"Earth's surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a small scale, in the very neighbourhood of man's busiest haunts, occur the cosmical cataclysms which are usually seen only in remote solitudes, and which during the unknown ages of geology have left their indelible records on large portions of the earth's surface. Here we are admitted into the very workshop of Nature, and are privileged to witness her processes of creation. In the neighbourhood of Rome the volcanoes are long extinct. Nature is dead, and there is nothing left but her cold gray ashes. But here we see her in all her vigour, changing ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... say, is ninety-three millions of miles away from the earth's surface, Susy; and think you that if some of us climb the mountains we are much nearer light than ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... but the Pilot is prepared and has put his craft on an even keel in less time than it takes to tell you about it; for well he knows that he must expect such conditions when passing over a shore or, indeed, any well-defined change in the composition of the earth's surface. Especially is this so on a hot and sunny day, for then the warm surface of the earth creates columns of ascending air, the speed of the ascent depending upon the composition of the surface. Sandy soil, for instance, ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... by no means the same density throughout. Like all gases, air is subject to the law that the density increases directly as the pressure, and thus the densest and heaviest layers are those nearest the sea-level, because the air near the earth's surface has to support the pressure of all the air above it. As airmen rise into the highest portions of the atmosphere the height of the column of air above them decreases, and it follows that, having a shorter column of air to support, those portions are less dense than those lower down. So rare does ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... the memory 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 army, or of killing eight hundred and fifty thousand men with a flourish of his quill,—for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... "has not yet become superfluous. Two-thirds of the earth's surface is still covered with water. But if a vessel here and there is swallowed up in the flood, the ark of humanity cannot sink, since God has set his rainbow in the heavens. The ocean is the cradle of heroism, it is the unifying, not ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... possession of the continent. Buffon has made the striking remark that the creative power appeared to have never had great vigour in America. He alluded to the abundance of the flora and fauna as compared with that of other great divisions of the earth's surface. Whether the numbers of the Indians are an illustration of the same fact, or whether there is some special cause, is beyond my very modest scientific attainments. When one reflects upon the countless herds of bison which used to cover the Western plains, or marks in the present ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... composting in heaps and natural decomposition on the earth's surface is temperature. On the forest floor, leaves leisurely decay and the primary agents of decomposition are soil animals. Bacteria and other microorganisms are secondary. In a compost pile the opposite occurs: we substitute a violent fermentation by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. Soil animals ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... arising from the mutual conflict of geographical conditions. And they, especially, recognize the agency of a Divine Providence controlling those forces in nature by which the configuration of the earth's surface is determined, and the distribution of its oceans, continents, and islands is secured; and a providence, also, directing the dispersions and migrations of nations—determining the times of each nation's existence, and fixing the geographical bounds of their habitation, all in view of the moral ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... ancient boulder-clays of Scotland seem to have been formed when the land was undergoing a slow process of subsidence, or, as I should perhaps rather say, when a very considerable area of the earth's surface, including the sea-bottom, as well as the eminences that rose over it, was the subject of a gradual depression; for little or no alteration appears to have taken place at the time in the relative levels ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the spontaneous aloe shows. The subsoil is laterite, also highly ferruginous. Soft and working well with the axe while it retains the quarry-water, it soon hardens by exposure; and, thus weathered, it forms the best and ugliest of the local building materials. Embedded in the earth's surface are blocks and boulders apparently erratic, dislodged or washed down from the upper heights, where similar masses are seen. Many are scattered, as if by an eruption; others lie in slab or dome shape upon the shore. The shape is usually spheroidal, and the material hypersthene (a hard and ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... around, 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 carry ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum
... which have a soul change, and possess in themselves a principle of change, and in changing move according to law and to the order of destiny: natures which have undergone a lesser change move less and on the earth's surface, but those which have suffered more change and have become more criminal sink into the abyss, that is to say, into Hades and other places in the world below, of which the very names terrify men, and which they picture to themselves as in a dream, both while alive and when released from ...
