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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Perhaps the best part of researching Victorian geologists was the Celtic field trips that took me to Glen Roy in the Scottish Highlands, the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales, the Llanfair Quarry near Builth Wells and Tricket Mill and the Llanstephan Hills on the banks of the River Wye. The subject also gave me the chance to work in the beautiful library of the Geological Society in Burlington House, Piccadilly, the society’s home since 1860, with its remarkable collection of journals going back to the society’s origins in 1807. At Burlington House I was grateful for the help of the assistant librarian, Wendy Cawthorne, who knows so well the vast collection.
Well before I went on the Glen Roy field trip led by Professor Martin Rudwick FRS, I had been inspired by his fine books on the history of the earth sciences – notably Worlds Before Adam, Bursting the Limits of Time, Lyell and Darwin, Geologists: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Reform and The Great Devonian Controversy. On the Glen, I met Professor James A. Secord, whose Penguin classic edition of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology never left my desk while writing this book. I also met John and Annie Henry of Nineteenth-Century Geological Maps, who offered many illustrations from Lyell’s archives for this book as well as helpful comment on the text.
At Little Haven, the Pembrokeshire geologist Sid Howells showed me round the spectacular folds, twists and caves, bringing me a hardhat to protect me from falling rocks. None fell.
Dr Robert Owens, head of the palaeontology section of the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff, took me around the fossiliferous Llanfawr Quarry at Llandrindod Wells. Trilobites may be the world’s favourite fossil – hard carapaced creatures with fringed heads. As one who had never seen a trilobite before, I came home with pockets full – not museum-worthy specimens, rather fragments found in almost every shard of scattered rock. From Tom Sharpe, curator of palaeontology and archives and Dave Smith at the same fine museum, I learned of the great collection of the papers and drawings of Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche. I am grateful to the museum for permission to reproduce some of these classics.
Charles Gordon Clark of Llaneglwys, Powys, escorted me on a memorable field trip to the iconic juncture of the Old Red Sandstone with the Aberedw rocks at Llanstephan in the Upper Wye Valley. He also gave much help, with accompanying literature, on the long dispute to define the Silurian System of rocks. Professor Jim Kennedy and Eliza Howell, Geological Collections Manager, showed me round the Buckland collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
The Natural History Museum in South Kensington is the professional home of the man with possibly the greatest gift for explaining geology, Professor Richard Fortey, FRS, FRLS. The title of his book Trilobite! conveys an infectious enthusiasm for the tiny three-lobed fossils which existed before life emerged from the sea. His subtitle calls them Eyewitness to Evolution.
Once more I am grateful for the assistance of Dr Walter Gratzer, emeritus professor of biophysical chemistry at King’s College London and family friend. His rare mix of scientific and literary fluency is shown in his many books, such as Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes and, most recently, Giant Molecules: From Nylon to Nanotubes. He kindly read the manuscript of this book and made many suggestions for changes, small and large, almost all of them accepted. Another friend, the geologist Dr Laura Garwin, cast her expert eye on the text and offered many helpful observations. Again I owe thanks to the scholar Bernard McGinley for casting his sharp eye over another of my works in progress. Any errors that remain are my own.
I would also like to thank Aosaf Asfal of the Royal Society, Sally Bushell of the University of Lancaster, Dr Warwick Gould of the University of London, Frank A. J. L. James, professor of the history of science at the Royal Institution, the geological historian Cherry Lewis, the science writer Nina Morgan, Gwyn Miles of Somerset House, Paul Shepherd of the British Geological Survey at Keyworth, Nottingham, James and Annie Secord and Hugh Torrens of Keele University – all of whom were generous with their time and explanations for an outsider. Sian Williams, my assistant, gave invaluable technical support.
As ever, I am aware of my good fortune in having, as literary agents and friends, Caradoc King of A. P. Watt Ltd. in London and Ellen Levine of the Ellen Levine Agency in New York.
And as always I am deeply grateful to my family – my daughter Bronwen, my granddaughter Laura and my son Bruno, all united in loving memory of my husband, Sir John Maddox, former editor of Nature, who died in April 2009 after I began this book and who encouraged me to write it.
INDEX
A First Examination of the Principles of Geology (Greenough) here
Adams, Henry here
Agassiz, Louis here, here, here background and education here
glacial hypothesis here, here
later career here
marriage here
travels here
visits Lyell here
agents of change here
Alabama here
Albert, Prince here, here, here, here
Allegheny Mountains here, here
Alps, the here, here
An Introduction to Geology (Bakewell) here
Anning, Joseph here, here
Anning, Mary here, here, here, here, here background here
discoveries here
Ichthyosaurus skeleton find here
meets Buckland here
meets De La Beche here
and the Murchisons here
status here, here, here
visits London here
Anning, Richard here
Antcliffe, J. B. here
Antiquity of Man, The (Lyell) here
Appalachian mountains here
Arnold, Thomas here
Ashmolean Museum of Natural History here
Association of American Geologists here
astronomy here
Athenaeum Club here
Atlantic, widening here, here
atomic theory here
Autobiography (Darwin) here
Auvergne here
Axminster here
Babbage, Charles here
Babington, Dr William here
Bakewell, Robert here, here, here
Balzac, Honoré de here
Banks, Joseph here, here
Barnard Castle here
Beagle, HMS here, here, here, here, here
Bedford Street, London here
Bible, the here, here, here
Big Bang, the here
Big Bone Lick, Kentucky here
biological origins, search for here
Birch, Thomas here
Bridgewater Treatises here
Brighton here, here
Bristol, Pneumatic Institution here
Bristol Mirror here
British Association for the Advancement of Science here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
British Critic here
British Geological Survey here, here
British Museum here, here, here, here, here
Broderip, William here
Brongniart, Alexandre here, here
Browne, Janet here, here
Buckland. the Reverend William here, here, here, here, here, here and Agassiz here, here, here, here
and Anning here, here
background and education here
bizarre appetite here
dating of Noah’s Flood here
Reading the Rocks Page 24
