Reading the Rocks

by Brenda Maddox

  7Ibid., p. 2.

  8Ibid., p. 41n.

  9Ibid., p. 179n.

  10Deborah Cadbury, The Dinosaur Hunters, London: Fourth Estate, 2000, p. 94, citing Horace Woodward, The History of the Geological Society of London, London: Geological Society, 1907.

  11Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. 22.

  12Ibid., p. 22, quoting J. F. D’Aubuisson des Voisins, Traité de géognosie, Vol. 2, p. 253.

  13Cuvier, 1812, ‘L’histoire de ce monde’, in O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 62.

  14Gideon Mantell to Benjamin Silliman, 14 Jun 1841 in Leonard G. Wilson, Lyell in America: Transatlantic Geology, 1841–53, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.

  15Cited in Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections on Natural History, London: Cape, 1996, p. 165.

  16Wilson, Revolution in Geology, pp. 116–17.

  17Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 185.

  18Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. 78.

  19Lyell, review of Memoir on the Geology of Central France, by G. P. Scrope, London 1827, Quarterly Review, 1827m, Vol. 36, pp. 437–83.

  20Lyell to his sister Marianne, 20 Oct 1828, Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 209.

  21Lyell to his sister Eleanor, 9 Nov 1828, ibid., p. 213.

  22Ibid.

  23Cited in Wilson, Revolution in Geology, p. 253.

  24Lyell to Murchison, 12 Jan 1829, in Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 234.

  25Lyell to Murchison, 15 Jan 1829, in ibid. p. 234.

  26Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. 152.

  27The image he labelled a temple is now thought to have been a marketplace. However, it served an almost religious purpose for Lyell.

  28Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. 70.

  29Ibid., p.149.

  30For an example of this well-known observation, see Walter Gratzer, The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception, and Human Frailty, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

  31Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. 196.

  32Ibid., p. 199.

  33Ibid., p. xxxiv, quoting Lyell to C. Lyell, 19 Oct 1830, Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 308.

  34Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. xxx.

  CHAPTER 5 FIGHTING FELLOWS

  1Lewis and Knell (eds), Making of the Geological Society, p. 77.

  2Ibid., p. 240.

  3Winchester, Map That Changed the World, p. 239.

  4Ibid., pp. 240–1.

  5Ibid., p. 37.

  6Cited in Herries Davies, Whatever is Under the Earth, p. 24.

  7Babbage cited in Lewis and Knell (eds), Making of the Geological Society, p. 327.

  8John C. Thackray, ‘To See the Fellows Fight: Eye Witness Accounts of Meetings of the Geological Society of London and its Club’, 1822–66, British Society for the History of Science Monographs, p. ix.

  9Martin J. S. Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 31–2; see also Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters, pp. 106–7.

  10O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 329.

  11Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters, pp. 107–8.

  12Ibid., p. 108.

  13Ibid.

  14Lyell to Mantell, 8 Feb 1822, cited in O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 91, n. 66.

  15Conybeare to De la Beche, 4 March 1824, letter 302, T. Sharpe and P. J. McCartney, The Papers of H. T. De la Beche (1796–1855) in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff: National Museums & Galleries of Wales, 1998, p. 33.

  16Lewis and Knell (eds), Making of the Geological Society, p. 323.

  17Lyell to Sisley, 21 Jan 1728, cited in ibid., p. 28.

  18Shelley Emling, The Fossil Hunter, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 157.

  19Rachel Hewitt, Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey, London: Granta, 2010, p. 29l.

  CHAPTER 6 DATING THE DELUGE

  1Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters, p. 21.

  2W. Buckland, ‘Vindiciae geologicae; or, the Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained’, Oxford: 1820, pp. 2–5.

  3James Secord, Victorian Sensation: The extraordinary publication, reception, and secret authorship of ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 223.

  4Buckland, ‘Vindiciae geologicae’, pp. 2–5.

  5Ibid.

  6Ibid., pp. 23–4.

  7Ibid.

  8Mrs. E. O. Gordon, The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland, D.D, F.R.S, by His Daughter, London: John Murray, 1894, p. 4.

  9William Buckland, ‘Memoir’, in Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, London: William Pickering, 1837, Vol. 1, p. xxiv.

