Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
that published by William Stukeley (1687-1765) a year earlier.
Strachey imagined
the Mass of the Terraqueous Globe to consist of ... perhaps, of ten
thousand other different Minerals, all originally, whilst in a soft and
fluid State, tending towards the Centre. It must mechanically ...
follow, by the continual Revolution of the crude Mass from West to
East [ ...] like the winding up of a jack, or rolling up the Leaves of a
Paper-Book, that every one of these Strata ... appear to the Day
[Earth's surface, with the] lightest to be uppermost ....
As John Fuller has pointed out, Strachey was the first to use strati-
graphical cross-sections to illustrate the disposition of the geological
structure beneath the surface. Use of this graphic innovation later
became widespread and today is one of the first concepts taught to
undergraduate geological students setting out to map for themselves.
EARLY EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENTS TOWARDS A GLOBAL
STRATIGRAPHIC FRAMEWORK
While most eighteenth-century ideas in stratigraphy such as those of
Ray and Strachey were confined to explanation of local phenonema, a
number of authors expanded local information into a global stratigra-
phy. At this time the rapid rise in geological exploration and localised
mapping was in response to the need for basic raw materials such as iron
ore and coal, particularly at times when various nations were engaged in
hostilities with each other. The German or Prussian states were largely
fragmentary, but under threat at times from France in the west and from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the southeast, which itself was con-
tinually skirmishing with the northeastern Italian states of Venice and
the Veneto. In the Germanic states various mining academies were
active across the country; that at Freiberg, presided over by the eminent
Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817), was perhaps the best known.
This drew students from far beyond the national boundaries, with
English, Scottish, Irish, French and American students known to have
enrolled. Equally in Italy, scientists in institutions and academies
