Scientific (Prose)

After the annual excursion of the Lowly Dale Scientific Society, the members were addressed by Mr. Evertrot Gagthorp. New specimens, the product of their recent journey, now enrich the Museum: viz. In Geology - Limestone, pumice stone, soft stone, white stone, plum stone, and cherry stone. Conchology - Egg shell Tortoise shell nut shell and satchel. Botany - Corn flour, grog blossom, and many leaves from the book of nature. Entomology - a swallow tail had been obtained, but the president going to a dress party, had got the loan of it.

John Hartley

John Hartley was an English poet who wrote in the Yorkshire dialect. Born on January 1, 1839, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, he was known for his humorous and dialectical poetry, which vividly captured the spirit and culture of Yorkshire. Hartley's works were extremely popular in the 19th century, and he remains a significant figure in regional English literature. He passed away on March 10, 1915.

John Hartley

What it Comes to.

John Hartley, Simple Poetry

Nivver Heed.

John Hartley, Simple Poetry

Uncle Ben.

John Hartley, Simple Poetry

Th' New Railrooad. (Prose)

John Hartley, Simple Poetry

English

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The Science Club

Hurrah for the Science Club!
    Join it, ye fourth year men;
Join it, thou smooth-cheeked scrub,
    Whose years scarce number ten

Join it, divines most grave;
    Science, as all men know,
As a friend the Church may save,
    But may damage her as a foe.

(And in any case it is well,
    If attacking insidious doubt,
Or devoting H--- to H---,
    To know what you're talking about.)

Hurrah for the lang-nebbit word!
    Hurrah for the erudite phrase,
That in Dura Den shall be heard,
    That shall echo on Kinkell Braes!

Hurrah for the spoils of the links
    (The golf-ball as well as the daisy)!
Hurrah for explosions and stinks
    To set half the landladies crazy!

Hurrah for the fragments of boulders,
    ...

Robert Fuller Murray

The Society Upon the Stanislaus

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And Ill tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.

But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member dont agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to put a head on him.

Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.

Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;

Bret Harte

Anticipated Meeting Of The British Association In The Year 1836.

After some observations from Dr. M'Grig
On that fossil reliquium called Petrified Wig,
Or Perruquolithus--a specimen rare
Of those wigs made for antediluvian wear,
Which, it seems, stood the Flood without turning a hair--
Mr. Tomkins rose up, and requested attention
To facts no less wondrous which he had to mention.

Some large fossil creatures had lately been found,
Of a species no longer now seen above ground,
But the same (as to Tomkins most clearly appears)
With those animals, lost now for hundreds of years,
Which our ancestors used to call "Bishops" and "Peers,"
But which Tomkins more erudite names has bestowed on,
Having called the Peer fossil the Aris-tocratodon,^[1]
And, finding much food under t'other one's thorax,
Has christen...

Thomas Moore

To The Pliocene Skull

"Speak, O man less recent!
                    Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
                    Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
                    Of earth's epidermis!

"Eo - Mio - Plio - whatsoe'er the 'cene' was
That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder, -
Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches, -
                    Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the professor slightly antedated
By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted
                    For cold-blooded creat...

Bret Harte

A Geological Madrigal

I have found out a gift for my fair;
I know where the fossils abound,
Where the footprints of Aves declare
The birds that once walked on the ground.
Oh, come, and in technical speech
Well walk this Devonian shore,
Or on some Silurian beach
Well wander, my love, evermore.

I will show thee the sinuous track
By the slow-moving Annelid made,
Or the Trilobite that, farther back,
In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid;
Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb,
The Plesiosaurus embalmed;
In his Oolitic prime and his bloom,
Iguanodon safe and unharmed.

You wished I remember it well,
And I loved you the more for that wish
For a perfect cystedian shell
And a whole holocephalic fish.
And oh, if Earths strata contains
In its lowest Silur...

Bret Harte

Investigating Flora

'Twas in scientific circles
That the great Professor Brown
Had a world-wide reputation
As a writer of renown.
He had striven finer feelings
In our natures to implant
By his Treatise on the Morals
Of the Red-eyed Bulldog Ant.
He had hoisted an opponent
Who had trodden unawares
On his "Reasons for Bare Patches
On the Female Native Bears".
So they gave him an appointment
As instructor to a band
Of the most attractive females
To be gathered in the land.

'Twas a "Ladies' Science Circle",
Just the latest social fad
For the Nicest People only,
And to make their rivals mad.
They were fond of "science rambles"
To the country from the town,
A parade of female beauty
In the leadership of Brown.
They would pick a place for lun...

Andrew Barton Paterson