Darkness Visible: Underground Culture in the Golden Age of Geology

Forbes Edward , “Review of Transactions of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists”, Athenaeum, no. 876 (1844), 727. Two studies that consider the roles proposed for science are Foote George , “Science and its functions in early nineteenth-century England”, Osiris, ix (1954), 438–54, and Cannon S. F. , Science in culture: The early Victorian period (New York, 1978), especially chap. 1.

See Porter R. S. , The making of geology: Earth sciences in Britain 1660–1815 (Cambridge, 1977), 140. Scientists fared badly from the Civil List: See Macleod R. M. , “Science and the civil list, 1824–1914”, Technology and society, vi (1970), 47–55 and Colp Ralph Jr , ‘“I will gladly do my best’: How Charles Darwin obtained a civil list pension for Alfred Russel Wallace”, Isis, lxxxiii (1992), 3–26. On Mary Anning's trade in fossils, see Barber Lynn , The heyday of natural history 1820–1870 (London, 1980), 127. “Science in England does everything”, wrote a frustrated Huxley T. H. in 1852, “but pay. You may earn praise but not pudding” (Leonard Huxley, Life and letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (2 vols, London, 1900), i, 100).

Porter , Making of geology (ref. 2), 131, and idem, “The industrial revolution and the rise of the science of geology”, in Changing perspectives in the history of science: Essays in honour of Joseph Needham, ed. by Teich M. and Young R. M. (London, 1973), 320–43.

The literature on ‘genesis and geology’ is immense, but an indication that no easy relationship existed between geology and Christian beliefs can be gained by comparing the evidence provided in Millhauser Milton , “The Scriptural geologists: An episode in the history of opinion”, Osiris, xi (1954), 65–86, and Gillispie C. C. , Genesis and geology: A study of the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (New York, 1959), 98–120.

Berman Morris , “‘Hegemony’ and the amateur tradition in British science”, Journal of social history, viii (1975), 30–50, p. 36.

See, for example, William Blake's comments in 1823 on the “things we artists hate!”, the gentlemen of science with their “good bottle of wine, and other philosophical instruments”, in Todd R. , Tracks in the snow: Studies in English science and art (London, 1946), 11–12; Mantell Gideon , The medals of creation; or, first lessons in geology, and the study of organic remains (2 vols, London, 1854), i, 1–2; and the testimony of Hugh Miller in Smiles Samuel , Robert Dick, baker, of Thurso, geologist and botanist (London, 1878), 105.

Charles Darwin to Fox W. D. , in The correspondence of Charles Darwin, i: 1821–1836 (Cambridge, 1985), 460; Secord J. A. , Controversy in Victorian geology: The Cambrian-Silurian dispute (Princeton, 1986), 20. Murchison believed that in the 1820s, “a great work could be done by a man with a quick eye, a good judgement, a clear notion of what had already been accomplished, and a stout pair of legs” ( Geikie Archibald , The life of Sir Roderick I. Murchison, based on his journals and letters with notices of his scientific contemporaries and a sketch of the rise and growth of palaeozoic geology in Britain (2 vols, London, 1875), i, 96).

Parkinson James , Organic remains of a former world: An examination of the mineralized remains of the vegetables and animals of the antediluvian world; generally termed extraneous fossils (2 vols, London, 1804–8), i, 1–2, 8. See also Mantell Gideon , A pictorial atlas of fossil remains, consisting of coloured illustrations selected from Parkinson's “Organic remains of a former world”, and Artist's “Antediluvian phytology” (London, 1850), 14–15 (Parkinson); Basalla G. Coleman W. and Kargon R. H. (eds), Victorian science (New York, 1970), 18 (Kingsley); Clark J. W. and Hughes T. M. , The life and letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (2 vols, Cambridge, 1890), i, 153 (Sedgwick).

See Porter , Making of geology (ref. 2), 141–2 (travel). Mantell saw very vividly the attraction of geology to such power-hungry men as Lyell and Murchison who tried to develop monopolies over territory (see S. Spokes, Gideon Algernon Mantell, ll.d., f.r.c.s., f.r.s., surgeon and geologist (London, 1927), 194, 221). On Murchison's territorial ambitions, see Secord James A. , “King of Siluria: Roderick Murchison and the imperial theme in nineteenth-century British geology”, Victorian studies, xxv (1982), 413–42; and Stafford Robert A. , Scientist of empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, scientific exploration and Victorian imperialism (Cambridge, 1989).

Waterston Charles D. , Hugh Miller: The Cromarty stonemason (Edinburgh, 1966), unpaginated, 17 (relief from tension).

Veninga James F. , The biographer's gift: Life histories and humanism (College Station, Texas, 1983), 13; Gittings Robert , The nature of biography (Seattle, 1978), 37–38; Garraty John A. , The nature of biography (New York, 1957), 107.

On this, see Cockshut A. O. J. , “Foreword”, Modernizing lives: Experiments in English biography, ed. by Hoberman Ruth (Carbondale, 1987), pp. ix-xiv; and Cox James M. , “Review of David Novars, The lines of life”, Biography, x (1987), 370–2.

Cantor Geoffrey , Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and scientist (London, 1991); Desmond Adrian and Moore James , Darwin (London, 1991); Bowlby John , Charles Darwin: A new biography (London, 1990); Geikie , Murchison (ref. 7); Clark and Hughes , Sedgwick (ref. 8); Wilson George and Geikie Archibald , Memoir of Edward Forbes, f.r.s. (Cambridge, 1861). Particularly interesting comments on the intendent difficulties of composing a scientific biography appear from the biographer of Newton: Westfall Richard S. , “Newton and his biographer”, Introspection in biography: The biographer's quest for self-analysis, ed. by Baron Samuel H. and Pletsch Carl (Hillside, N.J., 1985).

McCartney P. J. , Henry De la Beche: Observations on an observer (Cardiff, 1977), 6.

Geikie Archibald , A long life's work: An autobiography (London, 1924), 16.

Boylan P. J. , “Dean William Buckland, 1784–1856: A pioneer in cave science”, Studies in speleology, i (1967), 237–53, p. 237; Allen David Ellison , The naturalist in Britain: A social history (Harmondsworth, 1978), 63.

