parts of the earth's surface were buried under immense accumulations of ice, remnants of which are still with us in the icy ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... the sequel to call attention to particular parts of the earth's surface where it is desirable that additional observations should be made, in order to furnish data of a more accurate character, and to mark more distinctly barometric changes than the four daily readings are capable of effecting. The best means of accomplishing this for ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... themselves susceptible of subdivisions, which should also be accurately defined. What is the nature of these subdivisions? They are all connected with sudden physical changes in the earth's surface, more or less limited in their action, these changes being themselves related to important alterations in the organic world. Although I have stated that one general character prevailed during each of the Ages, yet there was nevertheless a constant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... revolutions destroying effectually the so-called power of gravitation, or the force of atmospheric pressure or whatever potent influence it may be that causes all unsupported things to fall downward to the earth's surface or to ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... so that no mortal could keep awake long enough to see him, as mortal eyes were sure to close in sleep as soon as the dust filled them. And next to him sat the Gnome King, whose people inhabit all that region under the earth's surface, where they guard the precious metals and the jewel stones that lie buried in rock and ore. At his right hand stood the King of the Sound Imps, who had wings on his feet, for his people are swift to carry all sounds that are made. When they are busy they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... folds of air. l. 176. The air, like all other bad conductors of electricity, is known to be a bad conductor of heat; and thence prevents the heat acquired from the sun's rays by the earth's surface from being so soon dissipated, in the same manner as a blanket, which may be considered as a sponge filled with air, prevents the escape of heat from the person wrapped in it. This seems to be one cause of the great degree ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... caution should perhaps be offered in connection with control measures. As man has come to occupy a greater portion of the earth's surface, and as he has become more and more the master of his environment, he has inevitably disturbed the relationships of the birds and mammals about him, has upset the balance of nature. If he kills the carnivorous species because of their ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... after many ages, the ice and snow in the north and in the far south begin to melt as the warmth from the rest of the world is conducted to the polar regions. And the heat from the interior of the earth makes all the parts of the earth's surface warmer. Winds almost stop blowing. Ocean currents stop flowing. The land receives less rainfall, until finally everything turns to a desert; almost the only rain is on the ocean. Animals die even before the rivers dry up, for ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... the writer has observed. For instance, there is at first sight no reason why a cubic foot of water should weigh 62.4 pounds. It simply does and that is all there is to it; it does, because it does. But if he reads that a cubic foot of water at one point on the earth's surface weighs less than it does at another point, or that in the Northern Hemisphere the wind in a storm revolves around the storm center in a direction contrary to the motion of the hands of a clock, he should perceive that these facts, if true, have a reason for them, and he should endeavor to perceive ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... left the river valley and crossed a succession of ridges or plateaus. At last they reached vast black basaltic masses and lava fields, proof of former subterranean fires which seemingly had forever dried out the life of the earth's surface. The very vastness of the views might have had charm but for the tempering feeling of awe, of doubt, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... hollow that was not unlike a cave in the mountain. At their feet ran the stream that had carried them forward, disappearing under some overhanging rocks. On all sides were rocks and dirt, with here and there a decayed tree root, showing that they were not very far under the earth's surface. ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... about Sir Isaac Newton, etc., etc., have been as good as those of many familiar with the accepted version. I would rather suppose that such sublunary problems had not interested him in the least, and that he no more cared how we happen to stick on the earth's surface than St Paul cared how a grain of wheat or any other seed germinates beneath it, when he similarly was betrayed into an ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... is of great importance in the economy of Nature, since it prevents the excessive evaporation of the waters upon the earth's surface, and limits its extent by unalterable laws. Water boils at a certain temperature when at the earth's surface, where the weight of the atmosphere is greatest, but at different temperatures at different elevations from the surface. