The Romance of Modern Geology: Describing in simple but exact language the making of the earth with some account of prehistoric animal lifeGrew, Edwin Sharpe
Science
The Romance of Modern Geology: Describing in simple but exact language the making of the earth with some account of prehistoric animal life
Grew, Edwin Sharpe
Geology; Paleontology
Now let us see how these winds might leave traces in the geological
record. When soil is exposed to the sun its surface becomes dust, and
the wind carries it off. Even where turf protects the surface, bare
places may always be found whence this covering has been removed.
Rabbits and moles bring up the earth to the surface; the earthworms
sometimes bring as much as ten tons of earth to the surface of a
single acre of turf in the course of a year. The earthworms bring up
only the finest particles of mould; and these, of course, are the
very particles readily converted into dust and borne away by the
wind if they are not washed away by rain. In tropical countries the
white ant conveys a prodigious amount of fine earth up into the open
air, building walls sometimes sixty feet high. Although, therefore,
the layer of vegetable soil which covers the land appears to be a
permanent protection, it does not really prevent a large amount
of material from being removed even from grassy ground. The wind
carries this fine dust far and wide over the land, and over the sea
as well. After the eruption of the island of Krakatoa in 1883, the
dust which was the product of that mighty explosion was carried round
the world, and even in England we saw the dust particles furnishing
extraordinary colours in sunset skies.
[Illustration:
_Stereo Copyright, Underwood & U._ _London and New York_
The Garden of the Gods, Colorado
These peaks exhibit the gradual wearing away of hard rocks by the
action of rain and wind.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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