Williams Rosalind , Notes on the underground: An essay on technology, society, and the imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). This book, when I first read it in 1990, I found to be maddeningly full of imprecisions and hesitancies; another reading two years later revealed its merits (and, once again, the importance of coming upon a work at the right moment). It has been a considerable stimulus to the present study.

Lockhart J. G. , Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott (5 vols, London, 1900), ii, 429.

O'Brien P. , Joseph Banks: A life (London, 1987), 164.

Banks Joseph , “Account of Staffa”, in Pennant T. , A tour in Scotland, and voyage to the Hebrides (Chester, 1774), 261–9; see Carter H. B. , Sir Joseph Banks 1743–1820 (London, 1988), 107–8, 119–24.

Virgil , Aeneid, trans. by Knight W. F. J. (Harmondsworth, 1956), 144 [VI, 44]; see Marrett R. R. , “Cave-worship”, The Hibbert journal, xxxviii (1940), 296–306, and Miller N. , Heavenly caves: Reflections on the garden grotto (London, 1982).

I should specify natural caves, to distinguish the phenomenon I describe from the earlier, and not unrelated, eighteenth-century fascination with garden grottoes, on which see: Aubin R. A. , “Grottoes, geology, and the Gothic Revival”, Studies in philology, xxxi (1934), 408–16; Bracher F. , “Pope's Grotto: The maze of fancy”, The Huntingdon Library quarterly, xii (1948), 141–62; and Brownwell M. R. , Alexander Pope and the arts of Georgian England (Oxford, 1978), 254–71.

The old Gaelic name of the cave is Uaimh binn, or “Cave of Music”; see Geikie A. , “Caverns and their contents”, Good words and Sunday magazine, ix (1868), 62; MacCulloch D. , The wondrous isle of Staffa (Glasgow, 1934), 87–96.

Banks, “Account of Staffa” (ref. 20), 262.

Johnson Samuel and Boswell James , Johnson's journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell's journal of a tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, ll.d., ed. by Chapman R. W. (London, 1974), 128–9, 384.

See MacCulloch , Wondrous isle (ref. 23); Maclean John Patterson , Historical examination of Fingal's Cave (Cincinnati, 1890).

The first geologist to set foot on Staffa and describe Fingal's Cave was de Saint Fond B. Faujas , whose account appeared in Voyage en Angleterre, en Ecosse et aux Iles Hébrides (1797), which appeared in English in an abridged version in 1814. MacCulloch published a sketch, “On Staffa”, in 1814 in Transactions of the Geological Society, ii (1814), 501–9. His full account appears in his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, including the Isle of Man: Comprising an account of their geological structure; with remarks on their agriculture, scenery and antiquities (3 vols, London, 1819), ii, 1–22, p. 15, and with emendations in his Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland … in six letters to Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (4 vols, London, 1824).

MacCulloch , “On Staffa” (ref. 27), 502. MacCulloch undertook the first major geological study of the rocks of northwest Scotland; for details, see Cumming David A. , “Geological maps in preparation: John Macculloch on the Western Isles”, Archives of natural history, x (1981), 255–71; idem, “John Macculloch: Blackguard, thief and high priest”, in From Linnaeus to Darwin: Commentaries on the history of biology and geology, ed. by Wheeler A. and Price J. H. (London, 1985), 77–88; and Flinn Derek , “John Macculloch, m.d., f.r.s., and his geological map of Scotland: His years in the Ordnance”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxxvi (1981), 83–101.

Wilson L. G. , Charles Lyell, the years to 1841: The revolution in geology (New Haven, 1972), 53–54.

Hurd M. , Mendelssohn (London, 1970), 44; Jacob H. E. , Felix Mendelssohn and his times (London, 1963), 199–200.

Finberg A. J. , The life of J. M. W. Turner, r.a. (Oxford, 1961), 332–3.

Reynolds G. , Turner (London, 1980), 153.

See de Saint Fond B. Faujas , A journey through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, ed. by Geikie Archibald (2 vols, Glasgow, 1907), ii, 45 (on Pennant) and frontispiece for the image of Fingal's Cave. In his pioneering study of “The emergence of a visual language for geological science 1760–1840” (History of science, xiv (1976), 149–95), Martin Rudwick suggests that Faujas de Saint Fond's distorted image results from the demands of the ‘neoclassical’ style; later portrayals of Staffa reflect the development of geological and topographical conventions.

Whitehouse F. Cope , Is Fingal's Cave artificial? (New York, 1882) and “Is Fingal's Cave artificial?”, Popular science monthly, xxii (1882), 231–40. Whitehouse's suggestion was quickly buried in the pages of Nature (“The thirst for renown”, Nature, xxvii (1883), 285–7).

Ayton Richard and Daniell William , A voyage round Great Britain undertaken between the years 1813 and 1823 and commencing from the Land's End, Cornwall (8 vols bound in 2, London 1814–25; repr. 1978), iii, 37–40. See also Daniell William , Interesting selections from animated nature, with illustrative scenery (2 vols, London, [1807]), i, pi. 47 and facing text.

Picquemot E. , Vues pittoresques de l'Ile de Staffa et de la Grotte de Fingal aux Iles Hebrides (Paris, 1816); Hitchcock Edward , Elementary geology (Amherst, 1840), 71–72; see also MacCulloch , Wondrous isle (ref. 23).

See Timpanaro Sebastiano , The Freudian slip: Psychoanalysis and textual criticism, transl. by Kate Soper (London, 1976), esp. pp. 30–40. For some graphic examples of misrepresentation in the depiction of Staffa and Fingal's Cave, see Whitehouse F. Cope , “The Caves of Staffa”, Notes and queries, 6th ser., viii (1883), 493.

Herrmann L. , Turner prints: The engraved work of J. M. W. Turner (New York, 1990), 200; see also Finley G. , Lanscapes of memory: Turner as illustrator to Scott (London, 1980) and Holcomb A. M. , “Turner and Scott”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxiv (1971), 386–97.

Scott Walter , The poetical works (Paris, 1838), 353 [IV, 10]; see Omer M. , Turner and the poets (London, 1975).

The lines “Nor of a theme … an answer draws” were added to Turner's “Staffa: Fingal's Cave”; see Omer, Turner (ref. 39).

[Thomas West], A guide to the lakes in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, 3rd edn (London, 1784), 236.

