The emergence of a visual language for geological science 1760—1840

History of Science

Volumn 14, Issue 3, 1976, Pages 149-195

  Rudwick, Martin J S ^a  

^a VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

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EID: 84973810244     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: 17538564     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327537601400301     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. A short illustrated lecture based on an earlier draft of this article was given at King's College, London, on 1 September 1975 as part of the Charles Lyell Centenary Symposium. I am very grateful to the many members of that conference who made helpful suggestions and criticisms, or who told me about examples—and counter-examples—of illustrations which I had not previously seen. I am particularly indebted, as usual, to Dr Roy Porter, for his constructive criticisms and encouragement in this work.
2. Quoted in Goethe J. W., Italian journey (1786–1788), ed. by Auden W. H. and Mayer E. (London, 1962), Introduction. The volumes of the great Corpus der Goethezeichnungen, ed. by Femmel Gerhard (Leipzig, 1958-) show how far Goethe practised his own maxim, particularly if the anachronistic editorial separation of ‘scientific’ from ‘artistic’ drawings is ignored. The ‘geological’ drawings are in Bd Vb, Die naturwissenschaftlichen Zeichnungen (1967), but should be compared with, for example, those in Bd IVa, Nachitalienische Landschaften (1966).
3. Unfortunately this applies to my own work in this article, which would be illustrated far more fully than it is, if economic constraints could be ignored. My selection is deliberately weighted towards exemplifying those aspects of the visual language of geology which have been relatively neglected; but wherever possible I refer in the notes to other relevant published reproductions in accessible modern works. Historical books aimed at the ‘general readers’ market may be illustrated lavishly, in contradiction to the point I am making, but in most cases there is little integration between text and pictures, and the latter often seem to have been chosen by the publisher rather than by the author!.
4. The idea that thinking can be intrinsically visual is apt to seem strange and even incomprehensible to those whose mental processes are primarily verbal or mathematical: On this point, see Arnheim Rudolf, Visual thinking (London, 1970). Educationalists have had to coin the ugly neologism ‘graphicacy’ to express the belief that visual and graphical skills should be given as much weight in education as those of ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’. The need for such a reform is indicated by the remarkable incompetence of many ‘literate’ historians and ‘numerate’ scientists when faced with simple visual tasks such as drawing a clear diagram or reading a map.
5. Although it covers only one country, the most thorough analysis of this development—integrating cognitive and institutional changes—is Porter Roy S., “The making of the science of geology in Britain, 1660–1815” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1974), which should be published by the Cambridge University Press in 1977.
6. Ivins William M. Jr., Prints and visual communications (London, 1953); the whole book is full of insights of potential value to historians of science, but see ch. 8 for a summary of the argument.
7. For a masterly treatment of this point in a general context, see Gombrich E. H., Art and illusion. A study in the psychology of pictorial representation (London, 1960). The lectures on which the book was based were entitled “The visible world and the language of art”.
8. Apart from this brief note, I shall omit any separate discussion of one major kind of illustration, namely that of specimens. Although illustrations of rocks, minerals and fossils are quantitatively one of the most important components of the visual language of geology, they have so much in common with earlier visual traditions of natural history that they deserve fuller discussion in that context. But it is worth noting that they share one feature which I shall argue is characteristic of all geological illustrations, namely the tendency to become more formalized and theory-laden in the course of time. Late eighteenth century illustrated books on rocks, minerals and fossils are often in effect ‘cabinets of rarities’ converted into book form: The specimens are illustrated with an extreme and—to modern eyes—indiscriminate realism (depicting, for example, the fortuitous colours of fossils and the shapes of the slabs of rock on which they are preserved), sometimes rising to virtuoso heights of trompe d'oeil effects. In the early nineteenth century there was a clear trend, only partly explicable in economic terms, towards the omission of colour from pictures of fossils, and the selective ‘playing down’ of other fortuitous preservational features of particular specimens. The same trend can be seen in the illustration of minerals (for many of which colour is equally fortuitous), where simplified line-drawings of crystal forms were used increasingly to highlight what were believed on theoretical grounds to be the more fundamental features. The technical change from copper engraving to lithography, which I discuss in the next section of this article, was particularly important for the illustration of fossils. Another aspect of the visual treatment of fossils which deserves fuller analysis is the generally hesitant and tentative manner in which possible reconstructions of extinct organisms began to be suggested visually in published form during the early nineteenth century. For reproductions of some illustrations which exemplify these points, see my book on The meaning of fossils: Episodes in the history of palaeontology (London and New York, 1972).
9. In order to keep the text and notes of this article within reasonable bounds, I shall use a few works as representatives for much larger classes of material. Otherwise my references would quickly become a summary of sources for the history of geology in general during this period. Likewise I shall not attempt to note all the relevant secondary literature, particularly for those aspects of the subject—notably geological maps—which have been relatively fully studied by historians of geology.
