Frost and Fire - 1865 Author:John Francis Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: So it is on the large scale. The tool-marks of natural heat must be seen in a large volcanic country, before the action of tame heat working at home on a smal... more »l scale can be identified with volcanic action. Earth heat has done great work in Iceland. The country whose bare barren surface has recently been altered by two mechanical forces, which upheave and grind down the crust of the world, teaches principles on which geology is founded ; and when the lesson is learned, the scholar sees that a smelting house, a rubbish heap, a frying-pan, and the kettle, all shew the action and the effect of the same forces working on a smaller scale. Iceland is a "cinder heap," but it is a very large one ; and the lesson which it teaches is well worth the cost. Hecla may only be one large valve in a great caloric engine; but it is not too large to be seen, and it is well worth looking at. The two forces which have been set to shape the outer surface of the crust of our globe, if not the globe itself, are now employed in busily finishing an island as large as Ireland. They have worked and are working within such narrow bounds, that their work can be seen as a whole ; but on such a vast scale that the performance of still greater tasks by the same agents can be understood. These twin giants, Fire and Frost, Heat and Cold, are as busy near Hccla as at Wolverhamp- ton or Coatbridge, and their work is alike at home and abroad. They move steam, the atmosphere, and the ocean, and things moved by them ; they melt and freeze gas, water and slag, lava and metal, and move things moved by them; they shape clouds in the air, plates of slag, mounds in lava, and great mountains on the earth ; they have upheaved and depressed Iceland, Norway, and Scotland; they have altered the whole surface of the glo...« less