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... multiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? I cannot think of a single series of states of consciousness as causing even the relatively small groups of actions going on over the earth's surface. I cannot think of it even as antecedent to all the various winds and the dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the grinding actions of all the glaciers; still less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of processes ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... books here reprinted will never lose their value and interest for the originality of the observations they contain. Many parts of them are admirably adapted for giving an insight into problems regarding the structure and changes of the earth's surface, and in fact they form a charming introduction to physical geology and physiography in their application to special domains. The books themselves cannot be obtained for many times the price of the present volume, and both the general reader, who desires to know more of Darwin's work, ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... going to the expense of artificial light. The beasts of the field can find food by day which they would not be able to find at night. Moreover we owe it to the sunlight that we are able to see everything that is on the earth's surface, not only near by, but also at a distance, and to recognize both near and far things according to their species, which again is of manifold use to us not only in the business necessary to human life, and when we are traveling, but also for the scientific knowledge of Nature, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the lecturer, "is, we may say, a species of mental geography, as it were; which—by a study of the skull—leads also to a study of the brain within, even as geology naturally follows the initial contemplation of the earth's surface. The brain, thurfur, or intellectual retort, as we may say, natively exerts a molding influence on the skull contour; thurfur is the expert in phrenology most readily enabled to accurately locate the multitudinous intellectual forces, and most exactingly estimate, as well, the sequent character ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... before it touches Heiling, who invokes the help of his gnomes. They appear, but at the same moment the Queen is seen, exhorting her son to pardon and to forget. He willingly follows her away into his kingdom of night and darkness, never to see earth's surface again. The anxious peasants once more breathe freely and join in ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... stories are part of the common story of the wonderful Ice Age, when a frozen deluge pushed down from the north, and covered a vast part of the earth's surface with slowly moving glaciers. The traces that this age left in Ohio are much the same as it left elsewhere, and the signs that there were people here ten thousand years ago, when the glaciers began to melt and the land became fit to live in again, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... a well known fact among electricians that the volume and tension of electricity vary both in the earth and in the atmosphere at different sections of the earth's surface, and I conceive that we may yet find means of utilizing this differential tension of electricity; indeed, it is reported that during a recent storm the wires of an ocean cable were grounded at both ends and a sufficient current for all practical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... told them that when Calako came to the earth's surface wherever he placed his foot a deep chasm was made; then they brought to the altar a huge rock, on which Calako might stand, and they set it between the two pahos placed for ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... supposed, most of these difficulties wholly disappear. Let the reader reflect on the difficulty of looking at whole classes of facts from a new point of view. Let him observe how slowly, but surely, the noble views of Lyell on the gradual changes now in progress on the earth's surface have been accepted as sufficient to account for all that we see in its past history. The present action of natural selection may seem more or less probable; but I believe in the truth of the theory, {14} because it collects under one ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Apple and Hand.* [footnote... These illustrations serve to illustrate one of the most potent of geological agencies which has given the earth's surface its grandest characteristics. I mean the elevation of mountain ranges through the contraction of the globe as a whole. By the action of gravity the former larger surface crushes down, as it were, the contracting interior; and the superfluous matter, which belonged to a bigger ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... disappeared, engulfed, engulfed, all that stretch. From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock and mood of awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled: for it was, and is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the earth's surface is being purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how shall I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... them was Acting Governor De Lancey. Colonel Philipse—wearing the ancestral gold chain and jewelled badge of the keepers of the deer forests of Bohemia—gave the bride away, and with her went a good portion of the earth's surface, and much ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... agricultural and pastoral industry involves an enlargement of the sphere of man's domain, by encroachment upon the forests which once covered the greater part of the earth's surface otherwise adapted to his occupation. The felling of the woods has been attended with momentous consequences to the drainage of the soil, to the external configuration of its surface, and probably, also, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... that "a whirlwind which sets an extended portion of the atmosphere into a state of rapid revolution diminishes the pressure of the atmosphere over that portion of the earth's surface, and most of all at the centre of the whirl. The depth of the compressing column of air will, at the centre, be least, and its weight will be diminished in proportion to the violence of the wind." Yet this has been controverted ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... in a long vaulted corridor, with a stone-flagged floor, and a dim oil lamp burning at the further end. Two iron-barred windows showed that we had come above the earth's surface once more. Down this corridor we passed, and then through several passages and up a short winding stair. At the head of it was an open door, which led into a ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be the only way of raising the standard of comfort among people who work with their hands; I take the standpoint of the wholly unpractical man, and say that such efforts do not concern me. From my point of view no movement can be tolerated which begins with devastating the earth's surface. You will clothe your workpeople better, you will give them better food and more leisure; in doing so you injure the class that has finer sensibilities, and give power to the class which not only postpones everything to material well-being, but more and more regards intellectual refinement ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... distance of the moon from the earth was determined by a very circuitous process. The share which direct observation had in the work consisted in ascertaining, at one and the same instant, the zenith distances of the moon, as seen from two points very remote from one another on the earth's surface. The ascertainment of these angular distances ascertained their supplements; and since the angle at the earth's centre subtended by the distance between the two places of observation was deducible by spherical trigonometry ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Newton and Dr. Sclater about 1872. In addition to having already expressed his general views on this subject in various papers and articles, he had, after careful consideration, come to adopt Dr. Sclater's division of the earth's surface into six great zoological regions, which he found equally applicable to birds, mammalia, reptiles, and other great divisions; while at the same time it helped to explain the apparent contradictions in the distribution of land animals. Some ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... given thee to light thy fires, raiment wherewith thou mayest be clothed, food to fill thy belly, and a knife to clear thy way. Go then and make unto thyself friends among those who dwell beneath the earth, and come back no more to trouble or molest those who live upon the earth's surface." ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... gave forth a light like the light of stars. The voice came from behind the curtain: so I raised it and discovered a gilded door, whose beauty amazed the mind. I passed through the door and found myself in a saloon as it were a hoard upon earth's surface[FN511] and therein a girl as she were the sun shining fullest sheen in the zenith of a sky serene. She was robed in the costliest of raiment and decked with ornaments the most precious that could be and withal she was of passing beauty and loveliness, a model of symmetry and seemliness, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... the pit; and devils came and went at will. Even after it was conceded that the earth revolved, there were found writers who accounted for the diurnal revolution by attributing it to the movements of damned souls confined within, like restless squirrels in a revolving cage. On the earth's surface, between heaven and hell, was man, the common battleground of celestial and infernal hosts. At this time, of course, there was none of our modern knowledge of the heavens, nor of the age or structure ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... have been more, rather than less, extensive than at present. In order then to understand our possible knowledge of the early world and its inhabitants, we must compare, not the area of the whole field of our geological researches with the earth's surface, but the area of the examined portion of each formation separately with the whole earth. For example, during the Silurian period all the earth was Silurian, and animals were living and dying, and depositing their remains more or ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... before written history began, the economic capital of the world, the seat for the time being of opulence and of splendor, and at once the admiration and the envy of less favored rivals, has been a certain ambulatory spot upon the earth's surface, at a point where the lines of trade from east to west have converged. And always the marked idiosyncrasy of this spot has been its unrest. It has constantly oscillated from east to west according as the fortunes of war have prevailed, or as the march of applied science has made one ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Britain, the dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century, played a leading role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing literature and science. At its zenith, the British Empire stretched over one-fourth of the earth's surface. The first half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted in two World Wars. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire and the UK rebuilding itself into a modern and ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... can take everything. How foolish of Stephen Candy and his tribe not to be born of the class of landlords! The inconvenience of having no foothold on the earth's surface is ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... upheaval, the substance that cooled very quickly formed granite, that which cooled less rapidly became copper, the next in degree cooled down into silver, and the last became gold. But the most beautiful substance of all, the diamond, was formed by the first beams of sunlight condensed on the earth's surface. ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... granting a magnetic field to be there it is less difficult to understand how wireless waves are produced in this congenial medium and find their way through it, following in their journey the curve of the earth's surface." ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... time the five-mile height was reached Earth's surface had changed definitely from concave to convex. The plane was ascending by then in a somewhat wider spiral, but its climb was as steady and sure as ever. Frost begin to form quickly on the cabin's windows, creeping ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... effort to disguise himself further than to put on a different suit of clothes and get another horse; and why, in the name of all that was inconceivable, had he come back to Witton, instead of going to any other part of the earth's surface What could he expect here, except immediate detection, imprisonment, and ruin? Was he insane? He did not seem to be so; but that interpretation of his conduct was not only the most charitable one, but no other could be ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... Allied with geology, paleontology has established two laws of inestimable importance: the first, that one and the same area of the earth's surface has been successively occupied by very different kinds of living beings; the second, that the order of succession established in one locality holds ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... largely and less noticeably in carelessness of our natural resources, as is now beginning to be realized. Waste of timber is followed by waste of water, and that by waste of land. The earth's surface of arable soil is being washed into the ocean at a wholly unnecessary rate, the foundation of all wealth—of our very life on earth—thus slipping away from us unobserved. Every barren, naked hill is a ruined garden; every yellow, muddy river is leaking ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... myriad of miles away. She could not have been more remote had she been in Saturn. When Emmy asked him whether he did not long for Wiggleswick and the studious calm of Nunsmere, he said, "No." And he spoke truly; for wherein lay the advantage of one spot on the earth's surface over another, if Zora were not the light thereof? But he kept his reason in his heart. They rarely spoke ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... or a rock in the Atlantic. The key to fame, which later took the form of mechanical invention, and later still of discovery in the region of science, took the form then of actual discovery of parts of the earth's surface. The thing was in the air; news was coming in every day of something new seen, something new charted. If others had done so much, and the field was still half unexplored, could not he do something also? It was not an unlikely thought ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... country bordering the Colorado, adding much to our knowledge of our western possessions, and giving, in their report, an interesting and graphic description of, perhaps, the most remarkable portion of the earth's surface. Half of the report of the Colorado Expedition was prepared by Dr. Newberry, and so much importance was attached to his observations by his commanding officer, that in the preface he speaks of them as constituting "the most interesting ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... other by arithmetic. The most probable direction for an attack was from over the Pole. His radar beam bent only slightly to follow the curve of the Earth. At great range, the lower edge of the beam was too far above the Earth's surface to detect anything of military significance. On a minimum altitude trajectory, an ICBM aimed for North America would not be visible until it reached 83 deg. North Latitude on the other side of the Pole. One of his interceptors took ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... accustom ourselves to a strange situation. And to Stephen it was no less strange to be walking over a muddy road of the prairie with this most singular man and a newspaper correspondent, than it might have been to the sub-terrestrial inhabitant to emerge on the earth's surface. Stephen's mind was in the process of a chemical change: Suddenly it seemed to him as if he had known this tall Illinoisan always. The whim of the senatorial candidate in choosing him for a companion he did not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... new and decisive assault, the Shining Ones planted atomic mines throughout the foundations of Atlantis. But the Atlanteans struck first by a matter of hours. At a set moment every volcanic vent on the Earth's surface belched forth colossal volumes of a green gas. Though that gas was harmless to creatures of Earth, it meant slow but certain death to all Rikorians. Furiously the Shining Ones struck their own blow, setting off the cataclysmic explosion that sank Atlantis ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... to during the first centuries of modern European history. It is resolvable into the double proposition that "sovereignty is territorial," i.e. that it is always associated with the proprietorship