The Ancient World: Or, Picturesque Sketches of Creation

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J. Van Voorst, 1847 - 408 páginas

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Página 307 - The head was covered with a dry skin ; one of the ears, well preserved, was furnished with a tuft of hairs.
Página 308 - Covered with reddish wool and black hairs; but the dampness of the spot where it had lain so long had in some degree destroyed the hair. The entire carcase, of which I collected the bones on the spot, was nine feet four inches high, and sixteen feet four inches long, without including the tusks, which measured nine feet six inches along the curve. The distance from the base or root of the tusk to the point is three feet seven inches. The two tusks together weighed three hundred and sixty pounds English...
Página 201 - ... to the form of the body, for the head was totally different, the snout being enormously elongated, and the eyes exceedingly large ; while the organs of flight or wings were even more powerful in proportion, and the legs were probably capable of being used in the water, assisting the animal to swim. Let us now consider a little more in detail some of the peculiarities of structure of this strange monster. In the first place, the skull, far from resembling that of a bat or bird, resembles in its...
Página 376 - And now let us picture to ourselves the massive frame of the Megatherium, convulsed with the mighty wrestling, every vibrating fibre re-acting upon its bony attachment with a force which the...
Página 306 - ... quite free from ice. The summer of 1802 was cold, but in 1803 part of the ice between the earth and the mammoth, for such was the object, having melted more rapidly than the rest, the plane of its support became inclined, and the enormous mass fell by its own weight on a bank of sand.
Página 308 - It is interspersed with a few bristles, about three inches long, of a dark reddish colour. Among the separate parcels of hair are some rather redder than the short hair just mentioned, about four inches long, and some bristles nearly black, much thicker than horse hair, and from twelve to eighteen inches long.
Página 15 - ... of igneous fusion), and that it cooled gradually at the surface, perhaps by exposure in space, contracting in dimensions as it cooled and hardened. In this manner, it may be, a succession of thin solid crusts were formed, each in succession shrinking and cracking, until at length, when a certain balance was arrived at between the thickness of the crust, the rate of cooling, and the amount of internal heat, there would be left a rough uneven surface, having many elevations and depressions, its...
Página 307 - found the Mammoth still in the same place, but altogether mutilated. The prejudices being dissipated because the Tungusian chief had recovered his health, there was no obstacle to prevent approach to the...
Página 234 - ... particles, and turn them back into the ascending stream of animal life. Having converted the dead and decomposing particles into their own living tissues, they themselves become the food of larger Infusoria...
Página 178 - Prowling about at a great depth, where the reptilian structure of its lungs, and the bony apparatus of the ribs would allow it to remain for a long time without coming to the air to breathe, we may fancy we see this strange animal, with its enormous eyes directed upwards, and glaring like globes of fire. Its length is some thirty or forty feet, its head being six or eight feet long ; and it has paddles and a tail like a shark ; its whole energies are fixed on what is going on above, where the' plesiosaurus...

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