  10Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters, p. 30.

  11O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 115.

  12Ibid., p. 80.

  13Ibid.

  14Holmes, The Age of Wonder, p. 447.

  15O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 182.

  16The Times, 23 Jun 1832, p. 4.

  17O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 75.

  18Cadbury, Dinosaur Hunters, p. 61.

  19William Wollaston to Buckland, 24 Jun 1822, quoted in O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 105.

  20Davy cited in O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 88; Buckland’s letter to Lady Mary Cole, 24 Dec 1822, cited in Paul Ferris, Gower in History: Myth, People, Landscape, Hay on Wye: Armanaleg Books, 2009, p. 42.

  21Cited in McGowan, The Dragon Seekers, p. 58.

  22O’Connor, The Earth on Show, p. 91, n. 67, n. 68.

  23Ferris, Gower, p. 43.

  24Ibid., pp. 38–40.

  25Reverend William Buckland, ‘Notice of the Megalosaurus, or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield’, Transactions of the Geological Society of London (1824), p. 391.

  26Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. 433.

  27Ibid., pp. 434–5.

  28Ibid., p. xxviii.

  29Ibid.

  30Richard Fortey, ‘In Good Measure’ / ‘A Flood of Fossils’, TLS, 2008 (source unknown).

  CHAPTER 7 ON THE BEACH

  1John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, London: Vintage Books, 2010, p. 3.

  2Emling, Fossil Hunter, p. 55.

  3Bristol Mirror, 1823, cited in Donald R. Prothero, The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters, New York: Columbian University Press, 2015, p. 168.

  4Emling, Fossil Hunter, p. 208.

  5Ibid., p. 143.

  6Ibid., pp. 115, 116, 182, 325–6.

  7Cited in Gordon, Life and Correspondence of William Buckland, p. 115.

  8Emling, Fossil Hunter, p. 193.

  9W. D. Lang, ‘Three Letters of Mary Anning’, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, Vol. 66 (1944), p. 171, cited in Lewis and Knell (eds), Making of the Geological Society, p. 339; Lang Papers, Dorset County Museum, cited in ibid., p. 101.

  10Lewis and Knell (eds), Making of the Geological Society, p. 197.

  11Ibid., p. 199.

  12Fowles, French Lientenant’s Woman, p. 46.

  CHAPTER 8 DINOSAUR WARS

  1Mantell’s letters are preserved in the private archives of his son, Roderick, in Wellington, New Zealand.

  2Gideon Mantell, Journal of Gideon Mantell, Surgeon and Geologist Covering the Years 1818–1852, edited by E. Cecil Curwen, London: Oxford University Press, 1940, p. 3.

  3Dean, James Hutton, pp. 24–5.

  4Dennis R. Dean, Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 20.

  5Ibid., p. 38.

  6Ibid., p. 41.

  7Wilson, Revolution in Geology, p. 48.

  8McGowan, The Dragon Seekers, p. 87.

  9Emling, Fossil Hunter, p. 187.

  10Cited in Lewis and Knell (eds), Making of the Geological Society, p. 337.

  11McGowan, The Dragon Seekers, pp. 106–7.

  12Mantell, Journal, 17 Dec 1845, p. 200.

  13The Times, 3 Dec 1838; also see www.rth.org.uk.

  14Mant
ell, Journal, Dec 1845, p. 200.

  15Ibid., 4 and 23 Mar 1848, p. 221.

  16Ibid.

  17Ibid., p. 256.

  18Ibid., 25 Feb and 18 Mar 1851, pp. 264–5.

  19Ibid., 8 Oct 1852, pp. 273–4.

  20Ibid., 11 Oct 1851, p. 275.

  21Ibid., 13 Nov 1851, p. 277.

  22Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 118.

  23Mantell, Journal, 17 Sep 1829, p. 72.

  CHAPTER 9 CELIBACY GALORE

  1Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 183.

  2Ibid., p. 130.

  3Ibid., p. 152.

  4Ibid., p. 163.

  5Ibid., p. 161.

  6Ibid., p. 143.

  7Ibid., p. 433.

  8A prebendary is a clergyman receiving a stipend from a cathedral for having a role in its administration; a prebend is a form of benefit, usually from income on the cathedral estates.

