An example of metaphor in writing about science"
"…so far as it is to natural causes that are to be ascribed the operations of former time, and so far as, from the present state of things, or knowledge of natural history, we have it in our power to reason from effect to cause, there are, in the constitution of the world, which we now examine, certain means to read the annals of a former earth.
… WE are now, in reasoning from principles, come to a point decisive of the question, and which will either confirm the theory, if it be just, or confute our reasoning, if we have erred. Let us, therefore, open the book of Nature, and read in her records, if there had been a world bearing plants, at the time when this present world was forming at the bottom of the sea."
James Hutton (1788) Theory of the Earth
Reading the book of Nature is a common idiom in science writing but here Hutton also suggests the geological records offers 'annals' of the past forms of the earth.
Note that nature is personified as 'her'.
Read about personification in science texts
