Earthenware

“ At least two distinct types of local-made earthenware have been found, and, as many examples have well-proportioned shapes and attractive designs, it is evident that they were not fashioned by a young apprentice, but by a trained potter who took pride in shaping his wares. ”

“ But these differences of conditions being mineral, chemical, and local in their nature, have no necessary connection with the extinction, throughout a large area, of certain animals or plants. When the forms proper to loose sand or soft clay, or to perfectly clear water, or to a sea of moderate or great depth, recur with all the same species, we may infer that the interval of time has been, geologically speaking, small, however dense the mass of matter accumulated. But if, the genera remaining the same, the species are changed, we have entered upon a new period ”

“ An acre of clay, rolled hard and smooth, would have great reflecting power, but its radiation would be much increased by breaking it up into clods, because the actually exposed surface would be greater, though the outline of the field remained the same. The inequalities, natural or artificial, which always occur in the surface of ordinary earth, affect in the same way its quantity of superficies acting upon the temperature of the atmosphere, and acted on by it, though the amount of this action and reaction is not susceptible of measurement. ”

“ And so, while the materials which composed the surface layer of the cooling primitive Earth may have been tolerably uniform in composition, the débris derived from them has ever tended to get sorted out, as, for instance, into sand and mud at river mouths, or sand and dust in dry regions. In the course of ages the sorted materials, buried beneath subsequent deposits, have been formed through heat and pressure into rocks, which, when at length again brought to the surface by earth movement and exposed to the agents of disintegration, have been resolved once more into sands, clays, and so on. ”

“ Hidden among them, however, are hydrocarbon reservoirs, evaporites, and other mineral deposits, as well as human artifacts preserved for centuries by the arid climate. In these harsh environments, the information and perspective required to increase our understanding of arid-land geology and resources often depends on remote-sensing methods. Remote sensing is the collection of information about an object without being in direct physical contact with it. ”

“ Again, the Earth’s surface is covered with at least four-fifths water at depths ranging from one to five miles, including the millions of springs, lakes and rivers on land, to say nothing of the inexhaustible quantities of water encountered in the aforesaid boring and mining operations.
The deepest explorations in mines are the salt mines of Poland, the Calumet and Hecla copper mines and Comstock Lode. These have all been on trail of some mineral deposit formed by some remote work of Nature in the undefinable past, when volcanic or other influences in Nature’s laboratory left their deposit. ”

“ It can be demonstrated that the geological record must be incomplete, that it can only preserve remains found in certain favourable localities and under particular conditions; that it must be destroyed by processes of denudation, and obliterated by processes of metamorphosis. Beds of rock of any thickness crammed full of organic remains, may yet, either by the percolation of water through them, or by the influence of subterranean heat, lose all trace of these remains, and present the appearance of beds of rock formed under conditions in which living forms were absent. ”

“ It is, in the vicinity of the springs, a viscid earth, less plastic than clay, and more readily broken.
“When excavations are made into this earth, it is found to be composed of multitudinous layers, of different colours or shades of colour, each layer being quite distinctly divisible from those above and below it, though frequently no more than an inch or two in thickness.
“It is much to be regretted that the good example set by Olafsen and Povelsen of investigating the nature of the earth’s crust round about the solfataras, by piercing the soil, has not been more frequently carried out. ”

“ It is important to observe that all these subterranean operations—the formation of continents, of mountain-ranges with all their attendant phenomena of folds, faults and cleavage, and every form and phase of earthquake and volcanic activity—depend upon or originate in the interior heat of the earth. And over against the superficial or aqueous agencies, originating in the solar heat and producing the stratified or sedimentary rocks, we set the subterranean or igneous agencies originating in the central heat, and producing the unstratified or eruptive rocks. ”

“ Auer’s application of the rare earths to the production of artificial light, the incandescent mantle industry has developed to an extent which gives it a prominent place among those chemical industries which may be considered essential to modern civilisation. This technical development has in turn assisted and stimulated the scientific examination of the elements of this group, with the result that ordered and accurate knowledge is beginning to replace the confused and uncertain data which had been collected by earlier workers in the field. ”

“ The doubt is whether artificial excavations can be carried deep enough to reach the laboratory where the elastic fluids are distilled. There are, in many places, small natural crevices through which such fluids escape, and the source of them sometimes lies at so moderate a depth that they pervade the superficial soil and, as it were, transpire from it, over a considerable area. When the borer of an ordinary artesian well strikes into a cavity in the earth, imprisoned air often rushes out with great violence, and this has been still more frequently observed, in sinking mineral-oil wells. ”

“ A reason for the want of evidence on the subject may be, that, under ordinary circumstances, the process of conversion of bare ground to soil with a well-wooded surface is so gradual and slow, and the time required for a fair experiment is consequently so long, that many changes produced by the action of the new geographical element escape the notice and the memory of ordinary observers. The growth of a forest, including the formation of a thick stratum of vegetable mould beneath it, is the work of a generation, its destruction may be accomplished in a day ”

“ Even if he recognized oases in the deserts of America and Africa, the results of Artesian wells or springs, he could not believe them to be vegetation; for he would detect no irrigating canals running into them. He would come to the conclusion that no creature could possibly exist on the Earth, as the tremendous force of gravitation with great atmospheric pressure would forbid the existence of any organic forms. The immense clouds veiling the surface must at times suffer condensation, and the impact of raindrops would, from their velocity and weight, smash everything in the way of life. ”

