Anyhow, by the time we are finished, Australian Backyard Earth Scientist is going to be a good book, but here are some left-overs, more suited to older readers. These might have been epigraphs, but we don't do those for younger readers. Here are the unused quotes, and a few pics from my short-list (~250 shots at last count).
You can find more extra shots at these links:
ABES Teaching Pictures
ABES Teaching Pictures 2
ABES Teaching Pictures 3
Earth science
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| Folds, Mt Pilatus, Switzerland. |
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
— Proverb, dating back to the 16th century.
To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that
creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so
beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is
reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy
covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different
species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret.
― James Hutton, Theory
of the Earth, vol. 3, 46.
A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may
interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of
those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of
the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely
provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of
every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design,
and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the
heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits.
— James Hutton. Theory
of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations, Vol. 1 (1795), 276.
An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly
acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in
a word, with all branches of knowledge … It would be no less desirable that a
geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy,
zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to
organic and inorganic nature.
— Sir Charles Lyell, Principles
of Geology, Vol. 1, 3, 1835.
…the successive series of stratified formations are piled on
one another, almost like courses of masonry.
— William Buckland, Geology
and Mineralogy, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, Bridgewater
Treatise 6, Vol. 1, 37, 1836.
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| Folds and faults, S. coast NSW. |
[When] spring and summer come round, how easily may the
hammer be buckled round the waist, and the student emerge from the dust of town
into the joyous air of the country, for a few delightful hours among the rocks.
— Sir Archibald Geikie, in The Story of a Boulder: or, Gleanings from the Note-book of a Field
Geologist (1858), viii.
Apart from its healthful mental training as a branch of
ordinary education, geology as an open-air pursuit affords an admirable
training in habits of observation, furnishes a delightful relief from the cares
and routine of everyday life, takes us into the open fields and the free fresh
face of nature, leads us into all manner of sequestered nooks, whither hardly
any other occupation or interest would be likely to send us, sets before us
problems of the highest interest regarding the history of the ground beneath
our feet, and thus gives a new charm to scenery which may be already replete
with attractions.
— Sir Archibald Geikie, Outlines
of Field-Geology (1900), 251-2.
Experimental geology has this in common with all other
branches of our science, petrology and palaeontology included, that in the long
run it withers indoors.
— Phillip H. Kuenen’ 'Experiments in Geology', Transactions of the Geological Society of
Glasgow (1958), 23, 25.
No Geology without Marine Geology!
— Phillip H. Kuenen, Title of paper, Geologische Rundschau, 47(1),
1958, 1 – 10.
Geology itself is only chemistry with the element of time
added.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aspects of Culture, The American and Continental Monthly,
Volume 1, April 1870, 5.
Beneath all the wealth of detail in a geological map lies an
elegant, orderly simplicity.
— Tuzo Wilson, As quoted G.D. Garland in obituary 'John Tuzo
Wilson', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows
of the Royal Society (Nov 1995), 552.
Atoms
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| Hexagonal packing can turn up unexpectedly. |
To understand the very large, we must understand the very
small.
— Democritus (470 – 380 BC)
… in the field some amount of information concerning igneous
rocks can be obtained by rubbing down the chip on a grindstone and using a
whetstone, carborundum file, or water of Ayr stone for the final grinding. By
these and other methods … there are obtained slices of rocks which, though
thick, uneven, scratched, and all that is bad, from the point of view of the
professional maker of thin sections, are nevertheless capable of yielding much
information. With a pocket lens it is possible to make out from such a 'thin'
section the nature of the minerals present, the texture and the nature of the
rock.
— Frank Rutley, Elements
of Mineralogy, 22nd edition, 1915, p. 104.
The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that
an atom is highly organised, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern,
and the molecule is a pattern, and the crystal is a pattern; but the stone,
although it is made up of these patterns, is just a mere confusion. It's only
when life appears that you begin to get organisation on a larger scale. Life
takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of
them like the stone, it combines them into new and more elaborate patterns of
its own.
— Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963), Time Must Have a Stop. London: Chatto and Windus, 1945, chapter 14.