— Laws • Plato
... part of the earth's surface are nearly always white. They have forced their way to the sun along a frozen path and look akin to the perils of their road: the snow-threatened lily of the valley, the chill snowdrop, the frosty snowball, the bleak hawtree, the wintry wild cherry, the wintry dogwood. As the eye ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... To one who finds a charm in things as they exist in the unconquered provinces of Nature's dominions, and who, not being over-anxious to reach the end of his journey, is content to perform it on horseback, or in a waggon drawn by bullocks, it is permissible to lament the altered aspect of the earth's surface, together with the disappearance of numberless noble and beautiful forms, both of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. For he cannot find it in his heart to love the forms by which they are replaced; these are cultivated ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... our respective 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 ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them. Like the old Romans, and some few others, their Epic Poem is written on the Earth's surface: England her Mark! It is complained that they have no artists: one Shakspeare indeed; but for Raphael only a Reynolds; for Mozart nothing but a Mr. Bishop: not a picture, not a song. And yet they did produce one Shakspeare: consider how the element of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... like might be true of terrestrial changes; although no one recognized more clearly than he the fact that the dry land is being constantly washed down by rain and rivers and deposited in the sea; and that thus, in a longer or shorter time, the inequalities of the earth's surface must be leveled, and its high lards brought down to the ocean. But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth, which, upheaving the sea bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that these operations ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... 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
... the earth can only account for the flow of the Charles for there is no perceptible descent of the land. I like to think it is ruled by the stars and not by the configuration of the earth's surface. It is vagrant and nomadic in its habits, moving on a little, returning, winding and doubling, uncertain of its own intentions, a brother of the English Wye, said to derive its name from Vaga, the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... and the Indian Peninsula all point south? South America, Africa, and Australia are drawn out into wedges narrowing southwards. They are like stalactites in a grotto. But however much you may puzzle over the globe, and however much you may question learned men, you will never know why the earth's surface has assumed exactly the form it has ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Long before Darwin's book appeared evolution had been a recognised force in the moving world of science and philosophy. Kant and Laplace had worked out the development of suns and earths from white-hot star-clouds. Lyell had worked out the evolution of the earth's surface to its present highly complex geographical condition. Lamarck had worked out the descent of plants and animals from a common ancestor by slow modification. Herbert Spencer had worked out the growth of mind from its simplest beginnings to its ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... terrestrial element; the locus on the earth's surface of no inclination of the magnetic needle; the magnetic ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... living creatures, but the water striders and their near relatives are unique. No other group shares their power of actually walking, or rather pushing themselves, upon the surface of the water. They have a little piece of the world all to themselves. Yet, although three fifths of the earth's surface consists of water, this group of insects is a small one. A very few, however, are found out upon the ocean, where the tiny creatures row themselves cheerfully along. It is thought that they attach their eggs to the floating saragassum seaweed. If only we knew the whole life of one of these ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... carving of a coat of arms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with a stony slope at the back. It might have been a hill for all I know or perhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a combination of all these: just a bit of the earth's surface. Once I asked her where exactly it was situated and she answered, waving her hand cavalierly at the dead wall of the room: "Oh, over there." I thought that this was all that I was going to hear but she added moodily, "I used to take my goats there, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... regions. This is what I should expect to find in the central parts of Australia, from the nature of that portion which I had seen and the state of the weather throughout the winter. An almost perpetual sunshine had prevailed, dry cirro-cumulus clouds had arisen indeed sometimes, but no point of the earth's surface was of sufficient height to attract them or to arrest their progress in the sky. There seemed neither on the earth nor in the air sufficient humidity to feed a cloud. Dew was very uncommon, the moisture from the one or two slight showers, which did reach the ground, was measured out in ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... a race of farmers. When the war broke out eighty-five per cent of the people lived in the country. Although a nation having one-sixth of the earth's surface, yet she has only a few large cities. It is actually said that years ago people had to be chained in the cities to keep them ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... important, because, heavily loaded, they were to help lessen the fall of the projectile, when drawn by the lunar attraction (after having passed the point of neutral attraction) on to the moon's surface; a fall which ought to be six times less rapid than it would have been on the earth's surface, thanks to the difference of bulk. The inspection ended with general satisfaction, when each returned to watch space through the side windows and ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... a long time, and I almost envied his privilege, wishing that I might also hear the human voice from the earth's surface. ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... 