See King-Hele Desmond , Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic poets (London, 1986), 113–14; Hassler Donald M. , “New diggings in old mines: Erasmus Darwin and romantic views on evolution”, Wordsworth circle, xv (1984), 26–28.

That tours to continental Europe also took in caves is indicated by the frequency of their appearance in Richard Chandler's Travels in Asia Minor and Travels in Greece, reprinted several times through the early decades of the nineteenth century.

Botting Douglas , Humboldt and the cosmos (London, 1973), 19.

This example is taken from Dean D. R. , “Geology and English literature: Crosscurrents, 1770–1830” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1968), 36–37.

Altick R. D. , The shows of London (Cambridge, 1978), 141–62.

McCormick J. , Dion Boucicault (Cambridge, 1987), 33–35; Fawkes R. , Dion Boucicault: A biography (London, 1979), 121–8; for illustration, see Evans H. Evans M. , The Victorians at home and at work (Newton Abbot, 1973), 67.

Preyer Robert O. , “The Romantic tide at Trinity: Notes on the transmission and diffusion of new approaches to traditional studies at Cambridge, 1820–1840”, in Victorian science and Victorian values: Literary perspectives, ed. by Paradis James and Postlewait Thomas (New Brunswick, 1985), 39–68, p. 52. According to his friend Adam Sedgwick, Wordsworth “uttered a poetic ban against my brethren of the hammer”. See Clark and Hughes , Adam Sedgwick (ref. 8), i, 247; Geikie , Long life's work (ref. 15). The Romantics' interest in mountains has attracted some attention in the following studies: Paul de Man, “Intentional structure of the Romantic image”, in Romanticism and consciousness, ed. by Bloom Harold (New York, 1970), 72–77; Randel Fred V. , “The mountaintops of English Romanticism”, Texas studies in literature and language, xxiii (1981), 294–323; Robertson David , “Mid-Victorians amongst the Alps”, in Nature and the Victorian imagination, ed. by Knoepflmacher U. C. and Tennyson G. B. (Berkeley, 1977), 113–36; Randel Fred V. , “Frankenstein, feminism, and the intertextuality of mountains”, Studies in romanticism, xxiii (1985), 515–32; and Nicolson Marjorie Hope , Mountain gloom and mountain glory: The development of the aesthetics of the infinite (Ithaca, 1959), 371–93.

Ansted D. T. , “Caves and their contents”, Popular science review, i (1862), 135–44, 450–60, p. 460; Art Palmer cited in Christine Gorman, “Subterranean secrets”, Time, 30 November 1992, 64–67, p. 67.

Dean , “Geology and English literature” (ref. 45), 53–54.

Donald Fleming has shown that it is the most common piece of aesthetic terminology used by Charles Darwin to describe the untamed landscapes he encountered during his Beagle voyage; see “Charles Darwin: The anaesthetic man”, Victorian studies, iv (1961), 219–36. On Darwin and the Romantics (particularly Wordsworth), see Manier Edward , The young Darwin and his cultural circle (Boston, 1978), esp. pp. 89–96; and James Paradis's stimulating essay, “Darwin and landscape”, in Paradis and Postlewait (eds), Victorian science (ref. 48), 85–110, which suggests a powerful shaping influence from Romanticism both on Darwin's sense of natural beauty and on his theories of nature. The influence, such as it is, has not to my knowledge been subsequently examined in any detail.

Lockhart , Memoirs (ref. 18).

Ibid., ii, 407, 148, 437; see Dean , “Geology and English literature” (ref. 45), 59–60.

Weinberg F. M. , The Cave: The evolution of a metaphoric field from Homer to Ariosto (New York, 1986); Malcolm J. , “The Cave revisited”, Classical quarterly, xxxi (1981), 60–68. On animate nature, particularly mountains and caves, see Barbara Maria Stafford, “Rude sublime: The taste for nature's colossi during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries”, Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser., lxxxvii (1974), 113–26.

Williams , Notes on the underground (ref. 17), 23. For treatments of the cave during earlier ages, see Mourlot E. , “‘Artifice naturelle’ ou ‘nature artificielle’: Les grottes medicéenes dans la Florence du XVIe siècle”, in Ville et campagne dans la littérature italienne de la Renaissance, II: Le courtisan travesti (Paris, 1977), 303–42; and Evett D. , “Mammon's grotto: Sixteenth-century visual grotesquerie and some features of Spenser's Faerie Queene”, English literary renaissance, xii (1982), 180–209.

Sigmund Freud would a century later take up the same range of geological, and especially archaeological, analogies to speak of the unconscious, referring to the psychoanalyst as uncovering “layer after layer of the patient's psyche”. On this, see Gay Peter , Freud: A life for our time (London, 1988), 171 and, for some interesting perspectives, Bernfeld S. C. , “Freud and archaeology”, American imago, viii (1951), 107–28 and Schorske C. E. , Finde-siècle Vienna: Politics and culture (New York, 1980), 181–207. See also Dean , Geology and English literature (ref. 45), 42–43, 184–90.

Dean , Geology and English literature (ref. 45), 44.

Coleridge S. T. , Poems, ed. by Coleridge E. H. (Oxford, 1935), 444.

Edward Forbes, “Introductory lecture delivered at the opening of the Natural History Class in the University of Edinburgh, on Wednesday, 1st November 1854”, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, n.s., i (1855), 145–57, p. 152. The need to travel in the field is the burden of Forbes's lecture.

Dean , “Geology and English literature” (ref. 45), 42–43.

Buckland William , “Account of assemblage of fossil teeth and bones of elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bear, tiger, and hyaena, and sixteen other animals; discovered in a cave at Kirkdale, Yorkshire, in the year 1821: With a comparative view of five similar caverns in various parts of England, and others on the continent”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, cxii (1822), 171–236, p. 176.

Anon., “Peak Cavern”, The penny magazine, iii (1834), 148–49, p. 148.

Westall William , Great Britain illustrated: A series of original views … with descriptions by Thomas Moule (London, 1830), 46.

MacCulloch , Wondrous isle (ref. 23), 111–33.

