THE EXHIBITION HALL FOR THE LAND
Theory of the Earth, the book by James Hutton published in 1795, contains an engraving of unconformity in Jedburgh, Scotland.
The upper half of the print appears to be an ordinary landscape painting of a rural landscape; against rolling low hills in the distance, a person on a carriage is passing by a horse rider; a fenced-off bushy road is sparsely lined with trees. However, below this plane the picture reveals a cross-section of the earth. Flat sedimentary layers lie just below the surface, followed by unconformity at a deeper level, as well as a vertical layer at the bottom that has clearly experienced uplift, tilting and erosion since its formation much earlier under the sea. The sequences make visible the notion that
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