James Dwight Dana Archives - The Behaviour University

A map of the moon… should be in every geological lecture room; for no where can we have a more complete or more magnificent illustration of volcanic operations. Our sublimest volcanoes would rank among the smaller lunar eminences; and our Etnas are but spitting furnaces.

Moon

Science

Volcanoes

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Are coral reefs growing from the depths of the oceans? … [The] reply is a simple negative; and a single fact establishes its truth. The reef-forming coral zoophytes, as has been shown, cannot grow at greater depths than 100 or 120 feet; and therefore in seas deeper than this, the formation or growth of reefs over the bottom is impossible.

Ocean

Sea

Simple

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For nine miles along a submerged ridge, the corals rise in lumpy hillocks that spread out 100 yards or more, resembling heaped scoops of rainbow sherbet and Neapolitan ice cream. The mounds, some 100 feet tall, sprout delicate treelike gorgonians that sift currents for a plankton meal. Fish, worms and other creatures dart or crawl in every crevice. This description could apply to thousands of coral reefs in shallow, sun-streaked tropical waters from Australia to the Bahamas. But this is the Sula Ridge, 1,000 feet down in frigid darkness on the continental shelf 100 miles off Norway’s coast.

Feet

Ice

Nature

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Geology is rapidly taking its place as an introduction to the higher history of man. If the author has sought to exalt a favorite science, it has been with the desire that man-in whom geological history had its consummation, the prophecies of the successive ages their fulfilment-might better comprehend his own nobility and the true purpose of his existence.

History

Men

Science

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Most agreeable are the memories of events and labours, connected with the cruise:- of companions in travel, … of coral islands with their groves, and beautiful life, above and below the waters, … of lofty precipices, richly draped, even the sternest fronts made to smile and be glad, as delights the gay tropics, and alive with waterfalls, gliding, leaping, or plunging, on their way down from the giddy heights, and, as they go, playing out and in amid the foliage…

Beautiful

Memories

Nature

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Mount Shasta – a vision of immensity such as pertains to the vast universe rather than to our own planet.

Immensity

Planets

Vision

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Mr Hall’s hypothesis has its cause for subsidence, but none for the lifting of the thickened sunken crust into mountains. It is a theory for the origin of mountains, with the origin of mountains left out.

Causes

Mountain

Theory

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Science, while it penetrates deeply the system of things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of vision, the word mystery.

Limits

Science

Vision

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Some writers, rejecting the idea which science had reached, that reefs of rocks could be due in any way to “animalcules,” have talked of electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance.

Ignorance

Rocks

Science

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The coral zoophyte may be leveled by transported masses swept over by the waters; yet like the trodden sod, it sprouts again, and continues to grow and flourish as before.

May

Nature

Water

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Quotes by James Dwight Dana

James Dwight Dana

A map of the moon… should be in every geological lecture room; for no where can we have a more complete or more magnificent illustration of volcanic operations. Our sublimest volcanoes would rank among the smaller lunar eminences; and our Etnas are but spitting furnaces.

Mount Shasta – a vision of immensity such as pertains to the vast universe rather than to our own planet.

Mr Hall’s hypothesis has its cause for subsidence, but none for the lifting of the thickened sunken crust into mountains. It is a theory for the origin of mountains, with the origin of mountains left out.

Science, while it penetrates deeply the system of things about us, sees everywhere, in the dim limits of vision, the word mystery.

Some writers, rejecting the idea which science had reached, that reefs of rocks could be due in any way to “animalcules,” have talked of electrical forces, the first and last appeal of ignorance.

The coral zoophyte may be leveled by transported masses swept over by the waters; yet like the trodden sod, it sprouts again, and continues to grow and flourish as before.

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