  9Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 452.

  10Ibid., p. 298.

  11Ibid., p. 299.

  12Ibid., p. 323.

  13Sedgwick cited in Adelene Buckland, Novel Science: Fiction and the Invention of Nineteenth-Century Geology, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 87.

  14Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 227.

  15Ibid., p. 247.

  16Ibid., p. 248.

  17Ibid., p. 211.

  18Source unknown.

  19Conybeare cited in Nicolaas Rupke, The Great Chain of History: William Buckland and the English School of Geology (1814–1849), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 182.

  20Ibid.

  21Ibid.

  22Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 275.

  23Rev. Adam Sedgwick, Addresses delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society of London on the 18th February 1831 (and on the 19th February, 1830), London: Richard Taylor, 1831, p. 18.

  24Cited in Winchester, Map That Changed the World, pp. 280–1.

  25Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 368.

  26Cited in ibid., p. 368.

  27Ibid.

  28Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. xxix.

  29Janet Browne, Charles Darwin, Vol. 2: The Power of Place, New York, Alfred Knopf, 2002, p. 140.

  30Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 395.

  31Ibid.

  32Ibid., p. 459.

  33Ibid., p. 97.

  34Ibid., p. 460.

  35Lyell to his sister Caroline, 3 May 1837, Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol 2, p. 10.

  36Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 1, p. 388.

  37Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 60.

  38Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 136.

  39Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 374.

  CHAPTER 10 FROM SILURIA TO THE MOON

  1Archibald Geikie, The Life of Sir Roderick K. Murchison, London: John Murray, 1875, p. 96.

  2Rudwick, Great Devonian Controversy, pp. 73–8.

  3Ibid.

  4Robert A. Stafford, Scientist of Empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, Scientific Exploration and Victorian Imperialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 19.

  5Clark and Hughes (eds), Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, Vol. 2, p. 442.

  6John C. W. Cope, ‘What have they done to the Ordovician?’, Geoscientist, 17 Mar 2007, Vol. 17, No 3.

  CHAPTER 11 ALPS ON ALPS ARISE

  1Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the Years 1860–69, revised and edited by H. E. G. Tayndale, London: John Murray, 1879, p. 310.

  2Ibid., pp. 317–18.

  3Wordsworth, ‘Cambridge and the Alps’, Complete Poetical Works, Book VI, pp. 512–13.

  4Poetical Register, 1808, ii. 308, p. 311.

  5Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps, p. 385.

  6Edward Whymper, letter to The Times, dated 7 Aug 1865, printed 8 Aug 1865.

  7Andrew St George to author, Jul 2011.

  8John Tyndall, Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1879, Vol. 2, p. 90.

  9Ibid., p. 128.

  10See John Stuart Mill, ‘The Spirit of the Age’, in Essays on Politics and Culture, edited by Gertrude Himmelfarb, New York: Doubleday, 1962, pp. 3–50.

  11Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays, Vol. 1, first published 1894; digital publication: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 103.

  CHAPTER 12 DARWIN THE GEOLOGIST

  1Charles Darwin to Catherine Darwin, 6 Apr 1834, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1821–1836, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 379.

  2Cited in Browne, Darwin, Vol. 2, p. 72.

  3Martin A. Patchett, Life and letters of the Right Honourable Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, G.C.B. , D.C.L., London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1893, p. 20.

  4Ruth Padel, Darwin: A Life in Poems, London: Chatto & Windus, 2009, p. 31.

  5James Secord (ed.), Charles Darwin: Evolutionary Writings (including The Autobiographies), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 81.

  6Darwin to Henslow, 12 Aug 1835, cited in John Bowlby, Charles Darwin: A New Biography, London: Hutchinson, 1990, p. 166.

  7Ibid.

  8Ibid., pp. 160–1.

  9Lyell to Darwin, 26 Dec 1836, in Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 475.

  10Lyell to his sister Eleanor, 26 Feb 1830, in ibid., Vol. 1, p. 263.

  11Darwin to his brother, 6 Nov 1836, in ibid., Vol. 2.

  12Charles Lyell to Darwin, 26 December 1836, in ibid., Vol. 1, p. 475.

  13Lyell to Darwin, 26 Dec 1836, in ibid., Vol. 1, p. 475.

