Scotland
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Extract of a map showing the route taken by the Wernerian Robert Jameson to view the major geological and mineralogical sites of Scotland for his book ‘Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles’ (1800). GSL Library collection. This volume belonged to Greenough which presumably accompanied him on his 1805 tour as his itinerary closely followed this route. |
In 1805, George Bellas Greenough embarked on a geological tour of Scotland and was accompanied for the most part by James Skene (1775-1864), a lawyer and antiquarian who he had met whilst studying in Göttingen. Greenough’s intention was to compare the rival geological concepts of Plutonism and Neptunism advocated by James Hutton (1726-1797) and Abraham Werner (1749-1817) respectively. These concepts, about whether heat or water played the primary part in the formation of rocks, had appeared in recent works by the Scottish geologists James Playfair (1748-1819) and Robert Jameson (1774-1854) which Greenough took with him to observe first hand. Greenough would not be completely convinced by either theory, but was notably to be the first to suggest that the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy were the marks of successive beach levels of an ancient lake.
The first published geological map of Scotland was issued in 1836 under the (posthumous) authorship of John MacCulloch. The fieldwork alone had taken MacCulloch around 15 years to accomplish, but the reception to the map’s publication was rather negative from some quarters. Despite its topographical and geological errors, the map is not thought to have been superseded until the work of the Geological Survey in the 1860s.
SHARPE'S AND GREENOUGH'S MAPS OF SCOTLAND, 1851-1852
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Daniel Sharpe. GSL/POR/53/20 |
On 23 July 1851 a committee headed by George Bellas Greenough was appointed by Council to assess the extent of the Society's Map collection holdings and make suggestions as to their improvement. One of the recommendations was that a new geological map of Scotland should be produced. This map was never intended for publication, instead its formation was specifically for the benefit of the Society’s Fellows.
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Fair draft of the Sharpe and Greenough map of Scotland, [1852]. Greenough collection, ref: LDGSL/947/6/C/5. |
Geological Map of Scotland, solely attributed to Daniel Sharpe (1852). Archive ref: LDGSL/702. |