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 ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... associated against Germany, occupy, with their dependencies, two-thirds of the earth's surface and include more than four-fifths of its population. The governments of these nations declared that they were fighting primarily, not for selfish interests such as "ports and provinces and trade," but "for the common interests of the whole family of civilized ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... Suddenly a hot wind began to blow from the south, and the heat became so intense that leaves withered and dropped from the trees, the grass dried up, and large cracks appeared in several places of the earth's surface. Thirst, heat, and weariness began to tell upon the young prince, so he took the cooling flagon from his ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... because we have a tolerably complete record of the succession of geological formations, we have therefore any correspondingly complete record of their fossiliferous contents. The work of determining the relative ages of the rocks does not require that every cubic mile of the earth's surface should be separately examined, in order to find all the different fossils which it may contain. Were this the case, we should hitherto have made but very small progress in our reading of the testimony of the rocks. The relative ages of the rocks are determined by broad comparative surveys over ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... who are queerly shaped but powerful sprites that labor at the furnaces and forges of their king, making gold and silver and other metals which they conceal in the crevices of the rocks, so that those living upon the earth's surface can only find them with great difficulty. Also they make diamonds and rubies and emeralds, which they hide in the ground; so that the kingdom of the Nomes is wonderfully rich, and all we have of precious stones and silver ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... period than an imperfect account of the life of a few particular peoples. Necessarily limited almost entirely to an acquaintance with the history of that portion of the globe included in the 'Roman Empire,' we almost forget our profound ignorance of that vastly larger proportion of the earth's surface, the extra-Roman world, embracing then, as now, civilised as well as barbarous nations. The Chinese empire (the most extraordinary, perhaps, and whose antiquity far surpasses that of any known), comprehending within its limits two-thirds of the population of the globe; the refined ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... knows the part played by erosion in shaping the earth's surface as we see it. He sees, I repeat, the phantoms of vanished hills and mountains all about us. He sees their shadow forms wherever he looks. He follows out the lines of the flexed or folded strata where they come to the surface, and thus sketches ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... older than the discovery of the antiquated zipper," Spink orated. "Ha, you big plexidomes still believe the Earth was condensed from a filament, and was ejected by the sun under the gravitational attraction of a big star passing close to the Earth's surface. First it was a liquid drop and cooling solidified it after a period of a few million years. You citizens still think it has a liquid core. Some of you think it is pretty hot inside like they had atomic furnaces all fired up. Ha, the exterior ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... a landscape with mountains and plains, lakes and rivers, very like those upon the earth's surface; but all the scene was splendidly colored by the variegated lights from the six suns. Here and there were groups of houses that seemed made of clear glass, because they ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... 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 common ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... 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 prosperous European nation. As one of five permanent members ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... that bright-coloured fruits attract birds, who eat the soft parts of the fruit and swallow the hard stone or seed which is thus prepared for germination, and carried about and dispersed over the earth's surface. Again, showy coloured flowers attract insects, which carry away ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... build a fire and fabricate clothing is given 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 ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... they assume the shape of a cone, the point of which being a tangent on the earth's surface: the cone varies in shape, is generally of a good diameter, occasionally much pulled out, some being 2,300 feet in height, the currents are most violent ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... man's first sin inconveniences of the seasons, and of the different climates of the globe, as well as a thousand things on the earth's surface, and in the dispositions and habits of the lower animals, which are not attributed to that cause ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... it's the mad dream of a visionary or feeble-minded person. He don't deny there would be money in whales if they could be handled, but you couldn't handle anything that had the whole ocean to swim in that covers three quarters of the earth's surface, as he has often read. And how would you get a branding iron on a whale, and what good would it do you? He'd beat it out for Europe. He said they was foolish to think whales would stay in a herd, and he guessed I'd been talking just to hear myself ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... a twinkle in his eye at her refusal to answer his question, "takes up the history of the earth's surface—its crust—the layers of this—as one might study the skin of an apple as large as the globe. In the course of an almost infinite time, as we measure things, it discovers the appearance of Life on this crust, and then tries to follow the progress of Life from the lowest forms ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... 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
