This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ... CARBONATE. CHAPTER IV. THE CARBONATE ORES. "whatever theory of iron-ore-origination or iron-ore-metamorphosis we adopt, the fact is patent to theorists of every sort and to those who will not theorize upon the subject, that a great change comes over the aspect of the ore-world when we ascend the scale of rocks and ages and reach a comparatively later stage than that of the Cambrian and Silurian eras. No longer magnetic and specular iron veins present their enormoiis and unsteady wedges among granite hills, loaded with curious and brilliant minerals. No longer vast deposits of brown hematite beneath a covering of gravel-drift follow the outcrops of the older limestones. There come instead to view innumerable thin but wide extended sheets of protocarbonate of iron, alternating with slates surcharged with carbon and sulphur, and with flagstones full of vegetable stemcasts but almost destitute of higher types of life. This new form of iron meets us first in any great abundance at the beginning of the Devonian age, recurs at long intervals during its elapse, makes one of its most brilliant exhibits at the opening of the Coal era, through which it reigns supreme, reappears with the coal measures of the Middle Secondary or Triassic age, and finishes its mission in the tertiary strata underlapping the sea coast. The first important fact afforded by this series of phenomena is this: that the age of carbon opens in both forms, organic and chemical, at once. Plants and animals appear in abundance when carbonate of iron appears in workable layers. How far this is a coincidence based on a relation of cause and effect is not yet well made out. Some see a closer and more necessary dependence of the carbonation of the ore upon the carbon set free from...

本作は単なる産業資料を超え、鉄という鉱物を媒介に地球の鼓動を活写した壮大な産業叙事詩です。著者のレスリーは地質学的な変遷をドラマチックな時代の転換点として描き出し、炭素の時代の幕開けを崇高なポエジーをもって語り尽くします。無機質な記述の背後に潜む大地への畏敬と、文明を築き上げる人間の情熱が混ざり合う瞬間は、読む者の魂を激しく揺さぶる文学的極致と言えます。 映像化作品においては、紙面から滲み出る鉄と炎の熱気が圧倒的な視覚情報として補完され、テキストが持つ厳格な美学をより肉感的に体験できるでしょう。静謐な学術的考察と、荒々しい産業現場の躍動感が呼応するこのメディアミックスは、失われた時代の重厚な空気感を現代に鮮やかに蘇らせる、至高のシナジーを生み出しています。