  14Desmond and Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, p. 257.

  15Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, Vol. 3, London: 1776, appendix, p. 394.

  16Lyell to Herschel, 1 Jun 1836, Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 464.

  17Cited in Browne, Darwin, Vol. 2, p. 431.

  18Darwin to Lyell, 12 November 1838, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1837–1843, Vol. 2, p. 114.

  19Emma Wedgwood to Darwin, in Browne, Charles Darwin, Vol. 1: Voyaging, London: Jonathan Cape, 1995, p. 396.

  20Wilson, Lyell in America, p. 287.

  21Darwin to Lyell, 6 September 1861, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1861, Vol. 9, p. 256.

  22Darwin to Thomas Jamieson, 6 Sep 1861, in Ibid., p. 255.

  CHAPTER 13 THE ICEMAN COMETH

  1Cited in Rupke, Great Chain of History, p. 102.

  2Geoscientist, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 7.

  3Preface to Gordon, The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland, p. x.

  4Horace B. Woodward, The History of the London Geological Society, London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1908, p. 140.

  5Forbes to Agassiz, 13 Feb 1841, quoted in Herries Davies, Whatever is Under the Earth, p. 87.

  6Edward Lurie, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, p. 101.

  7Cited in Literary Gazette, and Journal of the Belles Lettres . . ., London, Sat 17 Oct 1840, p. 671.

  8Herries Davies, Whatever is Under the Earth, p. 84.

  9Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. xi.

  10In Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, Vol. 2, Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1886, p. 445–6.

  11Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918, p. 60.

  12Oliver Wendell Holmes, ‘At the Saturday Club’, 1884.

  CHAPTER 14 FOOTPRINTS IN PENNSYLVANIA

  1Darwin to the Reverend Fox, 24 Oct 1839, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1837–1843, Vol. 2, p. 234.

  2Darwin to Leonard Jenyns, 10 Apr 1839, quoted in Francis Darwin (ed.), Life and Letters of Charles Darwi
n, London: John Murray, 1887, Vol. 1, p. 299.

  3Lyell to Darwin, Jul 1841, Wilson, Revolution in Geology, p. 460.

  4Darwin to Emma Wedgwood, 20 Jan 1838, in ibid., pp. 458–9.

  5C. Lyell, Travels in North America; with Geological Observations on the United States, Canada and Nova Scotia, London: John Murray, 1855, Vol. 1, p. 5.

  6Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 71.

  7Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 60–1.

  8Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 17.

  9Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 106.

  10Dickens, Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, 1853, Vol. 1, p. 1.

  11Lyell, Travels, Vol. 1, p. 102.

  12Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 121.

  13Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 105.

  14Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 206.

  15Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 107.

  16Ibid.

  17Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 117.

  18Ibid.

  19Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 158.

  20Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 66.

  21Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 168.

  22Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 169.

  23Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 183.

  24Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 228.

  25Geoscientist, Vol. 19, No. 2, p. 7.

  26Lyell, Travels, Vol. 1, p. 201.

  27Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 161.

  28Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 19.

  29Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 62–3.

  30Lyell to his father, 25 Feb 1846, in Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 2, p. 101.

  31Lyell to Leonard Horner, Aug 1841, in ibid., p. 55.

  32Lyell to Leonard Horner, 15 Feb 1846, in ibid., p. 101.

  33Darwin to Lyell, 30 July–2 August 1845, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1844–1846, Vol. 3, p. 233.

  34C. Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States, London: John Murray, 1850, Vol. 1, p. 184.

  35Ibid., p. 183.

  36Lyell, Travels, Vol. 2, p. 82.

  37 Ibid., p. 13.

  38Ibid., p. 27.

  39Ibid., p. 15.

  40Ibid., p. 79.

  41Wilson, Lyell in America, p. 265.

  42Lyell, Second Visit, Vol. 2, p. 312.

  CHAPTER 15 AT LAST, THE BIG QUESTION

  1Lyell/Secord, Principles, p. xxiv., citing Lyell to G. Ticknor, 1850, in Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 2, pp. 168–9.

  2Lyell (ed.), Life, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1, p. 313.

  3Wilson, Lyell in America, p. 301.

  4Ibid.

  5Desmond and Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, p. 354.