The journal of a naturalist / [Anon].

  • John Leonard Knapp
Date:
1829
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The journal of a naturalist / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/450 page 6
    G SOIL. rounded London ? Even in our own days heaths, moors, and wilds, have disappeared, so as to leave no indications of their former state but the name. Woods and forests seem to be the ori- ginal productions of most soils and countries favourable for the abode of mankind, as if in- viting a settlement, and offering materials for its use. As colonies increase, wants are aug- mented; the woods are consumed; the plough is introduced, division of property follows; a total change and obliteration ensues, though the ancient appellation by which the district was known yet continues. The parish consists in parts of a poor, shat- tery, gray clay, beneath which we find, in some places, a coarse lias ; in others a spongy, rough, impure limestone; in other parts a thin stratum of soil is spread over an immense and irregular rock of carbonate of lime, running to an un- known depth: this in many cases protrudes in great blocks through the thin skin of earth. The rock, though usually stratified, has no uni- form dip, but tends to different directions; in some places it appears as if immense sheets of semifluid matter had been pushed out of the station it had settled in, by some other or later formed heavy moving mass, or met with an im-
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