Quote#Nature
Pliny had no theoretical opinions of his own concerning changes of…
Quote byCharles Lyell · 1797–1875
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Chpt.2, p. 22.
English (original)
Pliny had no theoretical opinions of his own concerning changes of the earth's surface... But his enumeration of the new islands which had been formed in the Mediterranean, and of other convulsions, shows that the ancients had not been inattentive observers of the changes which had taken place on the earth within the memory of man.
— Charles Lyell
More from Charles Lyell
the extension of the sea had been greater at some former periods
Pallas, in more recent times, has drawn the same inference.
important changes had taken place
in the form of the coasts of Asia, and
The first who endeavored to draw a clear line of demarcation between these distinct departments, was Hutton, who declared that geology was in no ways concerned with 'questions as to the origin of things.
This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently …