Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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It had long been clear that the British Isles, incomparably
rich though it is in geological variety, has had no active volcanoes
for about 350 million years. Nevertheless, geologists refused on
the face of it to take no for an answer. The itinerant lecturer and
chemist John Warltire (
c.
1725/6-1810) went so far as to observe
that Exeter was built on an extinct volcano, and reported as
much to the Chapter House Philosophical Society in London
in 1785.²6 Further, Thomas Curtis of Bath wrote to Sir Charles
Blagden, the secretary of the Royal Society, with an account of
what seemed to be a new volcano in Flintshire, North Wales.²7 A
generation earlier, a traveller in County Kerry, Ireland, believed
he had discovered a volcano among cliffs by the Shannon estuary,
and wrote to the Bishop of Kenmore to tell him so:
Anonymous,
Exploration
of the Volcano Misti,
near Arequipa, Peru
,
1784, pen, ink and
watercolour on paper.
Near two years ago a piece of one of these Cliffs fell off,
whereupon there broke out a smoak attended with strong