of a limited portion of the earth's surface, and that "sovereigns inter se are to be deemed not paramount, but absolute, owners of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... history, the results of which have been preserved during many centuries of barbarism.' Be this as it may, we are now given to understand that the Egyptian Pyramids, whether originally erected for purposes of sepulture or not, are, at the same time, definite portions of a degree of the earth's surface in the meridian of Egypt; and it has been proposed, as these mighty structures are far more durable even now than anything which we could build in England, that when our standard shall be re-established, the length shall be cut on ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... northern part of Luzon), a distance of 200 leagues. It caused great destruction over the entire area; in the province of Ilocos it buried palm trees, so that only the tops of their branches were left above the earth's surface; through the power of the earthquake mountains were pushed against each other; it threw down many buildings, and killed a great number of people. Its fury was greatest in Nueva Segovia, where it opened the mountains, and created new lake basins. The earth threw ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... grains that build up into a vein; (b) hot water from deep within the earth fills cracks, then cools and deposits much of the material in solution as minerals in a vein—sometimes including metals such as gold and silver; (c) molten gaseous material squeezes into cracks near the earth's surface, then ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... of the age is strikingly exhibited in the intense desire to diminish the quantity of time necessary to pass from one spot of the earth's surface to another, and to communicate almost instantaneously with a remote distance. The great triumphs of genius, within the last half century, have been accomplished within the domain of commerce. And in contemplating the progress which has ensued, it is a cause of humiliation that, as in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and material cannot be fully replaced. Germany and Japan are already realizing what the inevitable result will be when the total strength of the United Nations hits them—at additional places on the earth's surface. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... a large, prosperous and healthful population. It is no part of the present purpose to extol the mineral or the pastoral districts. They lie apart. But in North Queensland agriculture is almost solely confined to the coast and is essentially tropical. The tropics represent that portion of the earth's surface wherein man may live with the minimum of exertion, where actual wants are few, and wherein ample comforts may be enjoyed by those who seek them with a quiet mind and easy understanding. Although the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... better than stagnation. Pain is better than stagnation. I have only just begun to live. Hitherto I have been a machine upon the earth's surface. I was a one-ideaed man, and a one-ideaed man is only one remove from a dead man. That is what I have only just begun to realise. For all these years I have never been stirred, never felt a real throb of human emotion pass through me. I had no time for ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was a very pleasant one. We drove to many interesting towns and settlements within fifteen or twenty miles of the city. I do not remember, in my many travels, any part of the earth's surface that is more attractive in the spring of the year, the season when I was there, than the region about Los Angeles. I met there many friends of General Sherman, who inquired for him, and I informed them he was living very pleasantly in St. Louis, that ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... set by the geologist is not merely that of the sun's existence, but that during which the causes effecting geological changes have not undergone any complete revolution. If, at any time, the sun radiated much less than its present amount of heat, no water could have existed on the earth's surface except in the form of ice; there would have been scarcely any evaporation, and the geological changes due to erosion could not have taken place. Moreover, the commencement of the geological operations of which we speak is by no means the commencement of the earth's ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... originally made its appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions—thermometric, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... permanent loss of plant cover, a common effect of too many animals grazing limited range land. ozone shield - a layer of the atmosphere composed of ozone gas (O3) that resides approximately 25 miles above the Earth's surface and absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation that can be harmful to living organisms. poaching - the illegal killing of animals or fish, a great concern with respect to endangered or threatened species. pollution - the contamination of a healthy ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the third degree" (Ibid. page 436.), and he shows that this furrowed surface must be produced "if the density is greater in one hemispheroid than in the other, so that the position of the centre of gravity is eccentric." (Ibid. page 431.) Such a modelling of the earth's surface can only be referred to a primitive period of plasticity. If the furrows account for the great ocean basins, the disposition of the continents seems equally to follow. Sir George Darwin has pointed out that they necessarily "arise from a supposed primitive