... 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 out from the edges. Norman ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... should be clearly distinguished from others, in order that they may receive the special attention due them. The moral truths of literature and history belong plainly to this group. But there are many others, such, for instance, as the picturing of places upon the earth's surface rather than upon maps; the association of places with their latitudes; in the case of such a live problem as protective tariff, the association of the main facts in its history; the association of our leading transportation routes with the progress ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... The period 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 ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... glimpse into the arcana of nature it immediately imagines an indefinite and all but unlimited extension of its view in that direction. So to many it has not appeared unreasonable to assume that, since it is possible to transmit electric impulses for considerable distances over the earth's surface by the simple propagation of a series of waves, or undulations, without connecting wires, it may also be possible to send such impulses through the ether from planet ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... man's most destructive enemy is Man. (The subject may have been suggested to him by a fine imaginative passage in Aristotle's Meteorology (i. 14, 7) dealing with the vast changes that have taken place on the earth's surface and the unrecorded perishings of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... depths, there was something not unpleasant about it. And, besides, we were beginning to get accustomed to this troglodyte [l] life. I no longer thought of sun, moon, and stars, trees, houses, and towns, nor of any of those terrestrial superfluities which are necessaries of men who live upon the earth's surface. Being fossils, we looked upon all ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... ashes, and desolate the earth with burning floods of lava, and of scalding hot water shot up out of subterranean boilers, and gaping fissures that emit sulphurous vapors, and strange sounds heard beneath the earth's surface, and all the marvelous experiences of Icelandic travel, including ghosts and hobgoblins that ramble over the icy wastes by night, and hide themselves in gloomy caverns by day—these he could dwell upon in earnest and homely language with ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... new facts toward a knowledge of the earth's surface, says one skilled authority, than any book that had been written before. The writer was the first to describe China, or Cathay, in its vastness of territory, its wonderfully rich and populous cities, and the first to tell of Tartary, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of Bulgaria, Roumania, and Bosnia, the final subjection of China and its southern tributaries must be added to complete the tale of Mongol triumph. The sphere of Mongol influence extended beyond this large portion of the earth's surface, just as the consequence of an explosion cannot be restricted to the immediate scene of the disaster. If we may include the remarkable achievements of his descendant Baber, and of that prince's grandson ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Farmers, editorialized, "a certain imperialist nation, unscrupulously pilfering the technical advance of Soviet Science, is using atomic power, contrary to international law. This is intolerable to a peace-loving people embracing 1/6 of the earth's surface and the poultrymen of the Collective, Little Red Father, have unanimously protested against such capitalist aggression which can only be directed against the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... then, may be regarded either as a superficies or as a solid; that is, either as a part of the earth's surface slightly elevated above the rest, or as a diffused and heterogeneous body displacing a certain portion of free and mobile atmosphere. It is primarily in the first character that it attracts our attention, as a radiating and absorbing surface, exposed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... weather and his own instincts, from living in small family parties of a score or so over restricted areas of indulgent country, to permanent settlements, to the life of tribal and national communities and the beginnings of cities. He had spread in that fragment of time over great areas of the earth's surface, and now he was adapting himself to the Arctic circle on the one hand and to the life of the tropics on the other; he had invented the plough and the ship, and subjugated most of the domestic animals; he was beginning to think of the origin of the world and the mysteries ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... mechanical explanation as is attempted by the philosophers. Design is also visible in the violation of the natural law by which water should always be above and around earth; whereas in reality we see a great part of the earth's surface above water. This is clearly a beneficent provision in order that animal life may sustain itself, and this is the significance of the words of the Psalmist (136, 6), "To him that stretched out the earth ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... of this earthquake were the swallowing up of the mole, and the vast extent of the earth's surface over which the shocks were felt. Several of the highest mountains in Portugal were violently shaken, and rent at their summits; huge masses falling from them into the neighboring valleys. These great fractures ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... and mine, as well as England and Germany." It is time to revise some of the fundamental assumptions of political philosophers and statesmen. Let us admit that peoples may be strong and happy and contented without seeking to control increasingly those sources of wealth still left undeveloped on the earth's surface, without cutting one another's throats in an effort for national expansion. The psychology of states cannot be fundamentally different from that of the individuals in them. And the happiness of the individual has never been found to consist wholly, even ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... 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 purpose ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... 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, are ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... THE VERTICAL. The difference between the geographical and geocentric latitudes of a place upon the earth's surface. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... arrive in the greatest numbers over the earth's equatorial regions. There they encounter the lines of magnetic force at the place where the latter have their greatest elevation above the earth, and where their direction is horizontal to the earth's surface. Obeying a law which has been demonstrated in the laboratory, the particles then follow the lines of force toward the poles. While they are above the equatorial regions they do not become luminescent, because at the great elevation that they there occupy ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... or three hours passed, and then a lurid light illumined the strange scene, brightening moment by moment, till earth and sky glowed like a mass of molten copper. The heat seemed to concentrate upon that part of the earth's surface, the air grew oppressive, and an ominous silence reigned, in which even the birds were hushed and the dumb brutes cowered ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... into which my poor husband's body was laid, and then the neighbours buried him, but in such a manner that he lay but a foot or two below the earth's surface. I have been afraid the beasts of prey which infest this region would get possession of his corpse; so, with my children, I build every night ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... problem of inventing a machine, but the problem of using and storing the forces of nature which now go to waste. Now to us who live on the earth there is only one source of power—the sun. Darken the sun and every engine on the earth's surface would soon stop, every wheel cease to turn, and all movement cease. How prodigal this supply of power is we seldom stop to consider. Deducting the atmospheric absorption, it is still true that the sun delivers on each square yard of the earth's surface, when he is shining, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... 