10. It would be worth making international comparisons on these points. Examples of work by some of the individuals I have mentioned will be cited later in this article. Webster's name appears on many illustrations in the Transactions of the Geological Society of London, in cases where he must have worked from rougher sketches submitted by the author of the article concerned. Many field sketches by Lyell are excellently reproduced in Leonard Wilson G., Charles Lyell. The years to 1841: The revolution in geology (New Haven and London, 1972). Perhaps the most striking exception to my generalization about the artistic competence of early nineteenth century English geologists is Charles Darwin, whose notebooks and published works are curiously poor in illustrations of any kind: Darwin seems to have been exceptionally ‘non-visual’ as far as the communication of his observations and theories was concerned.
11. For an earlier historical period, when such frontispieces were commonly symbolic or allegorical in style, there is a well-established art-historical tradition of iconographical interpretation, which has been applied to some more specifically ‘scientific’ frontispieces. But there is scope for much more research on the frontispieces of scientific books of the late eighteenth century onwards, when they became less overtly symbolic in style but arguably no less rich in meaning.
12. Hamilton William Sir, Campi Phlegraei. Observations on the volcanos of the Two Sicilies, as they have been communicated to the Royal Society of London (Naples, 1776), with a Supplement (Naples, 1779). Campi Phlegraei has a text in English and French; it was originally sold at sixty Neapolitan ducats (see p. 90), and Hamilton spent £1300 of his own money on financing it: See Fothergill B., Sir William Hamilton, envoy extraordinary (London, 1969). Hamilton also presented the Royal Society of London with an ‘eidophysicon’ with the aid of which backlighted paintings on glass could give an even more vivid impression of the eruptions he had witnessed: See Smith Bernard, European vision and the south Pacific (London, 1960), ch. 2.
13. de Saussure Horace-Bénedict, Voyages dan les Alpes, précédés d'un essai sur l'histoire naturelle des environs de Genève (Neuchatel, 1779–96).
14. For example, the largely topographical works of Jean-André de Luc, such as his early five-volume Lettres physiques et morales sur l'histoire de la terre et de l'homme (La Haye and Paris, 1779) and his late two-volume Geological travels in some parts of France, Switzerland and Germany (London, 1813). The topographical works of Jean Louis Giraud-Soulavie and even Leopold von Buch are comparable in the extreme scarcity or total absence of illustrations. Likewise James Hutton, whose importance as a traveller-naturalist is now in danger of being obscured by recent historical enthusiasm for his natural philosophy, included only seven engraved plates (two re-drawn from de Saussure) to accompany the 1187 pages of text in the published volumes of his Theory of the earth (Edinburgh, 1795; reprinted Weinheim and Codicote, 1959). The same verbosity of text and paucity (or absence) of illustrations characterize most of the early ‘textbooks’ for geology, suggesting that the value of visual communication for didactic purposes was likewise not generally appreciated, even into the early nineteenth century: Examples include Voigt's Johann C. W. Praktische Gebirgskunde (2nd ed., Weimar, 1797), De Luc'sTraité élémentaire de géologie (Paris, 1809), Breislak's Scipio Introduzione alla geologia (Milano, 1811), Bakewell's Robert An introduction to geology (London, 1813), J.-C. de la Métherie's three-volume Leçons de géologie (Paris, 1816) and J. F. d'Aubuisson de Voisins's two-volume Traité de géognosie (Strasbourg, 1819).
15. My Fig. 1 is reproduced from pl. vi of Campi Phlegraei (ref. 12), and Fig. 2 from pl. i of Hamilton William Sir, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and other volcanos: In a series of letters addressed to the Royal Society (London, 1772).
16. Sometimes this disadvantage was reduced by the fact that the engraved plates were bound in a separate volume from the text, so that the reader could have both text and illustrations before him simultaneously: A significant example is the early Transactions of the Geological Society of London, as originally issued. Of course where expense was no object—as in Hamilton's Campi Phlegraei—the plates could be interleaved with the explanatory text at the correct points.
17. Some of the Hebridean plates from Richard Ayton and William Daniell, A voyage round Great Britain undertaken in the year 1813 … (London, 1814–20) were issued separately in 1818 with a cover label which indicates that they were intended to appeal to geologists. An example of a geological mezzotint is the view of the volcanic topography of Auvergne which forms the frontispiece to von Buch Leopold, Geognostische Beobachtungen auf Reisen durch Deutschland und Italien, ii (Berlin, 1809).
18. Senefelder devised the process in 1797 originally for the cheap reproduction of sheet music. For its history, see Ivins, op. cit. (ref. 6), and for example Twyman Michael, Lithography 1800–1850: The techniques of drawing on stone in England and France and their application in works of topography (London, 1970).
19. In the introduction to his Art of drawing on stone (London, 1824), he defended lithographs against the slur of being mere “greasy daubs”, urged their social value in allowing artistic knowledge to be disseminated more widely, and illustrated their scientific value with, for example, a topographical map (pl. 19) that rivals an engraving in its fine detail. He also produced a very fine specimen plate (undated, but probably about 1820) with drawings by Scharf—mostly of fossils, but also one geological cliff view—to demonstrate the value of his ‘lithotint’ process more directly for the geological market.