viscosity ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... section of the western hemisphere lies Great Britain's most extended colony, the vast Dominion of Canada, which covers an immense area of the earth's surface, surpassing that of the United States, and nearly equal to the whole of Europe. Its population, however, is not in accordance with its dimensions, though of late it is growing rapidly, being now over 7,000,000. The bleak and inhospitable character of the far northern section ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the continual deposition of which, at the present time, cannot be questioned (though probably the greater part of the masses which consist of them may belong to an era preceding the actual condition of the earth's surface) it would seem that the whole subject of these newer calcareous formations requires elucidation: and, if the inferences connected with them do not throw considerable doubt upon some opinions at present ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... open air temple, still standing upon Salsbury Plain, and bearing the name of Stonehenge, the most wonderful monument now standing upon the earth's surface. They built several other circular open air temples in the British Islands, and conspicuously among them, away up in the Orkneys, above Scotland, a very perfect and beautiful one called the "Standing ...
— Prehistoric Structures of Central America - Who Erected Them? • Martin Ingham Townsend
... follows: three lectures on the History of Science; two on reasons why we should study Science; four on the Crust of the Earth, and the nature of Volcanoes and Earthquakes; two on the form of Earth's Surface and the elevation of the Continents; five on Physical Geography; five on the nature of Heat and Magnetism; sixteen on Astronomy; two on Mountains and how they are formed; three on the Nature of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... place, we are not agreed as to the exact ratio of the axes, nor are we agreed as to the exact figure of the earth. If an attempt is made to measure the difference of longitude between two points on the earth's surface, especially when they are a considerable distance from each other, it is necessary to depend upon astronomical observations. In attempting to deduce the difference of longitude from geodetic measures, you must assume that the true ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... the earth worm. Scientists tell us that without this creature's work in preparing the soil, but little of the earth's surface would be fit for cultivation. To its voluntary efforts we owe our supplies of vegetable food, but not satisfied with this, we conscript him that he may help us to ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... "this is good to see," he says of a purity, of a fair thing. It needs not to speak of the impurity, of the ugliness. Left unmentioned, unforbidden, who knows how soon they might die out of men's lives, perhaps even from the earth's surface? Men hedging gardens have for centuries set plants under that "letter of law" which "killeth," until the very word hedge has become a pain and an offence; and all the while there have been standing in every wild country graceful walls of unhindered brier and berry, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a sore subject with me. I once witnessed a phenomenon which was to me quite as extraordinary as any of the 'spiritual' performances. I have at this moment in my possession apparently irresistible evidence of the reality of what then took place; and I am sure that there exists at a point on the earth's surface, which unluckily I cannot define, strong corroborative proof of my story. Nevertheless, the first persons who heard it utterly ridiculed it, and were disposed to treat me either as a madman, or at best as an audacious trespasser on that privilege of lying which belonged ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... returning from the country of the other, loaded with plunder and carrying a train of captives! They had met midway, and stood within musket range, gazing at each other with feelings of the most bitter hostility, and yet a conflict was as impossible as though twenty miles of the earth's surface ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... knowledge of static electricity, to arrive at hypotheses of a more than chimerical nature. In the first place, that our sphere is a more or less electrified body is generally admitted. More than this, it is demonstrated that the different parts of the earth's surface and its enveloping atmosphere are variously charged. As a consequence of these varying charges, there is a constant series of currents flowing through the various parts of the earth, which show themselves in such telegraph wires as may lie in the direction followed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... own things, or objects of thought. Thus a particular peak in a mountain chain is as much one thing as the chain itself, though, physically speaking, it is inseparable from it, just as the chain itself is inseparable from the earth's surface. In the same way a necklace is as much one thing as the individual ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... curve of the elevating or depressing rudder on an airship helps it to go up or down. If the rudder is inclined upward the aeroplane shoots toward the clouds. When the rudder is parallel to the plane of the earth's surface, the airship flies in a straight line. When the rudder is tilted ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... a high fence that marks the beginning of the Holden lot. Back of this fence is secreted a microcosmos, a world in little, where one may encounter strange races of