A crystal lacks rhythm from excess of pattern, while a fog
is unrhythmic in that it exhibits a patternless confusion of detail.
— A. N. Whitehead (1861 – 1947), An Introduction to Mathematics. Oxford: OUP, 1948.
One generation passeth away and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth forever.
— Holy Bible,
Ecclesiastes, 1:4
To explain the observed phenomena, we may dispense with
sudden, violent and general catastrophes, and regard the ancient and present
fluctuations . . . as belonging to one continuous and uniform series of events.
— Sir Charles Lyell (1797 – 1875), Principles of Geology.
Rather more than a century ago Sir Charles Lyell, then an
Oxford student, noticed that a small lake on his father's Scotch estate was
capable of depositing an appreciable layer of limestone on its bottom within
quite a few years — and on his discovery that rocks could be built up as well
as worn away is based a large part of modern geology.
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved
Problems of Science, London 1937.
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| Thermal mud, Orakei Korako, New Zealand |
Compared with what we think of as long periods in our
everyday calculations, there must have been enormous time and considerable
variations in circumstances for nature to lead the organisation of animals to
the degree of complexity and development that we see today.
— Chevalier de Lamarck (1744 – 1829), Philosophie Zoologique.
We may confidently come to the conclusion, that the forces
which slowly and by little starts uplift continents, and that those which at
successive periods pour forth volcanic matter from open orifices, are
identical.
— Charles Darwin, Journal
of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited
During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, 2nd edn. (1845), ch.
XIV, 311.
… millions of our race are now supported by lands situated
where deep seas once prevailed in earlier ages. In many districts not yet
occupied by man, land animals and forests now abound where the anchor once sank
into the oozy bottom.
— Sir Charles Lyell, Principles
of Geology, Vol. 1, 373, 1835.
While a glacier is moving, it rubs and wears down the bottom
on which it moves, scrapes its surface (now smooth), triturates the broken-off
material that is found between the ice and the rock, pulverizes or reduces it
to a clayey paste, rounds angular blocks that resist its pressure, and polishes
those having a larger surface. At the surface of the glacier, other processes
occur. Fragments of rocks that are broken-off from the neighbouring walls and
fall on the ice, remain there or can be transported to the sides; they advance
in this way on the top of the glacier, without moving or rubbing against each
other … and arrive at the extremity of the glacier with their angles, sharp edges,
and their uneven surfaces intact.
— Louis Agassiz, La
théorie des glaciers et ses progrès les plus récents. Bibl. universelle de
Genève, (3), Vol. 41, p.127. Trans. Karin Verrecchia.
On the morning of May 8th, 1902, the clocks of St. Pierre
ticked on towards ten minutes of 8 when they would stop forever. Against a
background of bright sunshine, a huge column of vapour rose from the cone of
Mont Pelée.
A salvo of reports as from heavy artillery. Then, choked by
lava boiled to white heat by fires in the depths of the earth, Pelée with a
terrific explosion blew its head off.
— Fairfax Downey, 'Last Days of St. Pierre', in Disaster Fighters, G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Temperature gradients in ordinary [volcanically] quiet areas
range from less than 10 to as much as 50 degrees Celsius per kilometre.
— A. E. Benfield, 'The Earth's Heat', Scientific American Reader (1953), page 71.
 |
| Volcanic bombs in the making, Mt Yasur, Tanna, Vanuatu. |
Naturally a good deal of thought has been given to how the
immense energy of volcanoes might be harnessed for man's use. It has been done
on a relatively minor scale in several countries, notably Italy and Iceland.
— A. E. Benfield, 'The Earth's Heat', Scientific American Reader (1953), page 86.
Just as the level of Stone Age finds gives an average
sinkage of 9 inches in a hundred years, so calculations based on Roman remains
suggest a similar figure… Presumably it is still doing so to-day, although it
will be another five hundred or a thousand years before the problem of
maintaining the Thames embankment will begin to become acute.
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved
Problems of Science, London 1937. (The Thames Barrier went into operation
in 1986!).
Field reversals, occurring roughly every million years, are
the most dramatic of the wide range of phenomena exhibited by the earth's
magnetic field. And the next reversal on Earth may not be so far away: if the
current rate of decay of the Earth's dipole component is maintained, it will
vanish in less than 2000 years' time.