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 by the currents. Such ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... remarks is more than doubtful, even if we except (as I suppose he would) all those numerous organic forms which contain no hard parts.) So far from a very long-continued subsidence being probable, many facts lead to the belief that the earth's surface oscillates up and down; and we have seen that during the elevatory movements there is but a small chance of DURABLE ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... and, by increasing the arbitrary delights of my imagination, aggravated the disenchantment that was in store for me when I set out upon my travels. They magnified the idea that I formed of certain points on the earth's surface, making them more special, and in consequence more real. I did not then represent to myself towns, landscapes, historic buildings, as pictures more or less attractive, cut out here and there of a substance that was ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Croll, in a letter to "Nature" (July 13, 1876), incidentally mentions the lessons that may be derived from the configurations of the earth's surface. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... 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 valleys are the result of vast ages of gentle erosion, and gentleness and repose are stamped upon ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... can contract distance and bring any mundane scene within its range while penetrating solid matter as if it did not exist at all. So by utilizing this power, which I possess to a considerable degree, it is my intention to make a hurried survey of the earth's surface in order to obtain an exact idea of present conditions. Furthermore, by the subtle concentration of our mind forces together I shall convey to your inner vision the actual scenes witnessed by myself, and you shall act as my mental consort on a trip ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... 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 the side of one of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... terrestrial changes by means of causes and according to laws known to be in operation at the present day: "During the progress of Geology, there have been great fluctuations of opinion respecting the nature of the causes to which all former changes in the earth's surface are referable. The first observers conceived that the monuments which the Geologist endeavors to decipher relate to a period when the physical constitution of the earth differed entirely from the present, and that, even after the creation of living beings, there ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... said Edmund. "Every time we double our distance from the earth we lose another three quarters of our weight. If I had thought to bring along a spring dynamometer, I could have shown you, Jack, that when we were 4,000 miles above the earth's surface the 200 good pounds with which you depress the scales at home had diminished to 50, and that when we had passed about 150,000 miles into space you weighed no more than a couple of ounces. From that point on, it has been the attraction of the sun ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... poor dejected wretches lay; nothing but earth's surface for a bed,—no blanket to cover them. They have eaten their measure of corn, and are sleeping; they sleep while chivalry revels! Harry has drawn his hat partly over his face, and made a pillow of the little bundle he carried ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Mechlin (Malines), Utrecht, Overyssel, and Groningen, which, collectively, formed a great and powerful state able to contend with monarchies. Higher than it then stood their commerce could not rise. The sources of their wealth were above the earth's surface, but they were more valuable and inexhaustible and richer than all the mines in America. These seventeen provinces which, taken together, scarcely comprised the fifth part of Italy, and do not extend beyond three hundred Flemish miles, yielded an annual ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had their origin at a very remote period of the earth's history, and no theory, however complete, can do more than afford a probable conjecture as to how they were produced. Our ignorance of the state of the earth's surface and of the conditions of life at those remote periods is very great; thousands of animals and plants must have existed of which we have no record; while we are usually without any information as to the habits and general life-history even of those of which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... containing 30 degrees, is also pasted on the sphere, in the precise space where the lines of longitude have been previously marked its lines of latitude corresponding in a similar manner. The paper upon which these portions of the earth's surface are engraved is thin and extremely tough. It is rubbed down with the greatest care, through all the stages of this pasting process. We have at length a globe covered with a plain map, so perfectly joined that every line and every letter fit together as if they had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... of our modern epoch a chief power in Europe and the mistress of almost the whole Western world as well,—these countries have all sunk to positions of comparative insignificance, and Italy alone shows signs of effectual regeneration. And yet on the whole earth's surface there are no lands more richly endowed by nature as abodes for man than Italy, Turkey, ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... Martins, "was the first to distinguish littoral from ocean fossils, but no one accepts his theory that oceans make their beds deeper owing to the action of the tides, and distribute themselves differently over the earth's surface without any change of level of