Primitive Rocks: Humphry Davy, Mining, and the Sublime Landscapes of Cornwall’

摘要

The newly established Geological Society of London, formed in 1807, set out as a primary purpose its ambition to produce a geological map of Britain. The editors of the first issue of the Society's journal, Transactions of the Geological Society (1811), stated their hope that its members will continue to donate mineral specimens which will lay the foundations of such a map ("Preface" viii). A few years later, in 1814, a similar society was formed in Cornwall which then produced its own journal, Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall (1818), the first issue of which echoed the London version of Transactions, though on a smaller scale: "In the construction of a geological map of Cornwall, the Society has made considerable progress, and the Council trust that from the zealous and united exertion of its members, its completion may be confidently anticipated" ("Preface" viii). At this point the president of the London Society, George Bellas Greenough, was about to publish his Geological Map of England and Wales (1819), the result of a cooperative collaboration between the society's members who sent in rock specimens from various localities throughout much of Britain