— Jeremy Bloxham, 'Evidence for asymmetry and fluctuation', Nature, 322: 13, 1986
Time
The poor world is almost six thousand years old . . .
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), As You Like It, IV, i, 95
There are said to be a billion billion insects on the earth
at any moment, most of them with very short life expectancies by our standards.
— Lewis Thomas (1913 – ), The Lives of a Cell, Penguin Books, 1978.
We can be certain that the radiation did not change
appreciably during the last 500 million years; because during all this time
life existed on earth, which means that the temperature of the earth during the
whole period must have been very nearly what it is today. This temperature is
determined by the sun's radiation.
— Hans Albrecht Bethe (1906-000), The Sky, December 1940.
More recently, advances in physics have given us methods to
put absolute dates, in millions of years, on rocks and the fossils that they
contain. These methods depend on the fact that particular radioactive elements
decay at precisely known rates. It is as though precision-made miniature
stopwatches had been conveniently buried in the rocks. Each stopwatch was
started at the moment that it was laid down. All that the palaeontologist has
to do is dig it up and read off the time on the dial.
— Richard Dawkins, The
Blind Watchmaker, Penguin, 1986.
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| Slate blocks, Norway. |
According to this view of the matter, there is nothing
casual in the formation of Metamorphic Rocks. All strata, once buried deep
enough, (and due TIME allowed!!!) must assume that state,—none can escape. All
records of former worlds must ultimately perish.
— Sir John Herschel, Letter to Mr Murchison, quoted in the
Appendix to Charles Babbage, The Ninth
Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment (1838), 240.
Fossils
… implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as
if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would
not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like
an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
— Charles Dickens, Bleak
House, London, 1852, page 1.
Life has come to be regarded by the majority of biologists
as forming one vast genealogical tree, the roots of which are buried deep down
in the lowest fossiliferous strata, and the tops of whose branches,
constituting the life that now exists on the globe, are alone seen above the
surface.
— John Gibson, 'Fossil fishes of Scotland' in Science Gleanings in Many Fields (1884).
 |
| Fossils in marble, Sydney. |
We are lucky to have fossils at all. It is a remarkably
fortunate fact of geology that bones, shells and other hard parts of animals,
before they decay, can occasionally leave an imprint which later acts as a
mould, which shapes hardening rock into a permanent memory of the animal. We
don't know what proportion of animals are fossilized after their death — I
personally would consider it a very great honour to be fossilized — but it is
certainly very small indeed.
— Richard Dawkins (1941 – ), The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Books, 1988, p. 225.
David Davies, a Welsh mine foreman, was the first to make
really large collections of plant material from different coal seams. He showed
that even when the plants did not differ very much, there were differences in
the proportions of different kinds, just as in one meadow you will find a great
deal of clover among the grass, in another very little.
J.B.S.Haldane (1892-1964) Everything Has a History, Allen and Unwin 1951, page 50.
J.B.S.Haldane (1892-1964) Everything Has a History, Allen and Unwin 1951, page 50.
 |
| Fossils in a limy sandstone, W.A. |
If a single well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in
500 million years-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be
utterly destroyed. Incidentally, this is sufficient answer to the canard, put
about by creationists and their journalistic fellow travellers, that the whole
theory of evolution is an 'unfalsifiable' tautology. Ironically, it is also why
creationists are so keen on the fake human footprints, which were carved during
the depression to fool tourists, in the dinosaur beds of Texas.
— Richard Dawkins (1941 – ), The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Books, 1988, page 225.
Soil
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| Erosion in a spoil heap, South Australia. |
In the agricultural sense soils are the superficial layers,
usually less than a foot in thickness, of disintegrated and decomposed rock material,
which is mingled with organic matter, and furnishes the necessary conditions
and materials for plant growth.
— G. W. Tyrrell, The
Principles of Petrology, Methuen, 1929, p. 184.
As to the ground or soil, it is in general but very indifft
— in some parts nothing but hard, solid rock, in others a black sand full of
ant hills. In some spots, however, it is
better, in one place especially we have found some good strong clay of wh they
have already begun to make bricks wh are said to be very good.
