Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
a book later that year: Life on the Earth: Its Origin and Succession (Cambridge &
London: Macmillan, 1860). The leading authority on the geological work of John
Phillips is Jack Morrell and a number of his publications have been recently repub-
lished in the collection John Phillips and the Business of Victorian science
(Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2005). Of most interest to this topic is his 2001
paper 'Genesis and geochronology: the case of John Phillip (1800-1874)', in Lewis
and Knell, The Age of the Earth (2001), pp. 85-90.
A great deal has been written about Darwin's work in geology. Sandra Herbert,
the foremost authority, has recently published a book on the topic: Charles Darwin,
Geologist (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). However, Darwin's geological
activities were first discussed by Archibald Geikie in his Rede Lecture of 1909;
more recent papers, some of which also discuss his 1831 fieldwork, include those
by Paul H. Barrett, 'The Sedgwick-Darwin geological tour of North Wales',
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118 (1974), 146-164; Sandra
Herbert, 'Darwin as a geologist', Scientific American 254, number 5 (1986), 94-101;
Michael B. Roberts, 'I coloured a map: Darwin's attempts at geological mapping in
1831', Archives of Natural History 27, number 1 (2000), 69-79; Peter Lucas, ' ''A most
glorious country'': Charles Darwin and North Wales, especially his 1831 geological
tour', Archives of Natural History 27, number 1 (2002), 1-26; Sandra Herbert and
Michael B. Roberts, 'Charles Darwin's notes on his 1831 geological map of
Shrewsbury', Archives of Natural History 29, number 1 (2002), 27-30; Sandra
Herbert, 'Doing and knowing: Charles Darwin and other travellers', in Wyse
Jackson, Geological Travellers (2006); and Paul N. Pearson and Christopher J.
Nicholas, ' ''Marks of Extreme Violence'': Charles Darwin's geological observations
on St Jago (S ˜ o Tiago), Cape Verde Islands', in Wyse Jackson (2006), ibid.
Samuel Haughton's calculations were published in Manual of Geology, 3rd
edn (London: Longman, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1871) and in S. Haughton,
'A geological proof that changes in climate in past times were not due to changes
in position of the Pole; with an attempt to assign a minor limit to the duration of
geological time', Nature 18 (1878), 266-268. The quotation from Arthur Holmes
reworking Haughton's principle is from his paper 'The construction of a geological
time-scale', Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow 21 (1947), 117-152.
The most influential papers originating from the United States on the sub-
ject of sediment accumulation and the age of the Earth were Charles Doolittle
Walcott, 'Geologic time, as indicated by the sedimentary rocks of North
America', Journal of Geology 1 (1893), 639-676; and Joseph Barrell, 'Rhythms and
the measurements of geologic time', Geological Society of America Bulletin 28
(1917), 745-904. Many of the American contributions are discussed in detail by Ellis
L. Yochelson and Cherry Lewis: 'The age of the Earth in the United States
