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https://exhibits.library.illinois.edu/s/rbml/item/3894
- Title
- Elements of geology : a text-book for colleges and for the general reader
- Description
- Despite the significant progress in unraveling Earth’s history, geologists of the late 19th century were no closer to placing absolute ages on any of the well delineated segments of geologic time than savants of a century earlier. The pages shown here from Joesph LeConte’s widely read and popular textbook Elements of Geology (1879) illustrates this contrast. The detailed or “ideal” column on the right shows the well-defined geologic timescale, with its delineated segments of Earth’s history, which are not that dissimilar to the ones used by geologists today. The column is floating in time, however; and LeConte remarks on this same page on the near impossibility of trying to imagine the lengths of time represented here. In a manner similar to Hutton, LeConte notes that the lowest portion of Earth history, the “Archean,” represents “an infinite abyss of the unrecorded” and that trying to piece together the age of the Archean “hardly belongs strictly to geology, but rather to cosmic philosophy.”
- Call Number (click link to view in library catalog)
- IUB03317
- See Also
- Full Text Available at HathiTrust
- Authors
- LeConte, Joseph
- Full Title
- Elements of geology : a text-book for colleges and for the general reader
- Date
- 1879
- From the Exhibit
- In Search of Lost Time: Earth’s Chronology
- Publisher
- D. Appleton and Company, 549 and 551 Broadway
- Location
- New York
- Language
- English
- Rights
-
This item is the physical property of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Intellectual property rights, including copyright, may reside with the materials' creator(s) or their heirs.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library's reproduction and publication policies are available here: https://www.library.illinois.edu/rbx/collections/reproduction-services/. The library welcomes requests for reproductions made from works in our collections, though restrictions may apply to certain materials. Please contact the library with any questions at askacurator@illinois.edu. - Type
- Text
- Medium
- Book
- Bibliographic Citation
- LeConte, Joseph. Elements of Geology: A textbook for colleges and the general reader. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1879.