Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
America to this theory (http://www.acnatsci.org/museum/jefferson/otherPages/
degeneracy-01.html).
Jeff Loveland's essay on the three English translations of Buffon is given in
'Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon's Histoire naturelle in English, 1775-1815',
Archives of Natural History 31, part 2 (2004), 214-235.
A wonderful account of the long journey from Africa of the first giraffe to set
foot in Paris was published as Zarafa by Michael Allin (London: Headline Book
Publishing, 1998).
Chapter 8. Stratigraphical laws, uniformitarianism and
the development of the geological column
The late John C. Thackray has provided a wonderful first-hand account of the early
geological debates in the chambers of the Geological Society: 'To see the Fellows
fight', British Society for the History of Science Monographs 12 (2003). The quote
from Agassiz following the presentation of glacial observations in November 1840
is taken from a letter addressed to Sir Phillip Egerton reproduced on page 101.
An exhaustive list of the foundation dates of Geological Surveys is given in
David R. Oldroyd, Thinking About the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 124-127.
For further information on William Smith see the account of his life by his
nephew John Phillips. This was first published in 1844 but has recently been
reprinted as Memoirs of William Smith, LL.D. (Bath Royal Literary and Scientific
Institution, 2003) and contains an introduction to the life and times of the subject
by Hugh Torrens together with a reprinting of his essay that first appeared as
'Timeless order: William Smith (1769-1839) and the search for raw materials
1800-1820', in Lewis and Knell, The Age of the Earth (2001), pp. 61-83. A short
chronology of significant dates in Smith's life was compiled by Joan M. Eyles,
Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, number 1657 (1969), 173-176.
Recently small-scale facsimiles of his 1815 and 1820 maps have been made avail-
able by the British Geological Survey. Smith's cross-sections of 1819 were repro-
duced in 1995 in poster form by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists
and the Geological Society of London together with an explanatory booklet by John
G. C. M. Fuller, ''Strata Smith'' and his Stratigraphic Cross Sections, 1819.
Joe Burchfield's paper together with others on Charles Lyell appeared in
D. J. Blundell and A. C. Scott (eds.), Lyell: The Past is the Key to the Future
(Geological Society Special Publication 143, 1998). The most useful biographical
treatment of Lyell's early life is that by Leonard Wilson, Charles Lyell: The Years to
1841 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1972); a now somewhat dated