people in their native dress and behold, by walking a block, cities actually apart by league upon league of the earth's surface and separated ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... undoubtedly was, an ascension was undertaken with the misgivings which usually preface an initial stepping from terra firma to the inconstant air. Once aloft, however, with the widespreading splendor and endless immensity of the earth's surface unrolling beneath him, and an exquisite physical exhilaration thrilling along his nerves, Donaldson became heart and soul an aeronaut. The novel and sensational expedients with which he embellished his subsequent ascensions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... gifts * Of spirit and body a mere delight. Her shape breeds envy in Cassia-tree * When fares she forth in her symmetry dight: With luminous brow shaming moon of dark * And crown-like crescent the brightest bright. When treads she earth's surface her fragrance scents * The Zephyr that breathes over plain ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... home of the air spirits; Manheim, the earth, or middle realm; Jotunheim, the world of the giants, outside the sea surrounding the earth; Elfheim, the world of the black demons and dwarfs, just under the earth's surface; Helheim, the domain of the goddess of death, deep within the earth's bosom; and finally, Niflheim, the lowest kingdom of horror and pain, at the very bottom of the creation. The Buddhist kosmos, in the simplest form, as some of them ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... forenoon of varied pleasures to Ishmael. The gates of the Temple of Knowledge had been thrown open to him. All three of his studies had charmed him: the marvelous description of the earth's surface, the wonderful history of the human race, the curious analysis of language—each had in its turn delighted him. And now came the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of a function in which the growth is proportional to the function itself is to the air. The decrease in the pressure of the air at the distance h above the earth's surface ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... up of large fields of exertion as well as of the road to distinction and eminence, with all their incentives to effort, which are the very life of a majestic republic stretching over a large portion of the earth's surface, embracing such mixed nationalities, and founded upon principles of progress both in its physical and mental relations which have rendered it in very truth a new experiment among the nations. We had first to forget the divine right of kings, and the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... logical sequence of the past. From artesian wells, from mines, from geysers, from hot springs, a mass of facts has been collected proving incontestably the heated condition of all materials at a certain depth below the earth's surface; and if we need more positive evidence, we have it in the fiery eruptions that even now bear fearful testimony to the molten ocean seething within the globe and forcing its way out from time to time. The modern progress of Geology has led us by successive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... come down from the watershed towards Tanganyika we enter an area of the earth's surface still disturbed by internal igneous action. A hot fountain in the country of Nsama is often used to boil cassava and maize. Earthquakes are by no means rare. We experienced the shock of one while at Chitimba's village, and they extend as far as Casembe's. I felt ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Platte, and not far distant from its junction with that river, there is an extensive cavern, in which are deposited several mummies. Some tribes which roam this region have a tradition, that the first Indian ascended through this aperture, and settled on the earth's surface. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... in the mountain meadows, later in the palace of Valhalla on the heights. The giants are a great and strong race, but lack wisdom; they hate what is noble, and are enemies of the gods; they dwell in caves near the earth's surface. The dwarfs, or nibelungs, are black uncouth pigmies, hating the good, hating the gods; they are crafty and cunning, and dwell in the bowels of the earth. The nymphs are pure, innocent creatures of the water. The valkyrie are daughters of the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... an open country, like an unrolled map, simple in all its lines, with little variety in its scenery, devoid of sharp contrasts and sudden changes and hence lacking in the element of the picturesque which comes from these things. It is a part of the earth's surface that has never been subject to convulsion and upheaval. The stratified rock lies horizontally just as it was laid down in the bottom of the Devonian Seas millions of years ago. The mountains and the ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... to Olifant's River and at the cobalt mine near there joined those who had remained behind under General Muller. The enemy, however, who seemed determined, if possible, to obliterate us from the earth's surface, discovered our whereabouts about the middle of July, and attacked us in overwhelming numbers. We had taken up a position on the "Randts," and offered as much resistance as we could. The enemy poured into us a heavy shell fire from their howitzers ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... omniscient, and because they had come to settled conclusions about every kind of worldly problem. Youth and vitality equalised their ranks, and the fact that Audrey possessed many ascertained ancestors, and a part of the earth's