Horner, L. 1855. An account of some recent researches near Cairo, undertaken with a view to throwing light upon the geological history of the alluvial land of Egypt. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 145, 105-138.
read 8 February & 15 February 1855
Proc.RSL 7, 1854-1855, 233-240 (the report of the presentation).
Horner writes on the silty ground of Egypt. This could be one of the first papers of scientific historical geology; Horner certainly emphasized the importance of time for the geologist. He must have been the first person to appreciate, and to write about silt. His early work was on loess silt, he studied the silt suspended in the river Rhine, and he moved on to Nile silt. The Nile could have been a loess river but the silt never reached the aeolian transportation stage.
Also of interest:
Lepsius, Richard 1853. Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia & the peninsula of Sinai. (translated from the German by Joanna & Leonora Horner; with an appendix by Leonard Horner). H.G.Bohm London 578p [OCLC 3626811]
Horner added a section about the interaction of the Nile with its bed- and chronological implications. The original Lepsius volume was translated by Joanna & Leonora Horner, daughters of LH.
Leonard Horner in 1846; a sketch, for the Illustrated London News, made at the Southampton 1846 meeting of the British Association for the advancement of Science. LH was president of Section C Geology.
LH writes to Mrs Horner: Manchester 28 March 1852
'You ask me to give you a more clear idea than you have of the object of my researches in Egypt, and I will try to do so. According to records that go back to a very remote period, the Nile has every year overflowed its banks at a particular season, to such an extent as to cover with water the low land on each side of it, and that large portion at its embouchure, which, from its resemblance to the form of the Greek letter D, is called the Delta, that being the name of that letter. The water during the inundation is very muddy, and as the river has a very slight fall, the mud is deposited on the land over which the water spreads. As the amount of the inundation is on an average of years' uniform, so also is the amount of mud deposited uniform, and it has been calculated, by some very exact observations of the French, at the end of the last century, that every hundred years the mud deposited amounts to five inches. This amount, however, is subject to certain irregularities according to the localities.
If, therefore, perpendicular boring through the mud-deposit be made, for every five inches of that passed through, we may reckon (according to the assumed rate of increase) one hundred years, and thus if five hundred inches were gone through, it would indicate ten thousand years since the lowest of the five hundred was deposited.'
read 8 February & 15 February 1855
Proc.RSL 7, 1854-1855, 233-240 (the report of the presentation).
Horner writes on the silty ground of Egypt. This could be one of the first papers of scientific historical geology; Horner certainly emphasized the importance of time for the geologist. He must have been the first person to appreciate, and to write about silt. His early work was on loess silt, he studied the silt suspended in the river Rhine, and he moved on to Nile silt. The Nile could have been a loess river but the silt never reached the aeolian transportation stage.
Also of interest:
Lepsius, Richard 1853. Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia & the peninsula of Sinai. (translated from the German by Joanna & Leonora Horner; with an appendix by Leonard Horner). H.G.Bohm London 578p [OCLC 3626811]
Horner added a section about the interaction of the Nile with its bed- and chronological implications. The original Lepsius volume was translated by Joanna & Leonora Horner, daughters of LH.
Leonard Horner in 1846; a sketch, for the Illustrated London News, made at the Southampton 1846 meeting of the British Association for the advancement of Science. LH was president of Section C Geology.
LH writes to Mrs Horner: Manchester 28 March 1852
'You ask me to give you a more clear idea than you have of the object of my researches in Egypt, and I will try to do so. According to records that go back to a very remote period, the Nile has every year overflowed its banks at a particular season, to such an extent as to cover with water the low land on each side of it, and that large portion at its embouchure, which, from its resemblance to the form of the Greek letter D, is called the Delta, that being the name of that letter. The water during the inundation is very muddy, and as the river has a very slight fall, the mud is deposited on the land over which the water spreads. As the amount of the inundation is on an average of years' uniform, so also is the amount of mud deposited uniform, and it has been calculated, by some very exact observations of the French, at the end of the last century, that every hundred years the mud deposited amounts to five inches. This amount, however, is subject to certain irregularities according to the localities.
If, therefore, perpendicular boring through the mud-deposit be made, for every five inches of that passed through, we may reckon (according to the assumed rate of increase) one hundred years, and thus if five hundred inches were gone through, it would indicate ten thousand years since the lowest of the five hundred was deposited.'
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