For a classic Romantic piece of travel literature, see West , Guide (ref. 41), which, like Wordsworth's Guide to the lakes (various formats, 1820–35), offered tourists preparing to travel to the district the opportunity to see the landscape through paintings, composed or about to be composed. “The delicate touches of Claude, verified on Coniston Lake … the noble scenes of Poussin, exhibited on Windemere water … the stupendous romantic ideas of Salvator Rosa, realized in the Lake of Derwent“(see Byatt A. S. , Unruly times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their time (London, 1989), 254). Samuel Butler offers a vigorous satire on the European traveller who, like Mr Pontifex, makes “up his mind to admire only what he thought would be credible in him to admire, to look at nature and art only through the spectacles that had been handed down to him by generation after generation of prigs and impostors” (The way of all flesh (Harmondsworth, 1979), 45).

It is difficult to establish any association of Fingal's Cave with the tale presented with great success to the public by James Macpherson in Fingal, an ancient epic poem (1762) in the guise of a poem “composed by Ossian the Son of Fingal”. Few post-Banksian writers connected Macpherson's epic, whose famous ruined landscapes do not refer to caves, to Staffa. As to Macpherson himself, although he toured the Hebrides before composing his poem, he never set foot on Staffa or in Fingal's Cave (see Stafford Fiona J. , The sublime savage: A study of James Macpherson and the poems of Ossian (Edinburgh, 1988), 147 (on landscape) and 116–23 (on travels)). deGategno Paul J. , James Macpherson (1989) and Haywood Ian , The making of history: A study of the literary forgeries of James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton in relation to eighteenth-century ideas of history and fiction (Cranbury, N.J., 1986) are suggestive in their efforts to link Fingal to notions of history, landscape and the “ruin sentiment” prevalent in the mid-eighteenth century. It is possible (as Faujas de Saint Fond suggests) that the Celtic terms for “Cave of Music” (rendered as “an-ua-vine”) and “Fingal” (‘Fion’) are close enough to have been thought connected; see Journey through England (ref. 30), ii, 49–50.

Williams Raymond , The city and the country (St Albans, 1975), 160.

See Byatt , Unruly times (ref. 65), 261.

Anderson Benedict , Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, 1983).

See Rose Gillian , “Geography as a science of observation: The landscape, the gaze and masculinity” and other essays in Nature and science: Essays in the history of geographical knowledge, ed. by Driver Felix and Rose Gillian (Cheltenham, 1992), 8–18, and Cosgrove D. , “Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, x (1985), 45–62. Pugh Simon (ed.), Reading landscape: Country - city - capital (Manchester, 1990).

Williams , The city (ref. 67); Barrell John , The idea of landscape and the sense of place 1730–1840: An approach to the poetry of John Clare (Cambridge, 1972); Turner J. , The politics of landscape: Rural scenery and society in English poetry 1630–1660 (Oxford, 1979).

Clark Kenneth , Landscape into art (Harmondsworth, 1956).

Berger John , Ways of seeing (London, 1972); Solkin D. H. , Richard Wilson: The landscape of reaction (London, 1982); Barrell John , The political theory of painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt — the body of the public (New Haven, 1986).

Dean , Geology and English literature (ref. 45) and Tennyson and geology (Lincoln, 1985); Levere T. H. , Poetry realized in nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and early nineteenth-century science (Cambridge, 1981); Ospovat A. M. , “Romanticism and German geology: Five students of Abraham Gottlieb Werner”, Eighteenth-century life, vii (1982), 105–17. Rupke Nicolaas , “Romanticism in the Netherlands”, in Porter R. and Teich M. (eds), Romanticism in national context (Cambridge, 1988), 191–216. See also idem, “The study of fossils in the Romantic philosophy of history and nature”, History of science, xxi (1983), 389–413; “The apocalyptic denominator in English culture of the early nineteenth-century”, in Common denominators in art and science, ed. by Pollock M. (Aberdeen, 1983), 30–45; and “Caves, fossils and the history of the Earth”, in Romanticism and the sciences, ed. by Cunningham A. and Jardine N. (Cambridge, 1990), 241–59.

Porter and Teich (eds), Romanticism (ref. 74); Furst L. R. , Romanticism in perspective (London, 1969).

Lovejoy A. O. , Essays in the history of ideas (Baltimore, 1948), 232.

von Engelhardt Dietrich , “Romanticism in Germany” and Marilyn Butler, “Romanticism in England”, in Porter and Teich (eds), Romanticism (ref. 74), 109–33, 37–67.

Furst L. R. , The contours of European romanticism (Basingstoke, 1979), 8–9. A study that presents and investigates the definitional problem (which, of course, concerns the scope of Romanticism and hence its filiations to science) is Eichner Hans , “The rise of modern science and the genesis of Romanticism”, PMLA, xcvii (1982), 8–30, which develops a paper by Morse Peckham with broadly similar objectives: “Toward a theory of Romanticism”, PMLA, lxvi (1951), 5–23.

Snelders H. A. M. , “Romanticism and Naturphilosophie and the inorganic natural sciences 1797–1840: An introductory survey”, Studies in romanticism, ix (1970), 193–215, p. 194. It is worth noting that the full-length study by Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch conspicuously fails to deal with earth sciences (Natural science in German Romanticism (New York, 1941)).

Cannon Walter F. , “History in depth: The early Victorian period”, History of science, iii (1964), 20–38, p. 23; Preyer Robert O. , “The romantic tide reaches Trinity” (ref. 48), 52.

See, for example, the survey articles by Williams L. Pearce , “The physical sciences in the first half of the nineteenth century: Problems and sources”, History of science, i (1962), 1–15, and Mendelsohn Everett , “The biological sciences in the nineteenth century: Some problems and sources”, History of science, iii (1964), 39–59. Rhoda Rappaport's article, a survey of geology, which follows the format of its two predecessors, conspicuously fails to mention either Romanticism or Naturphilosophie: “Problems and sources in the history of geology, 1749–1810”, History of science, iii (1964), 60–77.

See Mullen Pierce C. , “The Romantic as scientist: Lorenz Oken”, Studies in romanticism, xvi (1977), 381–99.

Knight David , “The scientist as sage”, Studies in romanticism, vi (1967), 65–88, p. 82 (my emphasis); “Romanticism and the sciences”, in Cunningham and Jardine (eds), Romanticism (ref. 74), 13–24, p. 20. For a variant reading, see Levere Trevor H. , “Coleridge, chemistry, and the philosophy of nature”, Studies in romanticism, xvi (1977), 349–79 and idem, Poetry realized in nature (ref. 74), esp. pp. 36–39.

