The scriptural history of the earth and of mankind, compared with the cosmogonies, chronologies, and original traditions of ancient nations; an abstract and review of several modern systems; with an attempt to explain philosophically, the Mosaical account of the creation and deluge and to deduce from this last event the causes of the actual structure of the earth, in a series of letters / With notes and illustrations. By Philip Howard.

  • Howard, Philip, -1810
Date:
1797
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The scriptural history of the earth and of mankind, compared with the cosmogonies, chronologies, and original traditions of ancient nations; an abstract and review of several modern systems; with an attempt to explain philosophically, the Mosaical account of the creation and deluge and to deduce from this last event the causes of the actual structure of the earth, in a series of letters / With notes and illustrations. By Philip Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    583/624 (page 569)
    / TO LETTER Vilf. (c) Page 535. Whoever has travelled through mountainous countries mufl have obferved them traverfed in fome parts by narrow chafiiis, where the rugged faces of impending rocks with correfponding ftrata frown at each other, and in others, by valleys piefenting, on one fide at lead, if not on both, the floping declivities of mountain-backs. There we fee the fraclure itfelf which rent thofe rocks afunder : the ancient level has there been high uplifted into air : here we behold them dipping into the bowels of the earth, to nil up fome deep cavern burfl; open under them. If in the plain a (haft is funk, we fhall find the fame ftrata as appeared on the face ot the precipice dipping under ground, in the very fame order and with the fame inclination as clown the mountain’s back. If one or more of the fupeiior ftrata are want- ing, either on the declivity or within the earth, it is becaufe they have flipped off in the fall ; and their confufed ruins will be found to form the foil at the point of junefion between the hill and the plain. Mr. White- hurft, in his inquiry into the original ftate of the earth, has given plates, in which arc delineated thefe inclined ftrata from the tops of the mountains, where they appear in open day, to the greateft depths penetrated by mining in Derbyfhire and the north of Ireland. When the convulfion which occahoned thefe effefts was confined to fmall corners of a country, the de- lineation is eafily followed : but where vaft portions of the earth have been at once affetfted—as, for example, the continent of South America, from the height of the Andes, to meet the bottom of the Atlantic ocean at feveral hundred leagues dlftance—the traces of the whole are dilficult to be feized. The difficulty is ftill greater, becaufe the general inclined plane is fre- c]ucntly interrupted by the effecls of partial fiffures incident to fuch a Hiock producing a variety of intermediate breaks and inequalities. If the opera- tions of partial accidents are difcoverable on many parts of the inclined plane, the much ftronger effefts of the general fliock which overturne J the lite of the whole country are ftill more frequent and more vifible amongft the ftnpendous mountains elevated by it on the weftern coaft of that conti- 4 D nent. \