SketchBook of Popular Geology Author:Hugh Miller, Harriet Myrtle 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: LECTURE THIRD. The Poet Delta (Dr. Moir)—His Definition of Poetry—His Death—His Burial- place at Inveresk—Vision, Geological and Historical, of the Surroundin... more »g Country—What it is that imparts to Nature its Poetry—The Tertiary Formation in Scotland—In Geologic History all Ages contemporary—Amber the Resin of the Pinus succinifer—A Vegetable Production of the Middle Tertiary Ages —Its Properties and Uses—The Masses of Insects enclosed in it—The Structural Geology of Scotland—Its Trap Rock—The Scenery usually associated with the Trap Rock—How formed—The Cretaceous Period in Scotland—Its Productions—The Chalk Deposits—Death, of Species dependent on Laws different from those which determine the Death of Individuals—The Two great Infinites. The members of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh enjoyed the privilege last season of listening to one of the sweetest and tenderest of modern British poets eloquently descanting on the history of modern British poetry. Rarely had master established for himself a better claim to teach. And, regarding the elegant volume produced on that occasion, so exquisite in its taste and so generous in its criticisms, it may justly be said that perhaps its only, at all events its gravest defect, is the inevitable one that, in exhibiting all that during the bypast generation was most characteristic and best in the poesy of our country, it should have taken no cognizance of the poetry of Delta, Dr. Moir had just finished his course, but his volume had not yet appeared, when, urged by a friend, I perhaps too rashly consented to contribute two lectures to a course then delivering in the native town of the poet; and in one of these I expressed the conviction to which I gave utterance last season in this place, that there is no incompatibility between th...« less