See Orsini G. N. , “Coleridge and Schlegel reconsidered”, Comparative literature, xvi (1964), 97–118. Shaffer E. S. , in “Coleridge and natural philosophy: A review of recent literature and historical research” (History of science, xii (1974), 282–98), provides an excellent and balanced survey.

Wellek René , “German and English Romanticism: A confrontation”, Studies in romanticism, iv (1965), 35–56, pp. 39–40. Desmond Adrian , Archetypes and ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850–1875 (London, 1982), 42. See Knight D. M. , “German science in the Romantic period”, in The emergence of science in western Europe, ed. by Crosland Maurice (London, 1975), 161–78, p. 170.

Fisch Menachem and Schaffer Simon (eds), William Whewell: A composite portrait (Oxford, 1991), p. xi.

Orwell George , The road to Wigan pier (London, 1965), 34.

Mumford Lewis , Technics and civilisation (London, 1934), 70.

See, for examples, Hughes M. , “Mr Pope on his grotto”, Modern philology, xxviii (1930), 100–4; Praz Mario , The hero in eclipse in Victorian fiction (London, 1969), 109; Parkinson John , Outlines of oryctology: An introduction to the study of organic remains; especially those found in the British strata: Intended to aid the student in his enquiries respecting the nature of fossils, and their connection with the formation of the earth (London, 1822), 326.

Wordsworth William , The poems, ed. by Hayden John O. (2 vols, Harmondsworth, 1977), ii, 762. On the ‘profanation’ by tourists of Staffa, see Geikie Archibald , Scottish reminiscences (Glasgow, 1904), 246–7.

McLaughlin T. , Coprophilia, or, a peck of dirt (London, 1971), 152; Engels F. , The condition of the working-class in England, in Marx K. and Engels F. , Collected works, iv (London, 1975), 366; see also Pyne William Henry , Picturesque groups for the embellishment of landscape (2 vols, 1845; repr. New York, 1961), i, 164.

Lindsay W. L. , Minds in the lower animals in health and disease (2 vols, London, 1879), i, 444.

Willey Basil , Nineteenth-century studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold (Cambridge, 1980), 12.

Wlecke A. , Wordsworth and the sublime (Berkeley, 1973), 77–79.

See on this Weiskel T. , The Romantic sublime: Studies in the structure and psychology of transcendence (Baltimore, 1976), 26–32.

Brennan M. , Wordsworth, Turner and Romantic landscape: A study of the traditions of the picturesque and the sublime (Columbia, 1987), 23.

Wordsworth William , The prelude, ed. by Maxwell J. C. (Harmondsworth, 1971), 473 [XII, 120]; see also p. 295 [VII, 766]. Barrell , The idea of landscape (ref. 71), 182. An interesting, if somewhat tendentious, study of the Platonism of Shelley is that by Notopoulos J. A. , The Platonism of Shelley (Durham, N.C., 1949), a topic treated more equitably by Neville Rogers in his Shelley at work (Oxford, 1956).

Wordsworth , The prelude (ref. 97), 90 [II, 336].

Ibid., 492–3 [XIII, 64–72].

Brennan , Wordsworth (ref. 96), 69.

Butler Marilyn , Romantics, rebels and revolutionaries: English literature and its background 1760–1830 (Oxford, 1981).

Bodey H. , Mining (London, 1976), 45; Klingender F. D. , Art and the industrial revolution (London, 1968), 94.

Stafford Robert A. , “Geological surveys, mineral discoveries, and British expansion, 1835–71”, Journal of imperial and commonwealth history, xii (1984), 5–32, p. 10; Mumford Lewis , The city in history (Harmondsworth, 1975), 513.

Simonin Louis , Underground life: Or, mines and miners (London, 1869), 133, 42.

Wordsworth , “The excursion”, Poems (ref. 90), ii, 256 [VIII, 180–4].

Jean-Claude Beaune speaks of mines and miners having participated in history but of not having been studied as part of history, “La leçon des ténèbres”, in Simonin Louis , La vie souterraine: Les mines et les mineurs (Seyssel, 1982), 1. On the paucity of fiction on miners, mines and mining, see Hovanec Evelyn , “Reader's guide to coal mining fiction and selected prose narratives”, Bulletin of bibliography, xliii (1986), 159–71.

Ashton T.S. , Iron and steel in the industrial revolution (Manchester, 1951), 188; Ashton T. S. and Sykes J. , The coal industry of the eighteenth century (Manchester, 1929), 115–33.

Hammond J. L. and Hammond B. , The town labourers, 1760–1832: The new civilisation (London, 1979), 1. See Stevenson John , Popular disturbances in England 1700–1870 (London, 1979); Thomis M. I. and Holt P. , Threats of revolution in Britain, 1789–1848 (London, 1977); Darvall F. O. , Popular disturbances and public order in Regency England (Oxford, 1969).

Foster J. , Class struggle and the industrial revolution: Early industrial capitalism in three English towns (London, 1974), 101–2; Lubin I. and Everett H. , The British coal dilemma (London, 1927), 6.

Engels , Condition (ref. 91), 530–47; see Marcus Stephen , Engels, Manchester and the working class (London, 1974), 240–4.

Praz , The hero (ref. 89), 37–123.

Zola Emile , Germinal, trans. by Tancock L. (Harmondsworth, 1978), 499. For an interesting attempt to read Germinal as a geological novel and relate it to Zola's catastrophist vision, as expressed in his “La géologie et l'histoire” (1865), see Walker Philip , “Germinal and Zola's youthful ‘new faith’ based on geology”, Symposium, xxxvi (1982), 257–72.

Willey , Nineteenth-century studies (ref. 93), 24.

Coleridge Samuel Taylor , Selected poetry and prose, ed. by Potter Stephen (London, 1971), 85.

On the argument that rural nostalgia contributed to the actual industrial decline of Britain, see Weiner M. J. , English culture and the decline of the industrial spirit 1850–1980 (Harmondsworth, 1985).

