The following forthcoming publication should be of interest to mining
historians. I'm obliged to Ashgate for supplying the text from their
catalogue in digital form as the book is not yet featured on their website -
http://www.ashgate.com
Many members will be aware of Hugh Torrens work on geological and mining
history, and the book has the potential to fill a gap in our understanding
of the links between advances in science and the practice of mining.
Hopefully a full review will follow when I have had sight of the book,
publication of which is now expected in January 2002.
Peter
The Practice of British Geology, 1750–1850
Hugh Torrens
University of Keele, UK
Ashgate, Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS736
Geology is the most historical of all sciences. Yet its own history remains
neglected, especially the many aspects of how geology was practised in the
past. This volume analyses the careers of some important practical figures
in English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish geology between 1750 and 1850. These
include people who would have regarded themselves more as mining engineers
(or ‘coal viewers’ as they were then called in the vital coal industry) or
‘mineral surveyors’ as today’s mineral prospectors were first called (from
1808), or even inventors. Their expertise, in the land which lead the
industrial revolution, took them all over the world. Those included here
went to Italy, and South (Peru) and North America (Virginia and Canada). The
practice of geology, through the search for mines and minerals, has been
much less attended to by historians than the geology which was undertaken by
leisured amateurs - even though practical geology was as important in the
past as the oil industry is today.
Contents: Introduction; Some thoughts on the complex and forgotten history
of mineral exploration; The British ‘mineral engineer’ John Williams
(1732–1795), his work in Britain from 1749 to 1793 and as a mineral surveyor
in the Veneto and North Italy between 1793 and 1795; Geological
communication in the Bath area in the last half of the 18th century; Le
‘Nouvel Art de Prospection Minière’ de William Smith et le ‘Projet de
Houillère de Brewham’: un essai malencontreux de recherche de charbon dans
le sud-ouest de l’Angleterre, entre 1803 et 1810; Patronage and problems:
banks and the earth sciences; John Farey (1766–1826), an unrecognised
polymath; Coal hunting at Bexhill 1805–1811: how the new science of
stratigraphy was ignored; James Ryan (c.1770–1847) and the problems of
introducing Irish ‘new technology’ to British mines in the early 19th
century; Arthur Aikin’s mineralogical survey of Shropshire 1796–1816 and the
contemporary audience for geological publications; The scientific ancestry
and historiography of The Silurian System; Joseph Harrison Fryer
(1777–1855): geologist and mining engineer in England 1803–1825 and South
America 1826–1828 - a study in ‘failure’; William Edmond Logan’s geological
apprenticeship in Britain 1831–1842; James Buckman (1814–1884), English
consulting geologist and his visit to the Guyandotte coal-fields in 1854; Index.
December 2001 c. 350 pages 0 86078 876 8 c. £57.50
______________________________________________
Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen,
Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 07831 427599
University of Exeter - School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
(Centre for South Western Historical Studies)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
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