20. See the estimates submitted in 1822, printed in Woodward H. B., History of the Geological Society of London (London, 1907), 63. Some of the leading members of the Society also took advantage of the Scharf/Hullmandel partnership for their other publications: See for example the drawings of caves in Buckland William, Reliquiae diluvianae (London, 1823).
21. Lyell Charles, Principles of geology (London, 1830–33; reprinted New York and London, 1969). The frontispiece to the first volume—the famous so-called ‘Temple of Serapis’ at Pozzuoli—is reproduced in my article on “The strategy of Lyell's Principles of geology”, Isis, lxi (1970), 4–33; and all three are reproduced in Wilson, op. cit. (ref. 10), Figs 35, 36, 43.
22. Conybeare William Daniel and Phillips William, Outlines of the geology of England and Wales, with an introductory compendium of the general principles of that science, and comparative views of the structure of foreign countries (London, 1822; reprinted Farnborough, 1969).
23. Lyell, op. cit. (ref. 21); De la Beche Henry T., A geological manual (London, 1831) and Sections and views, illustrative of geological phaenomena (London, 1830). The latter book was entirely illustrated with De la Beche's own lithographs, apart from one engraving included where very fine detail was necessary.
24. See Ivins, op. cit. (ref. 6), 97, 107, for the specialization and division of labour within the wood-engraving trade, and for its social impact in making illustrations available to the mass market. In allowing illustrations to be printed on the same page as text, the development of wood engraving was in a sense a return to a much earlier situation in the history of visual communication, when woodcuts, although much cruder, had had the same advantage.
25. De la Beche Henry T., How to observe. Geology (London, 1835); Lyell, op. cit. (ref. 21). A typical sample of wood engravings from Lyell's third volume, illustrating a single restricted topic, is reproduced in my article on “Lyell on Etna, and the antiquity of the earth”, in Schneer Cecil J., (ed.), Toward a history of geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 288–304.
26. The theory-laden and ‘non-natural’ character of geological maps is well expressed by Harrison J. M., “Nature and significance of geological maps”, in Albritton C. C., (ed.), The fabric of geology (Stanford, 1963), 225–32.
27. The geological analogy for this historiographical point is borrowed from Porter Roy, “Charles Lyell and the principles of the history of geology”, British journal for the history of science, ix (1976), 91–103.
28. For a brief introduction for the relevant period, see Skelton R. A., “Cartography”, in A history of technology, ed. Singer C. et al., iv (Oxford, 1958), 596–628. Tooley R. V. and Bricker Charles, A history of cartography. 2500 years of maps and mapmakers (London, 1969), is profusely illustrated with good reproductions, but unfortunately is arranged according to the areas covered by the maps described, and not chronologically.
29. Saussure De, Voyages (ref. 13), ii (1786), frontispiece.
30. Campi Phlegraei (ref. 12), before Pl. 1. The map was coloured to match the style of the other plates, but significantly the meaning of the colours was nowhere explained, and does not seem to be related to the ‘geological’ character of the area.
31. This point is well made by Eyles V. A., “Mineralogical maps as forerunners of modern geological maps”, The cartographic journal, ix (1972), 133–5. More specifically, see also Fuller John G. C. M., “The industrial basis of stratigraphy: John Strachey, 1671–1743, and William Smith, 1769–1839”, Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, liii (1969), 2256–73.
32. For a description of the history of the Atlas and an analysis of the theoretical intentions of its compilers, see Rappaport Rhoda, “The geological atlas of Guettard, Lavoisier and Monnet: Conflicting views of the nature of geology”, in Schneer, op. cit. (ref. 25), 272–87. I am indebted to Dr Rappaport for sending me a photograph of feuille 56 (1770), from which my Fig. 3 is reproduced. For my own study of the Atlas I used the almost complete copy in the Geological Society of London (originally in the collection of its first President, G. B. Greenough).
33. Charpentier Johann Friedrich Wilhelm, Mineralogische Geographie der Chursächsischen Lande (Leipzig, 1778): “Petrographische Karte des Churfürstentums Sachsen und der incorporirten Lande, in welche durch Farben und Zeichen die Gesteinarten … angegeben worden sind” (see detail reproduced here as Fig. 4).
34. See for example the maps in Voigt J. C. W., Mineralogische Beschreibung des Hochstifts Fuld und einiger merkwürdigen Gegenden am Rhein und Mayn (Dessau und Leipzig, 1783), and in Flurl Matthias, Beschreibung der Gebirge von Baiern und der oberen Pfalz (München, 1792). Other German examples are mentioned briefly by Eyles, op. cit. (ref. 31). Guettard's small-scale map of France (1784) was similar: It is reproduced, unfortunately at a very small size, by Rappaport, op. cit. (ref. 32), Fig. 1.
35. Cuvier & Brongniart, “Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris”, Mémoires de l'Institut imperial de France, an 1810 (1811), 1–278, 2 pls and map; reprinted in Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles (Paris, 1812), i. Since the formations were described in their true temporal order of deposition, the corresponding ‘boxes’ in the key to the map are inverted from their true spatial order of superposition; nevertheless, the fact that they are in some real order is a significant change from the purely arbitrary arangement of the ‘boxes’ on e.g., Charpentier's map.
