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Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology: In a Series of Essays

Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology: In a Series of Essays

by George Bellas Greenough
Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology: In a Series of Essays

Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology: In a Series of Essays

by George Bellas Greenough

Overview

Born in London, the geologist G. B. Greenough FRS (1778-1855) initially studied law. His studies took him to the University of Göttingen where, almost by chance, he attended lectures on natural history. He was immediately hooked, gave up his legal studies, and devoted himself to geology, going on a series of scientific tours of France, Italy, Britain, Ireland and lastly India. He helped to found the Geological Society, and under its auspices, he organised a cooperative project that led to his famous geological map of England and Wales. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1807 for his services to geology. This influential series of essays, published in 1819, debunked a range of geological theories that were popular at the time, and by so doing, Greenough helped to reform much of geological thinking. The book also includes transcripts from his presidential addresses to the Geological Society.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781108035323
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 11/10/2011
Series: Cambridge Library Collection - Earth Science
Edition description: Reissue
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

Read an Excerpt


ESSAY III. Op THE INEQUALITIES WHICH EXISTED Off THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH PREVIOUSLY TO DILUVIAN ACTION, AND ON THE CAUSES OF THESE INEQUALITIES. I Have endeavoured in the preceding Essay to refer to their immediate causes, the inequalities which diversify the present surface of the earth ; but, as the operation of those causes must have been greatly modified by the form of the surface on which they acted, it is necessary, in order to complete our enquiry, that we should endeavour to ascertain the figure of the earth in preceding ages. While its construction was yet going on, is it probable that the surface of our planet exhibited one uninterrupted plane, or thatit was diversified then, as it is now, by protuberances arid depressions ? In favor of the former opinion, may be cited the authority of Stracey, Hutchinson, and many of the early writers. Believing that the materials which constitute the solid crust of the globe, were deposited from a fluid menstruum, in obedience to the laws of gravity uninfluenced by disturbing causes, they inferred, a priori, that every stratum must have been originally plane or rather concentric. The observations of Dr. Richardson a go to justify that inference : for though the upper surface of superficial strata is continually scolloped away, the plane forming their base, he says, continues always steady and rectilinear, and the upper and under surfaces of those beneath he finds invariably parallel to one another. These observations, however, I apprehend, are just only when applied to dis-r tricts of inconsiderable extent. Even along Philosophical Transactions for 1808. the coast of Antrim, it would not be easy to find the surface of the chalkunlacerated for a mile together, protected as it is by its thick cover of whinstone. ...

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. On stratification; 2. On the figure of the Earth; 3. On the inequalities which existed on the surface of the Earth previously to diluvian action, and on the causes of these inequalities; 4. On formations; 5. On the order of succession in rocks; 6. On the properties of rocks, as connected with their respective ages; 7. On the history of strata, as deduced from their fossil contents; 8. On mineral veins; Address delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Geological Society of London, on the 21st of February, 1834; Address delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Geological Society of London, on the 20th of February, 1835.
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