Principles of Geology: or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of GeologyLyell, Charles, Sir
Science
Principles of Geology: or, The Modern Changes of the Earth and its Inhabitants Considered as Illustrative of Geology
Lyell, Charles, Sir
Geology
_Generelli's illustrations of Moro_, 1749.--The style of Moro was
extremely prolix, and, like Hutton, who, at a later period, advanced
many of the same views, he stood in need of an illustrator. The Scotch
geologist was hardly more fortunate in the advocacy of Playfair, than
was Moro in numbering amongst his admirers Cirillo Generelli, who, nine
years afterwards, delivered at a sitting of Academicians at Cremona a
spirited exposition of his theory. This learned Carmelitan friar does
not pretend to have been an original observer, but he had studied
sufficiently to enable him to confirm the opinions of Moro by arguments
from other writers; and his selection of the doctrines then best
established is so judicious, that a brief abstract of them cannot fail
to be acceptable, as illustrating the state of geology in Europe, and in
Italy in particular, before the middle of the last century.
The bowels of the earth, says he, have carefully preserved the memorials
of past events, and this truth the marine productions so frequent in the
hills attest. From the reflections of Lazzaro Moro, we may assure
ourselves that these are the effects of earthquakes in past times, which
have changed vast spaces of sea into terra firma, and inhabited lands
into seas. In this, more than in any other department of physics, are
observations and experiments indispensable, and we must diligently
consider facts. The land is known, wherever we make excavations, to be
composed of different strata or soils placed one above the other, some
of sand, some of rock, some of chalk, others of marl, coal, pummice,
gypsum, lime, and the rest. These ingredients are sometimes pure, and
sometimes confusedly intermixed. Within are often imprisoned different
marine fishes, like dried mummies, and more frequently shells,
crustacea, corals, plants, &c., not only in Italy, but in France,
Germany, England, Africa, Asia, and America;--sometimes in the lowest,
sometimes in the loftiest beds of the earth, some upon the mountains,
some in deep mines, others near the sea, and others hundreds of miles
distant from it. Woodward conjectured that these marine bodies might be
found everywhere; but there are rocks in which none of them occur, as is
sufficiently attested by Vallisneri and Marsilli. The remains of fossil
animals consist chiefly of their more solid parts, and the most rocky
strata must have been soft when such exuviæ were inclosed in them.
Vegetable productions are found in different states of maturity,
indicating that they were imbedded in different seasons. Elephants,
elks, and other terrestrial quadrupeds, have been found in England and
elsewhere, in superficial strata, never covered by the sea. Alternations
are rare, yet not without example, of marine strata, with those which
contain marshy and terrestrial productions. Marine animals are arranged
in the subterraneous beds with admirable order, in distinct groups,
oysters here, dentalia or corals there, &c., as now, according to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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