36. A delineation of the strata of England and Wales, with part of Scotland … (London, 1815). Excellent colour facsimiles are now available, both of a representative portion of the 1815 map (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 1975) and of some of Smith's slightly later County maps (British Museum (Natural History), London, 1974). Eyles Joan M., “William Smith (1769–1839): A bibliography of his published writings, maps and geological sections, printed and lithographed”, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, v (1969), 87–109, gives an invaluable guide to this complex subject, and reproduces Smith's treatment of the Isle of Wight in three successive variants of his 1815 map.
37. For a thorough analysis of the mapping activities of Smith and his contemporaries, which avoids the hagiographical tendencies of some earlier work on Smith, see Bush Rachel (Rachel Laudan), “The development of geological mapping in Britain from 1795 to 1825” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1974). Dr Laudan argues that Smith's idiosyncratic convention of colouring was directly related to his—far from ‘modern’—causal theory of the origin of the formations in a series of sediment-bearing ‘floods’: The shaded limits of the formations on Smith's maps would thus indicate their original distribution and dip, only slightly modified by subsequent erosion. In the terms of my article, this interpretation would imply that Smith's maps had cognitive aims that were not merely structural but also causal. In any case, it is noteworthy that Smith's system of shaded colouring was clearly intended to show the areal limit of each formation, rather than its stratigraphical base, for in the keys the shading is often shown on the upper side of each box, and not on the lower side as a more ‘modernist’ interpretation of his intentions would lead one to expect. Smith still used the convention of spot-symbols, but only for features such as collieries. Examples of ‘distributional’ maps that Smith may have known include the frontispiece, a land-use map with colour-washes, to Billingsley's John General view of the agriculture of the county of Somerset (London, 1794), and the ‘mineralogical map’ (reproduced excellently in N. E. Butcher's exhibition catalogue The history and development of geological cartography (Reading, 1967)) to William George Maton's Observations … of the western counties of England (Salisbury, 1797), in which varieties of engraved patterns are used to suggest the chemical relationships of the different rock-types. It is well known that Smith's choice of colours for his maps was based on a somewhat similar concept of ‘realistic’ representation, with each colour approximating to the real colour of the rock concerned. This ‘realism’ was taken to its limit in sections constructed out of the rocks themselves: See Ford Trevor D., “White Watson (1760–1835) and his geological sections”, Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, lxxi (1960), 349–63.
38. Greenough G. B., A geological map of England and Wales (London, 1819), actually not published until 1820. The key had no fewer than thirty-seven ‘boxes’. For his extreme methodological scepticism, see A critical examination of the first principles of geology (London, 1819).
39. Compare for example the small maps in Bakewell Robert, op. cit. (ref. 14), Phillips William, An outline of mineralogy and geology (London, 1815), and Conybeare & Phillips, op. cit. (ref. 22).
40. Webster Thomas, “On the freshwater formations in the Isle of Wight, with some observations on the strata over the Chalk in the southeast part of England”, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, ii (1814), 161–254, pls 9–11; his general map of the London, Hampshire and Paris ‘basins' is reproduced in Wilson (ref. 10), Fig. 14. Webster's full account comprises half of the large volume by Englefield H. C.Sir, A description of the principal picturesque beauties, antiquities, and geological phaenomena, of the Isle of Wight (London, 1816): My Fig. 5 is reproduced from part of pl. 50.
41. MacCulloch John, “A sketch of the mineralogy of Skye”, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, iii (1816), 1–111, pls 1–4: The map is Pl. 1; ConybeareW. D.,(ed.), “On the geological features of the northeastern counties of Ireland”, ibid., 121–222, pls 8–11: The map is pl. 8. The only coloured map in the two earlier volumes did not denote geological but topographical regions: Holland Henry, “A sketch of the natural history of the Cheshire Rock-salt district”, ibid., i (1811), 38–61, pl. 1. After the third volume geological maps became common.
42. Desmarest Nicholas, “Extrait d'un mémoire sur la détermination de quelques époques de la nature par les produits de volcans”, Observations sur la physique, l'histoire naturelle et les arts, xiii (1779), 115–26. See Taylor K. L., “Nicholas Desmarest and geology in the eighteenth century”, in Schneer, op. cit. (ref. 25), 339–56. Desmarest's complete map of Auvergne was published posthumously in 1823.
43. MacCulloch's and Dick Lauder's work on the Glen Roy enigma is analyzed in detail in my “Darwin and Glen Roy: A ‘great failure’ in scientific method?”, Studies in the history and philosophy of science, v (1974), 97–185. Buckland's map (Transactions of the Geological Society of London, v (1821), pl. 37) was republished in his Reliquiae diluvianae (London, 1823), pl. 27. Lyell's map is in Principles of geology, ii (1832), opposite p. 1, and its theoretical intention is analyzed in my article on that work (ref. 21); see also his highly theoretical maps of the world, to illustrate the putative climatic effects of a clustering of continental masses in low and high latitudes, first published in the third edition of the Principles (London, 1834), i, opposite p. 80.
