Quote#Homeland
The following pages contain the result of my labours. They have been…
Quote byGideon Mantell · 1790–1852
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: The Fossils of the South Downs; or Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex (1822).
English (original)
The following pages contain the result of my labours. They have been composed under circumstances particularly unfavourable to literary pursuits; and such as those only can duly appreciate, who are aware of the numerous and anxious duties, which a country practitioner is called upon to perform.
— Gideon Mantell
More from Gideon Mantell
animals and plants have existed in successive families; they have been created, have lived their day, and by the operation of physical causes, have perished; while new races have been called into being, and in their turn have ceased to be, …
a time will assuredly come, when their endeavours to promote a taste for scientific knowledge among the intelligent inhabitants of Sussex, and to direct attention to the investigation of its physical phenomena, will he properly …
It appears that in the lapse of ages, the sea alternately encroaches on and retreats from the land, and the districts it formerly occupied become the habitation of terrestrial animals and vegetables;—but other revolutions succeed, the sea …
In the prosecution of these researches... extraneous fossils were no longer regarded merely as subjects of natural history, but as memorials of revolutions which have swept over the face of the earth, in ages antecedent to all human record …
Upon fixing my residence at Lewes, I resolved to devote my leisure moments to the investigation of the "Organic remains of a former world"...
A mere savage, ignorant and brutal, and the creature of appetite alone, can never rise from his degradation, until he has learned to draw from the mineral kingdom the instruments of arts and civilization, or, at least, to use the aids that …