Roe N. , Wordsworth and Coleridge: The radical years (Oxford, 1988), 263–8; Brinkley R. A. , “Vagrant and hermit: Milton and the politics of Tintern Abbey”, The Wordsworth circle, xvi (1985), 126–33; Johnston K. R. , “The politics of Tintern Abbey”, The Wordsworth circle, xiv (1983), 6–14.

Janowitz A. , England's ruins: Poetic purpose and the national landscape (Oxford, 1990); Goldstein L. , Ruins and empire: The evolution of a theme in Augustan and Romantic literature (Pittsburg, 1972).

It should be recalled that the political reaction to the French Revolution brought religion to the forefront of public life and made it a potent source of imagery: The protection of religion became associated with the preservation of existing social and political structures. One manifestation of renewed support for the Church of England was the post-Waterloo parliamentary grant for the building of new churches in London. On this see Kiernan V. , “Evangelicalism and the French Revolution”, Past and present, i (1952), 44–56; Watts Michael R. , The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), 478–90; Henriques Ursula , Religious toleration in England, 1787–1833 (Toronto, 1961), 99–135; and Brose Olive J. , Church and Parliament: The reshaping of the Church of England, 1828–1860 (Stanford, 1959).

Keats John , The letters, ed. by Rollins H. E. (2 vols, Cambridge, 1958), i, 349–50. See also Keats's “Hyperion” (1820), i, 86.

MacCulloch , Wondrous isle (ref. 23), 143, 153; MacCulloch , Description (ref. 27), ii, 16; see also [John Hutton], A tour to the caves, in the environs of Ingleborough and Settle … in a letter to a friend, 2nd edn (London, 1781), 34, and West , Guide to the lakes (ref. 41), 246.

Interestingly, the cave-as-cavern and cave-as-proscenium arch were both firmly in place in Australia by 1830. Thomas Mitchell in his description of Wellington Caves refers to “the great gallery named the chapel where there is also the altar — steps, font, &c — wholly the work of encrustation” (Thomas Mitchell, Fieldbook 1828–1830, Mitchell Library, Sydney, MS C42, entry for 25 June 1830). Many of these names have been retained, as is clear from Osborne R. A. L. , “Red earth and bones: The history of cave sediment studies in New South Wales, Australia”, Earth sciences history, x (1991), 13–28. Augustus Earle in his View on the coast of N.S. Wales Ilawarra (1827) offers what was perhaps a Wright-influenced outlook from a cave onto an agitated sea: The picture was described in 1829 as “an ideal view of a huge perforated rock in the foreground, with the sea at a distance. The beauty of his picture depended on the strong light and shade forming a contrast, and seemed as if one were contemplating beautiful scenery from the window of a darkened chamber.” See Hackforth-Jones Jocelyn , Augustus Earle: Travel artist (Canberra, 1980), 15.

An example would be the grottoes erected by Alexander Pope at Twickenham to offer “prospects” across his gardens (see Martin P. , Pursuing innocent pleasures: The gardening world of Alexander Pope (Hamden, Conn., 1984) and, for one such prospect, Paston G. , Mr. Pope: His life and times (2 vols, London, 1909), ii, 544). The obviously classical associations of Pope's grottoes were subdued in Romantic caves, and the outlook from the latter more elemental and untamed. One might hazard that while the caves of the Romantics bore political weight, the grottoes of Pope and his contemporaries were designed to offer instruction in (mainly classical) morality. In this regard, Aaron Hill in 1734 describes in great detail a design for an intricate piece of “Rock-Work” designed for his gardens. To walk through the caves and grottoes was to receive a moral education from the shells, fossils and rock formations, as well as from the architectural ruins, weapons and statuary carefully arranged to give the appearance of haphazardry (see Hill Aaron , Works (4 vols, London, 1753), ii, 199–210).

Wordsworth , The prelude (ref. 97), 443 [XI, 140–4].

Ibid., 458 [X, 982–3]; see Woodring C. , Politics in English romantic poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).

Burke Edmund , Reflections on the revolution in France (Harmondsworth, 1978), 149. Virgil , Aeneid (ref. 21), 31 [I, 140].

Keats John , The poetical works, ed. by Garrod H. W. (Oxford 1939), 178 [IV, 651], 184 [IV, 860], 169–70 [IV, 372–84], 175 [IV, 548]. See also Shelley's “Epipsychidion” (1821) which celebrates the lovely solitude of caves and equates them with sleep (Complete poetical works, ed. by Hutchinson Thomas (Oxford, 1925), 410 [194–5]).

MacCulloch , Wondrous isle (ref. 23), 182.

Aubin , “Grottoes” (ref. 22), 413; see also Shaftesbury's comments in Manwaring E. W. , Italian landscape in eighteenth-century England: A study of the influence of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa on English taste 1700–1800 (London, 1965), 122–3.

Janowitz , England's ruins (ref. 117), 64.

Fordyce William , A History of coal, coke and coal fields … in the North of England (London, 1860), 56–57 (much of the testimony cited by Fordyce is taken from William Howitt's Visits to remarkable places, published in 1841).

Simonin , Underground life (ref. 104), 131.

One may wonder whether there is not here a distinction still apparent today when discussions take place about nature and development: Some speak of “raw materials”, others of “natural resources”. As Michael Thompson has shown in an elegant analytical essay, much follows from the distinction. See “Socially viable ideas of nature: A cultural hypothesis”, Man, nature and technology: Essays on the role of ideological perpections, ed. by Baark Erik and Svedin Uno (London, 1988), 57–79. The work of Mary Douglas is also important in this respect, particularly her Implicit meanings (London, 1975).

Ashton and Sykes , The coal industry (ref. 107), 33–53.

Ibid., 40–41.

Roy A. , A history of the coal miners of the United States (New York, 1907), 14; Douglass D. and Krieger J. , A miner's life (London, 1983), p. x; Schwieder D. , Black diamonds: Life and work in Iowa's coal mining communities, 1895–1925 (Ames, Iowa, 1983), 10.

Harrison N. , Once a miner (London, 1954); Bodey , Mining (ref. 102).

Klingender , Art and the industrial revolution (ref. 102), 90.

Gordon E. O. , The life and correspondence of William Buckland, d.d., f.r.s. (London, 1894), 14.

Burnett John (ed.), Useful toil: Autobiographies of working people from the 1820s to the 1920s (London, 1974), 43.