surface, and much money, and that the concierge's wife possessed nothing but herself and a few bits of furniture, was not of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... all this to exasperate a philosopher, much to make him smile rather; but the earth's surface is not chiefly inhabited by philosophers, and I revive the recollection of it now in perfect good-humour, merely by way of suggesting to our ci-devant British cousins, that it would have been easier for them to hold their tongues than for us to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... cannot by any actual experiment reach an altitude more than a few miles above the earth, yet it is certain that gravitation would extend to elevations far greater. It is plain, thought Newton, that an apple let fall from a point a hundred miles above this earth's surface, would be drawn down by the attraction, and would continually gather fresh velocity until it reached the ground. From a hundred miles it was natural to think of what would happen at a thousand miles, or at hundreds of thousands ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Thus he accounted for the exceptional volume of water by the motion of rivers flowing down from the end of the pear. One step farther in the realms of fancy, and he indulged in a dream that this centre and apex of the earth's surface, with its mighty rivers, could be no other than the terrestrial paradise. Writing as one thought coursed after another in his teeming fancy, we find these passing whims of a vivid imagination embodied in the journal intended for the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... necklace with evident pleasure, showed herself very affable. Poor lost Guatos! Their dejected countenances, miserable grass huts, alive with vermin, and their extreme poverty, were most touching. Inhabiting, as they do, one of the hottest and dampest places on the earth's surface, where mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that they exist at all. Truly, man is a strange being, who can adapt himself to equatorial heat or polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief business in life seemed to consist in sitting on fibre mats spread on the ground, and driving away the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... conservative of the country would have had to suffer from the errors of its fools, as is often the case. But for this war there would be no possible excuse. Spain at one time owned nearly two- thirds of the earth's surface. She has lost every inch of it, except the Peninsula and a few islands, by her cruelty and stupidity. Her manifest destiny is to lose these islands in the same manner and for the same reasons. And brutal and stupid as she is, we have no more right to interfere in her domestic ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... is merely a shell or crust over the great mass of uninhabitable matter. The world beneath the earth's surface is as diversified as the world above. It has its mountains, its streams, its plains, its caverns, and its ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... with Hamilton for his sole helper, continued the work alone. Up to this time thirty-nine nights had been spent in the work of excavation. The two men now made a careful examination of the northeast corner of the cellar, at which point the earth's surface outside the prison wall, being eight or nine feet higher than at the canal or south side, afforded a better place to dig than the latter, being free from water and with clay-top enough to support itself. The unfavorable feature of this point was that the only possible terminus of a tunnel was ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... finding it out for myself, which I think I could have done. But, in any case, the article is exceedingly interesting ... Though I have been enjoying myself in following you underground, what is now going on on the earth's surface calls for close attention. I am here hard by one of the old military roads which have led into Italy from time immemorial, as at this day. I hear that great preparations are being made all along the valley of the Rhone and the neighbouring country. What I am sure of, because it is taking ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... to a vast antiquity, should have been contemptuously set aside as a fable by Greeks, Romans, and the modern world. It can only be because our predecessors, with their limited knowledge of the geological history of the world, did not believe it possible that any large part of the earth's surface could have been thus suddenly ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... own argument, and had not the slightest expectation that the convoy would be found. The map, which the breeze lifted and upon which the rain drummed, seemed to be entirely unconnected with the actual facts of the earth's surface. The party mounted tired, unwilling horses and filed off. Some soldiers in the darkness, watching the string of lanterns, gave a half-ironical 'Hurrah.' One by one, as the tracks bifurcated, George dispatched his men, with renewed insistent advice, and at last he ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of the earth that must be passed before reaching Milu, the hades of the Hawaiians. The cosmogony of the southern Polynesians, according to Mr. Tregear, recognized ten papa, or divisions. "The first division was the earth's surface; the second was the abode of Rongo-ma-tane and Haumia-tiketike; ... the tenth was Meto, or Ameto, or Aweto, wherein the soul of man found utter extinction." (The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, by Edward Tregear, F.R.G.S., etc., Wellington, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson |
