Have you ever plunged into the immensity of space and time by reading the geological treatises of Cuvier? Borne away on the wings of his genius, have you hovered over the illimitable abyss of the past as if a magician's hand were holding you aloft? As one penetrates from seam to seam, from stratum to stratum and discovers, under the quarries of Montmartre or in the schists of the Urals, those animals whose fossilized remains belong to antediluvian civilizations, the mind is startled to catch a vista of the milliards of years and the millions of peoples which the feeble memory of man and an indestructible divine tradition have forgotten and whose ashes heaped on the surface of our globe, form the two feet of earth which furnish us with bread and flowers. Is not Cuvier the greatest poet of our century? Certainly Lord Byron has expressed in words some aspects of spiritual turmoil; but our immortal natural historian has reconstructed worlds from bleached bones.Anonymous
About This Quote
Robert Louis Stevenson said, “I have a great interest in the study of geology, and I believe that one day we will be able to go back into the past, to visit those who once lived.” This quotation from the famous Scottish essayist and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson, best known for Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, illustrates the importance of geology for understanding our own history. Geologists can tell us what types of environments existed on Earth’s surface long ago.
They can also uncover clues about our earliest ancestors. And through their study of rocks they can help us understand how our planet changes over time.
Source: The Wild Asss Skin
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