44. What I here term ‘traverse’ and ‘columnar’ sections are more commonly called ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ sections respectively. The latter terms are likely to be confusing for non-geological readers, however, because a ‘horizontal’ section represents a vertical plane, albeit a plane the position of which can be marked on a map as a horizontal line across country. Modern geologists also use a variety of other more abstract forms of section, the conceptual antecedents of which are the ‘theoretical sections' that I mention briefly later in this article.
45. For example, feuille 61 (1769) of the Atlas has almost purely verbal sections of particular quarries; feuille 25 (1766) has more formalized columns of strata, drawn to scale and cross-referenced to the symbols used on the adjacent map, and ranging in specificity from a “coupe d'une carrière” to an “ordre et coupe des bancs des montagnes du Vexin considérées généralement”. Feuille 5 (undated) has a measured columnar section summarising the strata in coal-mines near Valenciennes. See also the sheets of the Paris region, reproduced (though unfortunately at a much reduced scale) as Figs 2 and 3 in Rappaport (ref. 32), and her discussion of the purpose of the sections. The range of sections that I describe is an iconographical, not a chronological spectrum.
46. There are similar profiles, with surface ‘mineralogical’ detail added, on feuilles 42 and 57 (1770). Measured profiles of surface topography were already a well established convention: See for example the one associated with the triangulation for the French meridian traverse of Peru in 1735–45, reproduced in Brown Lloyd A., The story of maps (London, 1949), 262.
47. For example [J.F.C.] Morand, “L'art d'exploiter les mines de charbon de terre”, in Déscription des arts et métiers, ii–iv (Paris, 1768–77): My Fig.10 is reproduced from ii, pl. 2, and is chosen for its relatively clear illustration of strata, although the mining methods shown are exceptionally primitive. See also the plates from the Encyclopédie, reproduced in Gillispie Charles Coulston,(ed.). A Diderot pictorial encyclopedia of trades and industry (New York, 1959), pls 127–134; also the engravings in German-language treatises such as Charpentier, op. cit. (ref. 33).
48. Strachey's sections (1719, 1725) are reproduced for example in Mather Kirtley F. and Mason Shirley L., A source book in geology (New York and London, 1939; reprinted 1964), 54, and by Fuller (ref. 31); those of Lehmann (1756) in Greene John C., The death of Adam: Evolution and its impact on western thought (Ames, Iowa, 1959); 60, and in Adams Frank Dawson, The birth and development of the geological sciences (London, 1938; reprinted New York, 1954), pl. 11. See also the exceptionally fine coloured engravings by Spörer F. H. Trebra F. W. H., Erfahrungen vom Innern der Gebirge (Dessau and Leipzig, 1785), in which evidence from mine-workings is explicitly used to infer structure in geological sections.
49. On industrial secrecy in mining, see Porter Roy, “The industrial revolution and the rise of the science of geology”, in Teich M. and Young R. (eds), Changing perspectives in the history of science (London, 1973), 320–43. There is a small collection of unpublished mine sections in the Geological Society of London (mostly dating from the earliest years of the nineteenth century), which were probably presented in the first flush of enthusiasm for transcending considerations of secrecy by making the Society a ‘Baconian’ repository of mining records in the national interest. I imagine that far larger collections of such materials are preserved at the main Continental mining schools, but I have not had an opportunity to study them.
50. Forster Westgarth, A treatise on a section of the strata, commencing near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and concluding on the west side of the mountain of Cross Fell (Newcastle, 1809), My Fig. 11 is reproduced from De la Beche's Sections and views, op. cit. (ref. 23), pl. 1.
51. Whitehurst John, An inquiry into the original state and formation of the earth; deduced from the facts and the laws of Nature. To which is added an appendix, containing some observations on the strata of Derbyshire (London, 1778). His sections are on pls 3, 4: My Fig. 6 is reproduced from pl. 3, Fig. 4. The earlier ‘cosmogonical’ sections of Steno (1669) are reproduced in Adams, op. cit. (ref. 48), 362, and Greene, op. cit. (ref. 48), 51, and in their original form in Rudwick, op. cit. (ref. 8), 67: Compare with Descartes's section, reproduced in Hölder Helmut, Geologie und Paläontologie in Texten und ihrer Geschichte (Freiburg and München, 1960), 136. Hölder also reproduces two of Kircher's (1664) sections (Taf. 2, 3): Compare with those of Scheuchzer (1731), also in Hölder (Taf. 4); and those of Moro (1740), in Adams, op. cit. (ref. 48), 370–1. See also those of Strachey (1725) and Catcott (1761), reproduced in Davies Gordon L., The earth in decay: A history of British geomorphology, 1578–1878 (London, 1969). pl. 3, 4; and those of Michell (1761), in Adamsop. cit. (ref. 48), 417.
52. His drawings of a normal fault show the same masonry-like style. The analogy between strata and masonry is a natural one to make, in view of the regular bedding and jointing to be seen in many quarries. Dr Roy Porter has pointed out to me that the simile was already a verbal commonplace at this period: For example, “if a person was to see the broken walls of a palace or castle that had been in part demolished …. And in the same manner if a person was to view the naked ends and broken edges of the strata in a mountain … (etc.)”, Catcott Alexander, A treatise on the deluge (London, 1761), 163.
