First impressions of England and its people / By Hugh Miller.

  • Miller, Hugh, 1802-1856.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First impressions of England and its people / By Hugh Miller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    223/440 (page 199)
    Sandstone ; we but know that land and water there were, from finding, wrapped up in the strata, the plants and reptiles of the one, and the fish and shells of the other. A few insu¬ lated facts dawn upon us in the Oolite. We ascertain that the Jurasic Alps formed in those early times the bottom of a sea,—nay, that the cuttle-fish discharged its ink, and the ammonite reared its sail, over the site of the gigantic Himalaya range; whereas, from the disposition of the Oolitic patches on both the eastern and western coasts of Scotland, it seems at least probable that in that remote period this ancient country, —^^Old Scotland,”—had got its head and shoulders above water. From the Weald we merely learn that a great river entered the sea somewhere near what now forms the south of England or north of France,—a river which drained the waters of some ex¬ tensive continent, that occupied, it is probable, no small portion of the space now covered up by the Atlantic. It is not at all impossible that the long trails of sea-weed, many fathoms in length, which undulate in mid ocean to the impulses of the gulf stream, and darken the w^ater over an area hundreds of miles in extent, are anchored beneath, to what once formed the Rocky Mountains of this submerged America. The Cre¬ taceous system, as becomes its more modern origin, tells a somewhat more distinct story. It formed the bed of a great ocean, which extended from central England to at least the shores of the Red Sea, and included within its area consider¬ able portions of France, Spain, Italy, Dalmatia, Albania, and the Morea,—a considerable part of Syria, as indicated in the ichthyolitic strata of Lebanon,—and large tracts of the great valley of Egypt, as shown by the nummulitic limestone of the pyramids. But the geography of these older formations, whether Palaeozoic or Secondary, cannot be other than imper¬ fect. Any one system, as shown on the geologic map, is but