the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... he found that the force which retains the moon in her orbit, as deduced from the force which occasions the fall of heavy bodies to the earth's surface, was one-sixth greater than that which is actually observed in her circular orbit. This difference threw a doubt upon all his speculations; but, unwilling to abandon what seemed to be otherwise so plausible, he endeavored ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... geographical zoology as used by Wallace, that part of the earth's surface including Asia east of the Indus River, south of the Himalayas and the Yangtse-kiang watershed, Ceylon, Sumatra, ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... above Earth's surface, Lance re-checked his tapes. Groombridge 34 was the only possible destination the autopilot could take him to. Somehow, he didn't mind taking one more look at the double-star system. He cut into hyperspace as quickly as he dared; then sat back ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... Betuhamon, now in the Turin Museum, illustrates, in the graphic manner so characteristic of the Egyptians, this act of creation. As Maspero(2) points out, the struggle of Sibu resulted in contorted attitudes to which the irregularities of the earth's surface are to be ascribed. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... an attempt at imposition? The man had not even made any 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 imagined that would ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... merely human means the architects of the pyramid could not have obtained, were also supernaturally communicated to them; so that the true mean density of the earth, her true shape, the configuration of land and water, the mean temperature of the earth's surface, and so forth, were either symbolised in the great pyramid's position, or in the shape and dimensions of its exterior and interior. In the pyramid also were preserved the true, because supernaturally communicated, standards of length, area, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... all strange, sir," said Professor Henderson. "In becoming detached from the old earth, our new planet was shifted a good bit, and that which was to the north is now almost west. If, by chance, this island in the air includes that point on the earth's surface which once represented the most northerly spot—the North Pole, in fact—it is the North Pole no longer. The magnetic needle points instead to a new North Pole, established on this fragment of a planet since it was shot off into space from its ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... resulted not only many kinds of igneous rocks, but the tilting up of sedimentary strata at all angles, the formation of faults and metallic veins, the production of endless dislocations and irregularities. Yet again, geologists teach us that the Earth's surface has been growing more varied in elevation—that the most ancient mountain systems are the smallest, and the Andes and Himalayas the most modern; while in all probability there have been corresponding changes in the bed of the ocean. As a consequence of these ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... moves on to—what? We do not know what is really happening, so strict is the censorship. But it seems inevitable to me that Germany will be beaten, that the horrid period of alliances and armaments will not come again, that England will gain even more of the earth's surface, that Russia may next play the menace; that all Europe (as much as survives) will be bankrupt; that relatively we shall be immensely stronger financially and politically—there must surely come many great changes—very many, yet undreamed of. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... an end, even a constitution such as yours will not last for ever, but will in time be dissolved. And this is the dissolution:—In plants that grow in the earth, as well as in animals that move on the earth's surface, fertility and sterility of soul and body occur when the circumferences of the circles of each are completed, which in short-lived existences pass over a short space, and in long-lived ones over a long space. But to the knowledge of human fecundity and sterility ...
— The Republic • Plato
... 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 ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... which 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... grayish yellow clay subsoil, with an abundance of lime in it, which you find in a large part of the state, including a large part of Hennepin County, and you have as good a soil as you may expect to find anywhere on the earth's surface. But you can't keep a soil up to its full limit of fertility, no matter how good it is, unless you ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... the weary wight, Who rage of keen pursuers fears; The whole earth's surface in his sight A ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... 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 hours after Waterloo, rather than ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... seconds West. It was discovered by means of an instrument called the dipping needle, which is just a magnetised needle made for dipping perpendicularly instead of going round horizontally like the mariner's compass. A graduated arc is fitted to it so that the amount of dip at any place on the earth's surface can be ascertained. At the magnetic equator there is no dip at all, because the needle being equally distant from the north and south magnetic poles, remains horizontal. As you travel north the needle dips more and more until ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... with equal freedom, and consequently the temperature rises. The earth may, from this point of view, be likened to a greenhouse, only, instead of the panes of glass, our globe is enveloped by an enormous coating of air. On the earth's surface, we stand, as it were, inside the greenhouse, and we benefit by the interposition of the atmosphere; but when we climb very high mountains, we gradually pass through some of the protecting medium, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... gate-ways of 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 ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... vast resources, whether we regard the variety and value of her natural or cultivated productions, the immense range of her minerals or her facilities for manufacturing industries. It would, perhaps, be safe to say that no equal portion of the earth's surface will, in half a century, be the scene of industries so various and ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... that across the 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 shortly ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston |
