BIOGRAPHIES
- Abel, Sir Frederick A.
- Achard, F. C.
- Andrews, Thomas
- Baeyer, Adolf von
- Balard, Antoine J.
- Baumé, Antoine
- Becher, J. J.
- Bell, Jacob
- Bergman, Torbern Olof
- Berthelot, M. P. E.
- Berthollet, C. L.
- Berzelius, J. J.
- Black, Joseph
- Boussingault
- Brande, William Thomas
- Brown, S. M.
- Bunsen, R. W. von
- Calvert, F. Crace
- Cannizzaro, Stanislao
- Cavendish, Henry
- Chevreul, M. E.
- Clark, Thomas
- Crookes, Sir William
- Dalton, John
- Daniell, John F.
- Davy, Sir Humphry
- Dewar, Sir James
- Döbereiner, J. W.
- Dulong, Pierre Louis
- Dumas, J. B. A.
- Erdmann, Otto Linné
- Fehling, Hermann von
- Fischer, Emil
- Fittig, Rudolf
- Flamel, Nicolas
- Fourcroy, A. F., de
- Frankland, Sir Edward
- Frémy, Edmond
- Fresenius, Karl R.
- Friedel, Charles
- Fuchs, Johann N. von
- Gannal, J. N.
- Gay-Lussac, J. L.
- Geber
- Geoffroy, E. F.
- Gerhardt, Charles F.
- Gibbs, Oliver Wolcott
- Gilbert, Sir Joseph H.
- Gladstone, John Hall
- Glaser, Christopher
- Glauber, Johann R.
- Gmelin (family)
- Graham, Thomas
- Guimet, Jean B.
- Guyton de Morveau
- Harcourt, W. Vernon
- Helmont, Jean B. van
- Henry, William
- Hofmann, A. W. von
- Homberg, William
- Kekulé, F. August
- Klaproth, M. H.
- Kolbe, A. W. Hermann
- Kopp, Hermann F. M.
- Kunkel von Lowenstjern
- Lavoisier, A. L.
- LeBlanc, Nicolas
- Lemery, Nicolas
- Liebig, J. von, baron
- Lunge, Georg
- Magnus, H. G.
- Marggraf, Andreas S.
- Marignac, J. C. G. de
- Mayow, John
- Mendeléeff, Dmitri I.
- Meyer, J. Lothar
- Meyer, Victor
- Mitscherlich, E.
- Mohr, K. Friedrich
- Moissan, Henri
- Mond, Ludwig
- Murray, John
- Muspratt, J. and J. S.
- Newlands, John A. R.
- Nobel, Alfred B.
- Pasteur, Louis
- Pelouze, T. Jules
- Perkin, Sir W. H.
- Pettenkofer, M. J. von
- Plattner, K. F.
- Priestley, Joseph
- Proust, Joseph Louis
- Prout, William
- Ramsay, Sir William
- Raoult, François M.
- Regnault, H. V.
- Richter, J. B.
- Roebuck, John
- Roscoe, Sir H. E.
- Rose (family)
- Rouelle, G. F.
- Sainte-Claire Deville
- Scheele, K. W.
- Schönbein, C. F.
- Schützenberger, P.
- Silliman, Benjamin
- Stahl, G. E.
- Stas, J. S.
- Tennant, Charles
- Tennant, Smithson
- Thénard, L. J.
- Thomsen, Julius
- Thomson, Thomas
- Van’t Hoff, J. H.
- Vauquelin, L. N.
- Weldon, Walter
- Wenzel, K. F.
- Williamson, A. W.
- Wislicenus, J.
- Wöhler, Friedrich
- Wollaston, W. H.
- Wurtz, C. A.
- Young, James
CHAPTER LVI
GEOLOGY
The Province Geology or Sermons in Stones
Shakespeare tells us that “there are sermons in stones.” No science, except possibly astronomy, appeals more to the imagination or carries one further away from our present workaday world than geology. While geology “claims as its peculiar territory the rocky framework of the globe,” its object is, says the Encyclopaedia Britannica (Vol. 11, p. 638) “to trace the structural progress of our planet from the earliest beginnings of its separate existence through its various stages of growth down to the present condition of things.” It goes back millions and hundreds of millions of years to the first beginnings of things and unravels complicated processes by which the earth and each of the continents on it has been built up.
“It follows, even into detail, the varied sculpture of mountain and valley, crag and ravine.” It shows “that the present races of plants and animals are the descendants of other and very different races which once peopled the earth. It teaches that there has been a progressive development of the inhabitants.” Dead and cold though the rocks seem, they are filled, to one who can read their secret, with the tragedy of past life. Parts of Florida are but the graves where millions of corals, now crushed into massive limestone, once lived and died; the coal of Pennsylvania tells of ferns and other terrestrial plants matted together into a bed whence they originally grew; “the snails and lizards which lived and died within a hollow tree, the insects which have been imprisoned within the exuding resin of old forests, the footprints of birds and quadrupeds, the trails of worms left upon former shores—these and innumerable other pieces of evidence” tell of the tragedies of former times and “enable the geologist to realize in some measure what the faunas and floras of successive periods have been.”
The foundation for the study of the whole subject in the Britannica is the article Geology (Vol. 11, p. 638), equivalent to 125 pages of this Guide. It is by the highest authority in the world, Sir Archibald Geikie, long director general of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, and director of the Museum of Practical Geology, London. It deals with the general principles and gives an outline of the subject matter of the science. In particular it treats of,
The historical development of geological science;
- The cosmical aspects of geology;
- Geognosy;
- Dynamical Geology;
- Geotectonic or Structural Geology;
- Palaeontological Geology;
- Stratigraphical Geology;
- Physiographical Geology.
Age of the Earth