The Governor has taken several excursions inland many miles
into the Country. First a little to the
Northward — here the ground and country are most wretched, nothing to be seen
but impassable Rocks, thickets, & swamps.
Next he went more towards the S.W.
Here he met with better ground — also with blue shale, a thing likely to
be of great service to the Settlement.
The wood is in general very ordinary & bad for building.
— George Mackaness (ed.), Some Letters of Rev. Richard Johnson, B.A., First Chaplain of New South
Wales, 2 parts: Australian Historical Monographs, new series vols XX and
XXI, Sydney: D.S.Ford, 1954, part I, page 19 (letter dated May 8, 1788).
Some idea may be formed of the appearance of the country by
what is seen on the South Head Road, near the Light House. At the distance of a
mile from the Heads, the spectator comes to a spot from which he can behold
nothing but rock blackened, with the effects of fire. Every tree, shrub,
flower, or atom of grass, has been burnt to the very root; and accustomed as
the eye is here to look with indifference upon large tracts of land around,
with scorched and half consumed trees, one cannot contemplate the scenes we
allude to without becoming sensible of an extraordinary sensation, produced by
the air of desolation with which one is surrounded.
Cattle at this season are much distressed for want of water.
The stockmen are obliged to drive them to the distance of many miles, even for
the scanty supply which a small creek or rivulet affords.
— The Australian
(Sydney), 9 December 1826, 3.
 |
| Simulating sedimentation. |
We are wealthy and wasteful but this can't go on. If we
don't eat dog biscuits, we could end up eating our dog instead.
— Magnus Pyke (1908 – 1992)
Now I submit that we cannot say much which is sympathetic to
our time unless we have assimilated our immediate tradition, which for this
country is the conquest of soil and climate. Accordingly, it is a function of
Biology in the University to provide this ingredient in education.
— Professor Eric Ashby, The
Place of Biology in Australian Education, inaugural lecture, Sydney, 1939.
Climate and weather
In parts of Siberia the southern boundary of permanently
frozen ground is receding poleward several dozen yards per annum.
— George Kimble, Scientific
American, 1950.
While all the evidence goes to show that carbonic acid is
now an almost invariable constituent of the air, it is one that requires least
change in the physical conditions under which the earth exists to effect a
change in its proportion. Minute as the proportion is, the delicacy of its
relation to animal and vegetable life on the earth makes the maintenance of the
apparently unstable equilibrium a matter of serious concern to mankind.
— Scientific American,
October 1883, quoted in Scientific
American, October 1983, p. 11
Occasional droughts occur throughout the colony at periods
varying from ten to fifteen years: and periodical floods of a destructive
character have at various times caused a serious loss of life and property.
— George French Angas, Australia:
a Popular Account, 1866, 140.
We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of the element
of air, which by unquestioned experiments is known to have weight, and so much,
indeed, that near the surface of the earth, where it is most dense it weighs
about one four-hundredth of the weight of water [actually more like 1/775].
Those who have written about twilight, moreover, have observed that the
vaporous and visible air rises above us to about [80 kilometres]; I do not
believe its height to be so great, since if it were, I could show that the
vacuum would be able to offer much greater resistance than it does…
— Evangelista Torricelli, in a letter to Michelangelo Ricci,
1644.
Not that there is anything very mysterious ... if it is
remembered that a barometer is merely a weighing balance under another name.
Instead of weighing a letter or a parcel against a series of standardised
weights, it weighs the whole mass of air above it, right to the top of the
atmosphere, against a column of mercury. An area of high pressure … is the
outward and ground-level sign of a mountain of air above. The mountain of air
is heavy. So the mercury has to rise higher…
— A. W. Haslett, Unsolved
Problems of Science, London 1937.
Attributed bits, lacking sources.
I could more easily believe that two Yankee professors would
lie than that stones would fall from heaven.
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in 1807.
I agree. But I wonder what it would have looked like if the
sun had been circling the earth.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), on being told how foolish
the ancients were for accepting the Ptolemaic system.
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer
than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
— J. B. S. Haldane (1892 – 1964)
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it
is comprehensible.
— Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
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