53. Farey John, General view of the agriculture and minerals of Derbyshire, with observations on the means of their improvement, i (London, 1811): See his section through Derbyshire (pl. 5). Ford Trevor D., “The first detailed geological sections across England, by John Farey, 1806–8”, Mercian geologist, ii (1967), 41–49, gives re-drawn versions of the earlier sections, which Farey said he circulated widely in the form of hand-drawn copies. Some of Farey's later sections did show curved strata.
54. Farey. op. cit. (ref. 53), pls 3, 4: My Fig. 22 reproduces a small corner of pl. 4.
55. Smith William, A geological section from London to Snowdon showing the varieties of the strata, and the correct altitude of the hills, coloured to correspond with his geological map of England and Wales (London, 1817). Five further sections were published as separate sheets in 1819: For details, see Eyles, op. cit. (ref. 36). A category of visual products that would deserve more study is the real three-dimensional geological models that were constructed and marketed in the early nineteenth century.
56. For example in his Mineralogische Reisen durch das Herzogthum Weimar und Eisenach und einige angränzende Gegenden, in Briefen (Weimar, 1781–85) and in his Practische Gebirgskunde (ref. 14). A re-drawn version of one of his sections is in Hölder, op. cit. (ref. 51), 40. For a suggestive study of the engineering drawings of this period as a means of structural visual communication, see the original edition of Klingender Francis D., Art and the industrial revolution (London, 1947), ch. 4, “Documentary illustration”.
57. Cuvier and Brongniart, op. cit. (ref. 35): My Fig. 8 is reproduced from part of fig. 4. Their “coupe générale” is fig. 1. I do not mean to imply that these sections were totally original in style, but their relation to earlier German examples and their possible antecedents back towards those in the Atlas minéralogique need further research. Although I do not accept the ‘catastrophist’ historiography of Michel Foucault's Les mots et les choses (Paris, 1966; trns. as The order of things (London, 1970)), his interpretation of Cuvier's biological work, as penetrating the “surface” of the earlier epistemological “grid” in order to reveal “deeper” structures could be supported by an extension to Cuvier's geological work, of which these sections are in my opinion symptomatic.
58. Webster's sections in his 1814 paper (ref. 40) are on pl. 11. There was an uncoloured engraved section in the same style even in the first volume (1811) of the Geological Society's Transactions, illustrating a paper by Arthur Aikin (i, unnumbered pl.), and some simple coloured ones in the same volume as Webster's, illustrating a paper by J. F. Berger (ii, pl. 1). In the third and fourth volumes (1816 and 1817) there were many more, illustrating papers by MacCulloch, Aikin, Buckland, etc. A more detailed study of these illustrations would probably show that I have over-simplified the historical relation between the French and English sections; but I am not concerned here to establish ‘firsts' so much as to suggest how the pattern of standardized practice developed.
59. My Fig. 12 is reproduced from Englefield, op. cit. (ref. 40), pl. 47. A slightly earlier but much less spectacular example, which may have given Webster his model, is Hall James Sir, “On the vertical position and convolutions of certain strata, and their relation to granite”, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vii (1814), 79–108: See pl. 4.
60. My Fig. 23 is reproduced from De la Beche, op. cit. (ref. 23), pl. 5. Conybeare published a fine “Section from the north of Scotland to the Adriatic” with his “Report on the progress, actual state and ulterior prospects of geological science”, Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1st & 2nd meetings 1831–2 (London, 1833), 365–414.
61. De la Beche H. T., Report on the geology of Cornwall, Devon and west Somerset (London, 1839). His emphasis on these dangers of vertical exaggeration was motivated by theoretical concerns: For example, he published a section of the whole earth, with mountains and oceans drawn to true scale, and commented, “how insignificant do our tremendous dislocations, stupendous mountains, and the like become, when we contemplate such a figure as that before us”, and he suggested that “mere thermometrical differences beneath the earth's crust” could account for even the greatest features of its surface (Sections and views (ref. 23), 71 and pl. 40).
62. “Tableau théorique de la succession et de la disposition la plus générale en Europe, des terrains et roches qui composent l‘écorce de la terre …” (Paris, undated), referring to Brongniart Alexandre, Tableau des terrains qui composent l’écorce du globe (Paris, 1829); Buckland William, Geology and mineralogy considered with reference to natural theology (London, 1836), ii, pl. 1, from part of which my Fig. 24 is re-drawn; Lyell Charles, Elements of geology (London, 1838), frontispiece, reproduced in Wilson, op. cit. (ref. 10), Fig. 52. In Brongniart's and Buckland's sections the vertical scale of the strata doubtless reflects primarily what was believed to be the relative average thicknesses of the successive formations; but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it also indicates the authors' conception of the relative time-scale that the generally tranquil deposition of the strata had occupied. If this inference is justified, the relatively small thickness assigned to the Tertiary strata, and the even more insignificant position of the so-called “diluvium”, would confirm the impression gained from verbal documents that a time-scale of humanly unimaginable magnitude was accepted as a matter of course by geologists in the 1830s, and that the supposed “diluvial” event occupied no physically privileged position in earth-history.