“ In the primitive class, he said, such as granite and gneiss, there are no organic remains, nor any signs of materials derived from the ruins of pre-existing rocks. Their origin, therefore, may have been purely chemical, antecedent to the creation of living beings, and probably coeval with the birth of the world itself. The secondary formations, on the contrary, which often contain sand, pebbles, and organic remains, must have been mechanical deposits, produced after the planet had become the habitation of animals and plants. ”

“ There is yet a further and impressive body of evidence furnished by the successive races of plants and animals which have lived upon the earth and have left their remains sealed up within its rocky crust. No one now believes in the exploded doctrine that successive creations and universal destructions of organic life are chronicled in the stratified rocks. It is everywhere admitted that, from the remotest times up to the present day, there has been an onward march of development, type succeeding type in one long continuous progression. As to the rate of this evolution precise data are wanting. ”

“ To conclude: it seems to be rendered probable, by the views above explained, that the constant repair of the land, and the subserviency of our planet to the support of terrestrial as well as aquatic species, are secured by the elevating and depressing power of causes acting in the interior of the earth; which, although so often the source of death and terror to the inhabitants of the globe—visiting in succession every zone, and filling the earth with monuments of ruin and disorder—are nevertheless the agents of a conservative principle above all others essential to the stability of the system. ”

“ If the successive strata contained good samples of all the plants and animals living at the time when the beds were formed, then it would be easy to read the record of the rocks, but many animals were too soft to become satisfactory fossils, many were eaten or dissolved away, many were destroyed by heat and pressure, so that the rock record is like a library very much damaged by fire and looting and decay. ”

“ The plants and animals found in these strata have been already described somewhat in detail, and we have turned aside to look at the processes whereby such masses of sedimentary rock came to be accumulated. But we shall probably better understand the habits of the animals and the general aspect of the vegetation, as well as the agencies at work in depositing vast beds of mineral matter, if we take a coal-field and analyse it stratum by stratum, marking as we go their varied and ever-changing character, and the corresponding diversity of the included organic remains. ”

“ But we have every reason to believe that the terrestrial productions of the archipelago would be preserved in an extremely imperfect manner in the formations which we suppose to be there accumulating. Not many of the strictly littoral animals, or of those which lived on naked submarine rocks, would be embedded; and those embedded in gravel or sand would not endure to a distant epoch. Wherever sediment did not accumulate on the bed of the sea, or where it did not accumulate at a sufficient rate to protect organic bodies from decay, no remains could be preserved. ”

“ Thus, through many long ages—probably millions of years—the surface of the earth underwent continual change from the constant deposition of stratified rock, each layer of which completely buried beneath it the various life forms of the previous period, which circumstance enables us to ascribe to the various members of the animal and vegetable kingdoms particular geological periods; for fossilised remains of animals and vegetables have been unearthed in the different layers of the stratified rocks, conclusively proving their existence on the earth at those periods. ”

“ Q. Now that you've seen high-res views of pebbly surface, what does that suggest about the kinds of measures on soil before you get to outcropping? Maybe measures of the soil and of the area where the airbags hit?
Matt: preliminary discussion with science team this morning. Agreement we're in unique spot and we need to characterize these soils the best we can. Chem measurements, mini-TES, hazard cam and Pancam images. Strong desire to trench to try to gain the mechanical properties of that material it's all sitting there for us. Also tantalizing clues in remote sensing data. ”

“ Even the fact that marine remains were inclosed in solid rocks, although observed by some, and even made the groundwork of geological speculation, never stimulated the industry or guided the inquiries of naturalists. It is not impossible that the theory of equivocal generation might have engendered some indifference on this subject, and that a belief in the spontaneous production of living beings from the earth or corrupt matter, might have caused the organic world to appear so unstable and fluctuating, that phenomena indicative of former changes would not awaken intense curiosity. ”

“ This system of classification is not only recommended by its greater clearness and facility of application, but is also best fitted to strike the imagination by bringing into one view the past changes of the inorganic world, and the contemporaneous revolutions of the organic creation. For the sedimentary formations of successive periods are most readily distinguished by the different species of fossil animals and plants which they inclose, and of which one race after another has flourished and then disappeared from the earth. ”

“ These computations have been sometimes founded on changes in the level of the land, or on the increase of peat, as in the Danish bogs, or on the conversion of water into land by alluvial deposits, since certain lake-settlements in Switzerland were abandoned. Alterations also in the geographical distribution or preponderance of certain living species of animals and plants have been taken into account in corroboration, as have the signs of progress in human civilisation, as serving to mark the lapse of time during the stone and bronze epochs. ”

“ This is a mineral that you got to have water around to make. We believe that this place on Mars had a groundwater environment that would have been suitable for life. Habitable place at one point in time. This is a place where minerals precipitated out from liquid water. One of the best kinds of rocks that preserve evidence for life are rocks where minerals precipitate and trap and preserve evidence of past life. These are very, very interesting rocks. Just as a teaser, we have tentative evidence that not only were they modified by liquid water, they may have been laid down by water. ”