Sir Archibald Geikie...on geological evolution
What art effects upon the marble block, nature accomplishes upon the surface of the land. Her tools are many and varied - air, frost, rain, springs, torrents, rivers, avalanches, glaciers, and the sea - each producing its own characteristic traces in the sculpture. With these implements, out of the huge bulk of the land she cuts the valleys, and ravines, scoops the lake-basins, hews with bold hand the colossal outlines of the mountains, carves out peak and crag, crest and cliff, chisels the courses of the torrents, splinters the sides of the precipices, spreads out the alluvium of the rivers, and piles up the moraines of the glaciers. Patiently and unceasingly has this great earth-sculptor sat at her task since the land first rose above the sea, washing down into the ocean the debris of her labour, to form the materials for the framework of future countries. And there will she remain at work so long as mountains stand, and rain falls, and rivers flow.
-Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad, 1882