63. de Beaumont L. Elie, “Recherches sur quelques-unes des révolutions de la surface du globe …”, Annales des sciences naturelles, xviii (1829), 5–25, 284–416; xix (1830), 5–99, 177–240; also published in book form (Paris, 1830). My Fig. 9 is reproduced from part of pl. 3. The convention of dashed lines was used on this diagram to suggest his more speculative hypothesis that the most recent “révolution”, which he believed had been responsible for the puzzling “diluvial” deposits, had been caused by the elevation of the Andes.
64. Saussure, op. cit. (ref. 13), ii (1786), pl. 5; compare i (1779), pl. 1. The work contains one remarkable iconographical experiment which was not, as far as I know, ever exploited further until modern times: A “vue circulaire” around the Glacier du Buet (i, pl. 8), which can only be compared with a modern panoramic photograph taken with a 180° fish-eye lens; the engraving is reproduced, but not well, in Chorley Richard J. Dunn Anthony J. and Beckinsale Robert P., The history of the study of landforms, or the development of geomorphology, i (London, 1964), 199.
65. In addition to my Fig. 1, examples of fine landscapes from Campi Phlegraei are reproduced in Hölder, op. cit. (ref. 51), Taf. 8, and in Fothergill, op. cit. (ref. 12), 65, 208, 209. The less successful pictures (e.g., pls 9, 33), have not been reproduced.
66. de Saint Fond Fauias. Recherches sur les volcans éteints du Vivarais et du Velay (Grenoble and Paris, 1778): See pls 9, 10, 12. See also for example the set of engravings after drawings by Antonio de Bittio, published (without text) as Basaltic mountains (London, 1807), in which many of the hexagonal columns have been ‘rationalized’ into square cross-sections; also the even later engravings in Scipion Breislak, Atlas géologique ou vues d'amas de colonnes basaltiques (Milan, 1818). My Fig. 14 is reproduced from the plate at p. 263 of Thos Pennant, A tour of Scotland, MDCCLXXII, Part I (London, 1774): Banks's “Account of Staffa” is at pp. 261–9. My Fig. 15 is reproduced from B. Faujas de Saint Fond, Voyages en Angleterre, en Ecosse et aux Iles Hébrides; ayant pour objet les sciences, les arts, l'histoire naturelle et les moeurs … (Paris, 1797). My charge of plagiarism is justified, I think, by a comparison of the incidental features of the two engravings.
67. For example, Fuseli referred to it as “that last branch of uninteresting subjects, that kind of landscape which is entirely occupied with the tame delineation of a given spot”, and Gainsborough declined to paint “real Views from Nature in this Country” (i.e., in England); quoted respectively in Clark Kenneth, “English romantic poets and landscape painting”, Memoirs and proceedings of the Manchester Philosophical Society, lxxxv (1941–43), 103–120, and Hermann Luke, British landscape painting in the eighteenth century (London, 1973), 39–40. Twyman, op. cit. (ref. 18) emphasizes the low esteem in which topography was held by academic artists, and. even argues that “the whole concept of the picturesque is at variance with the needs of topography” (12).
68. These were not mutually exclusive categories, nor were they completely separated from the social world of academic landscape painting. For example Gainsborough was happy to recommend Paul Sandby to his friends who wanted accurate topographical paintings of their country seats (see ref. 67). Sandby first encountered wild mountain scenery while attached as a draughtsman to the Highland survey after the ‘45 rebellion, and from 1768–97 was employed as principal drawing master at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich; and he published successful topographical books, such as The virtuosi's museum, containing select views, in England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1778), which include landscapes. For the tradition of artist-naturalists on voyages see Smith Bernard, op. cit. (ref. 12), ch. 2.
69. My Fig. 16 is reproduced from Ayton and Daniell, op. cit. (ref. 17), ii, plate at p. 47. William Daniell was one of a family of topographical artists, who published many colour-plate books in the early nineteenth century on a variety of remote or exotic places. Some typical coastal views appended to naval charts are reproduced in Howse Derek and Sanderson Michael, The sea chart. A historical survey based on the collections in the National Maritime Museum (Newton Abbot, 1973).
70. My Figs 13, 17 are reproduced from Englefield, op. cit. (ref. 40), pls 46 and 25; similar cliff views are reproduced in Wilson, op. cit. (ref. 10), Figs 12, 15. For an example of a purely antiquarian drawing by Webster, see Englefield, pl. 43: See also the ‘picturesque’ view reproduced in Wilson, Fig. 17. Englefield's and Webster's drawings in this book to some extent suggest, pace Twyman (see ref. 67), that documentary accuracy could be combined successfully with the ‘picturesque’.
71. My Fig. 18 is reproduced from pl. 16 of MacCulloch John, “On the parallel roads of Glen Roy”, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, iv (1817), 314–92, pls 15–22. MacCulloch's drawings should be compared with the much cruder sketches of the same subject by Lauder Thomas Dick, “On the parallel roads of Lochaber”, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, ix (1821), 1–64, pls 1–7; my Fig. 19 is reproduced from pl. 6. For an analysis of their (and later geologists‘) interpretations of these unusual horizontal terraces, see my “Darwin and Glen Roy” (ref. 43). The camera lucida of William Wollaston (who was another early member of the Geological Society of London) was a great improvement on the earlier camera obscura, because it was much less bulky and could be used in poor light. It would be interesting to know how generally it was used by early nineteenth century geologists.
72. See Hamilton, op. cit. (ref. 12), pl. 12, which shows a lava-flow in the 1760 eruption of Vesuvius flowing from a point low on the flank of the volcano and building a minor cone similar to a pre-historic cone nearby: This suggested that the accumulation of the whole volcano, including the minor cones, must have taken an extremely long period of time. My quotation is from Campi Phlegraei, 5.
73. A good early example is Conybeare William D., “Descriptive notes referring to the outline of sections presented by a part of the coasts of Antrim and Derry”, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, iii (1816), 196–216, pls 10–11*. A later example from Buckland's Reliquiae diluvianae (ref. 20) is reproduced in Chorley et al., op. cit. (ref. 64), Fig. 24. The artistic antecedents of these geological cliff views (and other geological landscapes) are reflected in an evident reluctance to intrude any form of verbal labelling on to the drawing: The strata are identified by colours, and the landmarks often by ‘flocks’ of conventional ‘birds’, in both cases identified outside or above the landscape itself (see Fig. 20). The translucent interpretative overlays to the glacial landscapes in Agassiz Louis, Recherches sur les glaciers (Neuchatel, 1840; trans. as Studies on glaciers, ed. Carozzi A. V., 1967) are a later example of the same tendency.
74. See for example Conybeare's 1816 cliff views (ref. 73). The last three (1819) of Smith's six engraved sections (ref. 55) were actually entitled “Section and view” as if to acknowledge their dual character.
75. For example, in the geological view which accompanied Thomas's Richard Survey of the mining district of Cornwall (London, 1819), the foreground is nominally a section in the same style as Smith's sections (which had the same publisher), but all the geological detail was in the landscape. Early examples of ‘pure’ geological landscapes of panoramic form are those illustrating articles by Nugent Nicholas and Weaver Thomas, in Transactions of the Geological Society of London, v (1821), pls 6, 7, 34. As usual the Atlas minéralogique (ref. 32) includes a much earlier precedent, although the landscape there bears only verbal labels indicating the surface distribution of the rocks: See feuille 76 (1769).
76. Scrope George Poulett, Memoir on the geology of central France (London, 1827). My Figs 20 and 21 are reproduced from his pl. 2 and 18 respectively. Part of another panoramic landscape (pl. 14) is reproduced in Wilson, Lyell (ref. 10), fig. 27; the other half in my article on “Poulett Scrope on the volcanoes of Auvergne: Lyellian time and political economy”, British journal for the history of science, vii (1974), 205–42, which analyzes the theoretical meaning of Scrope's text and illustrations. Wilson also reproduces two of Scrope's non-panoramic landscapes (figs 28, 29). The importance of the colour on Scrope's landscapes can be seen by comparing the originals with any of these reproductions or with the uncoloured versions in the second edition of his work, The geology and extinct volcanos of central France (London, 1858).
77. Lyell's illustrations were of the active volcano Etna in Sicily and the extinct volcanos near Olot in Spain (see ref. 21). A later example of his use of a ‘theoretical’ geological landscape is the frontispiece to his Travels in North America (London, 1845), which uses an imaginary aerial viewpoint to demonstrate the long-continued erosion of the Niagara Falls.
78. The major anomaly in this neat chronological scheme is the category of early ‘cosmogonical’ sections. However ‘speculative’ they may have been, these were unquestionably causal in intention, and I have argued that they were an important ‘input’ into the construction of more ‘empirical’ sections in the late eighteenth century. But these causal goals of ‘cosmogony’ were precisely what the dominant ‘structural’ tradition of the early nineteenth century rejected, and such theoretical ambitions were only gradually re-accepted in the 1820s as being respectably ‘scientific’.
79. When I summarized this article for the Lyell Centenary Symposium, my interpretation was vigorously criticized by my friend Professor Dr R. Hooykaas for being too exclusively oriented towards British science and British sources. Being at present resident in his country, and therefore well able to detect provincial tendencies in some English-speaking historians of science, I am sensitive to this criticism, but I hope that the full version of my argument will make it plain that I have at least attempted to give equal weight to French evidence on this subject; I am well aware, however, that my treatment of German primary sources (and, for example, Italian and Scandinavian) is sketchy. My excuse must be that this article is intended primarily to stimulate further research, and not to say the last word on the subject; and I shall be glad if my interpretation can be corrected, for example, by a fuller study of sources relating to the central and northern European mining tradition. On the other hand, I am unrepentant about my emphasis on the crucial social role of the Geological Society of London in the development of the visual language of geology, because I do not think this is merely the result of linguistic or nationalistic short-sightedness. On the contrary, I think it is an unsurprising conclusion that the institution of the first specialist society and first specialist journal in geology should have played a major part in the visual aspect of the cognitive development of the science.