Log-letters from "The Challenger"

Front Cover
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 477 - Wherever we have pumice containing much magnetite, " olivine, augite, or hornblende, and these apparently undergoing " decomposition and alteration, or where we have great showers " of volcanic ash, there also is manganese in the greatest abund"ance. The correspondence between the distribution of these " two may therefore be regarded as very significant of the origin " of the latter. Manganese is as frequent as iron in lavas ; and in " magnetite and in some varieties of hornblende and augite it par"...
Page 479 - I am every day more fully satisfied that this influx of cold water into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans from the southward is to be referred to the simplest and most obvious of all causes, the excess of evaporation over precipitation in the northern portion of the land hemisphere, and the excess of precipitation over evaporation in the middle and southern part of the water hemisphere.
Page 425 - In this desponding condition, with a crazy ship, a great scarcity of fresh water, and a crew so universally diseased that there were not above ten foremast men in a watch capable of doing duty...
Page 124 - There are no people in the world who strike one at first so much as these Friendly Islanders. Their clear, light, copper-brown coloured skins, yellow and curly hair, goodhumoured, handsome faces, their tout ensemble, formed a novel and splendid picture of the genus homo ; and, as far as physique and appearance go, they gave one certainly an impression of being a superior race to ours.
Page 493 - Review,' 1869. trifling alterations of a single genus of primitive organizable material, and that in all cases this 'albuminous material is the original active substratum of all vital phenomena, may,' says Professor Haeckel, ' perhaps be considered one of the greatest achievements of modern biology, and one of the richest in results.
Page 477 - This correspondence between the distribution of the manganese and volcanic debris appears to me very significant of the origin of the former. I regard the' manganese, as we find it, as one of the secondary products arising from the decomposition of volcanic minerals. Manganese is as frequent as iron in lavas, being usually associated with it, though in very much smaller amount. In magnetite and in some varieties of augite and hornblende the protoxide of iron is at times partially replaced by that...
Page 494 - In all cases the jelly-like or mobile aspect of the oozes is found to be due to the presence of the flocculent precipitate from the seawater associated with the ooze. No free albuminous matter could be detected.
Page 494 - ... had observed was not an organic body at all : and on examining it and its mode of preparation I determined it to be sulphate of lime, which had been eliminated from the sea-water, always present in the mud, as an amorphous precipitate on the addition of spirit of wine.
Page 476 - When there has been no reason to suppose that the trawl has sunk more than one or two inches in the clay, we have had in the bag over a hundred sharks...
Page 484 - ... to whom some new worm, coral, or echinoderm is a joy forever, who retires to a comfortable cabin to describe with enthusiasm this new animal, which we, without much enthusiasm, and with much weariness of spirit, to the rumbling tune of the donkey-engine only, had dragged up for him from the bottom of the sea.

Bibliographic information