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.

    31/450 page 11
    stone reefs, five hundred miles in extent, and three hundred fathom deep; and still more recently captain King, seven hundred miles, almost a continent, of rock, increasing, and vi- sibly forming:—all drawn from the waters of the ocean by a minute creature, that wonderful agent in the hands of Providence, the coral insect. This brief account of the origin of calcareous rocks was, perhaps, necessary before mentioning an extraordinary fact, that, after the lapse of so vast a portion of time since the basement of the mighty deep was heaved on high, existing proofs of this event should remain in our obscure vil- iage. The limestone rocks here are differently com- posed, but are principally of four kinds—a pale gray, hard and compact; a pale cream-coloured, fine grained and sonorous : these form the upper stratum of stone on our down, a recent deposit, or more probably a mass heaved up from its original station. The whole of this mass, running nearly half a mile long, is obviously of animal formation, a coral rock; a compounded body of minute cylindrical columns, the cells of the animals which constructed the material; the mouths of which are ail manifest by a magnifier. The stop in the progress of the work is even
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