The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of VegetationDarwin, Erasmus
History
The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation
Darwin, Erasmus
Natural history; Plants -- Poetry; Portland Vase
The recent production of iron is evinced from the chalybeate waters
which flow from morasses which lie upon gravel-beds, and which must
therefore have produced iron after those gravel-beds were raised out of
the sea. On the south side of the road between Cheadle and Okeymoor in
Staffordshire, yellow stains of iron are seen to penetrate the gravel
from a thin morass on its surface. There is a fissure eight or ten feet
wide, in a gravel-bed on the eastern side of the hollow road ascending
the hill about a mile from Trentham in Staffordshire, leading toward
Drayton in Shropshire, which fissure is filled up with nodules of iron-
ore. A bank of sods is now raised against this fissure to prevent the
loose iron nodules from falling into the turnpike road, and thus this
natural curiosity is at present concealed from travellers. A similar
fissure in a bed of marl, and filled up with iron nodules and with some
large pieces of flint, is seen on the eastern side of the hollow road
ascending the hill from the turnpike house about a mile from Derby in
the road towards Burton. And another such fissure filled with iron
nodes, appears about half a mile from Newton-Solney in Derbyshire, in
the road to Burton, near the summit of the hill. These collections of
iron and of flint must have been produced posterior to the elevation of
all those hills, and were thence evidently of vegetable or animal
origin. To which should be added, that iron is found in general in beds
either near the surface of the earth, or stratified with clay coals or
argillaceous grit, which are themselves productions of the modern world,
that is, from the recrements of vegetables and air-breathing animals.
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