Mayhew Henry , Mayhew's London, being selections from “London Labour and the London Poor” by Henry Mayhew (first published in 1851), ed. by Quennell P. (London, 1969), 552–3.

Halévy E. , England in 1815, trans. by Watkin E. I. and Barker D. A. (London, 1970), 260; see Griffin A. R. , Mining in the East Midlands 1550–1947 (London, 1971).

Hammond , The town labourers (ref. 108), 24–26; Albury D. and Schwartz J. , Partial progress: The politics of science and technology (London, 1982), 12–22.

Douglass and Krieger , A miner's life (ref. 135), 107–16.

Simonin , Underground life (ref. 104), 145.

Fowles J. F. , The French lieutenant's woman (London, 1970), 95; Anon ., “Caves”, Chambers's journal, n.s., xvii (1880), 230–3; McLaughlin , Coprophilia (ref. 91), 136. Marx Karl , too, sees the below-ground as a metaphorical site for primitive, proletarian regression (see Marx Karl , The economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1884 (Moscow, 1974), 102, 107, 109–10).

Ayton R. , A voyage round Great Britain undertaken in the summer of 1813 (2 vols, London, 1815), ii, 159.

Halévy , England (ref. 141), 262.

Cole G. D. H. , Studies in class structure (London, 1955), 31. See also Mattei Bruno , Rebelle, Rebelle! Révoltes et mythes du mineur 1830–1946 (Seyssel, 1987).

Lewis B. , Coal mining in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (London, 1971), 66.

Holderness G. , “Miners and the novel: From bourgeois to proletarian fiction”, in The British working-class novel in the twentieth-century, ed. by Hawthorn G. (London, 1984), 19–32. [ Howitt W. ], “The miner's daughter — a tale of the Peak”, Household words, i (1850), 125–30, 153–6, 182–6.

See [ Hutton R. H. ], “Review of The time machine”, Spectator, lxxv, issue of 13 July 1895, 41–43, p. 42. The remarks in Patrick Parrinder , H. G. Wells (New York, 1977), 16–24 are appropriate. While there seems to have been remarkably little treatment of the mining population in the nineteenth-century novel, Wells's account suggests a source of imagery in utopian or dystopian literature. A key text centrally concerned with the below ground is John Cleves Symmes's pseudonymous Symzonia (1820), the earliest American utopian fiction, which publicized the theory of polar openings leading to a succession of inner worlds and which inspired a great exploring expedition several years later (see Symmes J. C. [Captain Adam Seaborn], Symzonia: A voyage of discovery (Gainesville, 1965), and for some secondary literature, Bailey J. O. , “An early American utopian fiction”, American literature, xiv (1942), 285–93; Stanton W. , The great United States exploring expedition of 1838–1842 (Berkeley, 1975); and Peck J. W. , “Symmes’ theory”, Ohio state archeological and historical publications, xviii (1909), 28–42).

Burke , Reflections (ref. 125), 173–8. It is of interest to note that Burke's work also deploys profuse sexual metaphor and imagery in its depictions of the mob; see Paulson Ronald , Representations of revolution: 1789–1820 (New Haven, 1983), 60–61 and for the importance of these themes, Isaac Kramnick's psychoanalytic study, The rage of Edmund Burke: Portrait of an ambivalent conservative (New York, 1977), 134–42.

Carlyle Thomas , The French Revolution (2 vols, London, 1980), i, 143–58.

McClelland J. S. , The crowd and the mob: From Plato to Canetti (London, 1989), 110–37; Dudley E. and Novak M. E. (eds), The wild man within (Pittsburg, 1972); DePorte M. V. , Nightmares and hobby horses (San Marino, 1974).

See Cantor , Michael Faraday (ref. 13), 158.

Todhunter Isaac , William Whewell, d.d., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge: An account of his writings with selections from his literary and scientific correspondence (2 vols, London 1876), ii, 64. Whewell's curious letters to Lady Malcolmson (from “Underground Chamber, Dolcoath Mine, Cambourne, Cornwall”) appear in Douglas Janet Mary , The life and selections from the correspondence of William Whewell (London, 1881); see also William Whewell: Selected writings on history of science, ed. by Elkana Y. (Chicago, 1984), p. xii. I thank Jonathan Smith, manuscript cataloguer at Trinity College, Cambridge, for his help in tracking down these letters.

De la Beche Henry , A selection of the geological memoirs contained in the Annales des Mines (London, 1824); McCartney , Henry De la Beche (ref. 14); Stafford, “Geological surveys” (ref. 103), 6. De la Beche's Geological observer, noted Edward Forbes in his review, “bears importantly on the labours and pursuits of the miner” (“Review of The geological observer”, Literary gazette, no. 1785 (1851), 243–4, p. 243).

See Browne Janet , “Squibs and snobs: Science in humorous British undergraduate magazines around 1830”, History of science, xxx (1992), 165–97, p. 187, for an account of Sedgwick's lecture during the British Association meeting. After the meeting, Thomas Sopwith, geologist and mining engineer, played a leading role in inducing the government to establish a Mining Record office (see Richardson B. W. , Thomas Sopwith (London, 1891) and Report of the eighth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1839), p. xxiii, for details).

See Porter Roy , “The Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the science of geology”, in Changing perspectives (ref. 3), 320–43; Laudan Rachel , From mineralogy to geology: The foundations of a science, 1650–1830 (Chicago, 1987), esp. pp. 47–56, 87–112. James Secord offers some pertinent remarks on mining, as well as a reminder that “the extensive contemporary literature on mining … has been almost entirely ignored”, in “The Geological Survey of Great Britain as a research school, 1839–1855”, History of science, xxiv (1986), 223–75.

For testimony of Buckland's influence, see De la Beche Henry , A geological manual, 3rd edn (London, 1833), 201.

Rupke N. A. , “Oxford's scientific awakening and the role of geology”, to appear in History of Oxford University, viii, ed. by Brock Michael . I thank the author for showing me the typescript of this paper and take the opportunity to stress that my remarks by no means offer a complete interrogation of the arguments in Rupke's work. For example, Rupke's interesting comments about the role of history in geology and Romanticism are not treated here.

Rudwick M. J. S. , “Encounters with Adam, or at least the hyenas: Nineteenth-century visual representations of the deep past”, in History, humanity and evolution, ed. by Moore J. R. (Cambridge, 1989), 244–5.

Anon., “Caves” (ref. 145), 232.

McCartney , De la Beche (ref. 14), 48; Rupke Nicolaas , The great chain of history: William Buckland and the English school of geology 1814–1849 (Oxford, 1983), 7, 142. I thank Julian Holland for drawing this caricature to my attention. In a review of Rupke's book, P. J. Boylan reminds us of Buckland's “decidedly un-clerical coarse language” (“Review of The great chain of history”, Earth sciences history, iii (1984), 86–89, p. 86).

On this, see Robson John M. , “The fiat and finger of God: The Bridgewater Treatises”, in Victorian faith in crisis: Essays on continuity and change in nineteenth-century religious belief, ed. by Helmstadter Richard J. and Lightman Bernard (London, 1990), 71–125, pp. 95–96.

L[ang J. D. , “Account of the discovery of bone caves in Wellington Valley, about 210 miles west from Sydney in New Holland”, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, x (1831), 364–8, p. 365.

Gordon , William Buckland (ref. 138), 36.

Smith Adam , The wealth of nations (Harmondsworth, 1986), 446.

Buckle H. T. , History of civilization in England (3 vols, London, 1902), ii, 411. For an illuminating discussion, see Sennett Richard , The fall of public man (New York, 1977), 163–4, and Chevalier's Louis Labouring classes and dangerous classes in Paris during the first half of the nineteenth century (London, 1973).

On hypocrisy and character, see my “Setting murderous Machiavel to school: Hypocrisy in politics and the novel”, Journal of European studies, xviii (1988), 93–119, and “Hypocrisy in England: Some contours of an historical problem”, Studies in the history of psychology and the social sciences, iv (1986), 256–74. The dates for Sartor Resartus refer to its appearance in serial form in Fraser's magazine.

Byatt , Unruly times (ref. 65), 22.

See Lurie Alison , The language of clothes (New York, 1981); Laver James , Modesty in dress (Boston, 1969); Langner L. , The importance of wearing clothes (New York, 1959), 127–35; Gernsheim A. , Fashion and reality, 1840–1914 (New York, 1963); Batterbery M. Batterbery A. , Mirror, mirror: A social history of fashions (New York, 1977); Bell Quentin , On human finery (London, 1976).

[ Parton J. ], “The clothes mania”, Atlantic monthly, xxiii (1869), 531–48, p. 532.

Sopwith Thomas , An account of the mining districts of Alston Moor, Weardale and Teesdale, in Cumberland and Durham (Alnwick, 1833), 69, 135.

Lyell K. M. , Life, letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. (2 vols, London, 1881), i, 388. See also Gordon , William Buckland (ref. 138), 54, 58, 245, for Buckland's precautionary actions during the Chartist gatherings in 1848.

Driver and Rose , Nature and science (ref. 70); Stafford B. M. , Voyage into substance: Art, science, nature, and the illustrated travel account, 1760–1840 (London, 1984); Matless D. , “Seeing England with Morton and Cornish: Travel writing and the quest for order”, in A land fit for heroes: Essays in the human geography of later-war Britain, ed. by Heffernan M. and Gruffud P. (Occasional Papers no. 14, Loughborough, 1988), 110–29.

Morrell J. B. , “Professors Robison and Playfair and the Theophobia Gallica: Natural philosophy, religion and politics in Edinburgh, 1789–1815”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxvi (1971), 43–63; Secord , Controversy in Victorian geology (ref. 7), 33–34.

See, for some examples, Macleod R. M. , “Whigs and savants: Reflections on the reform movement in the Royal Society, 1830–48”, in Metropolis and province: Science in British culture 1780–1850, ed. by Inkster Ian and Morrell Jack (London, 1983), 55–90; Morrell Jack and Thackray Arnold , Gentlemen of science: Early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981); Morrell Jack , “Professionalization”, in Companion to the history of modern science, ed. by Olby R. C. Cantor G. N. Christie J. R. R. and Hodge M. J. S. (London, 1990), 980–9. About the struggle over the direction and presidency of the Royal Society, Davies Gilbert wrote of the “Great Contest … the Conflict of Aristocratic and Democratic Power” (Cantor, Michael Faraday (ref. 13), 130). On the relations between politics, scientific organization and methodologies of science, see my “A mind for the facts: Some antinomies of scientific culture in early nineteenth-century England”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, cxvii (1986), 294–324.

Relatively little attention has been paid to Buckland's cavework, but Boylan P. J. , “Dean William Buckland” (ref. 16), 237–53 and North F. J. , “Paviland Cave, the ‘Red Lady’, the deluge and William Buckland”, Annals of science, v (1942), 91–128 offer useful summaries, while Orange A. D. , “Hyaenas in Yorkshire: William Buckland and the cave at Kirkdale”, History today, xxii (1972), 777–85, focuses on Buckland's Kirkdale work, but contains no new information. The 1823 portrait of Buckland shows him surrounded by artefacts, including hyenas's faeces (see Boylan P. J. , “An unpublished portrait of Dean William Buckland, 1784–1856”, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, v (1970), 350–4).

Buckland William , Reliquiae diluvianae; or, observations on the organic remains contained in caves, fissures, and diluvial gravel, and on the other geological phenomena, attesting to the action of an universal deluge (London, 1823), 8.

Williams , Notes on the underground (ref. 17), 32.

See Boylan , “Dean William Buckland” (ref. 16), 244. Do cave explorers always vandalize what they see? Joseph Banks, certainly the first to venture to the furthest reaches of Fingal's Cave, appears to have left his own mark — cut into the hard rock, the inscription, “J.B., 1772” (see MacCulloch , Wondrous isle (ref. 23), 19–20).

Boylan , “Dean William Buckland” (ref. 16) refers to Buckland's sojourn at Kirkdale as being of “more than a week”. Lyell was certainly surprised at the speed with which Buckland could undertake fieldwork (see Lyell , Life, letters (ref. 175), i, 155).

Other geologists fascinated — perhaps obsessed — by coprolites and their importance as historical evidence and who happily resorted to scatalogical imagery in writing about geology include Richard Owen, Philip Gosse, James Parkinson, Adam Sedgwick, Gideon Mantell, and Hugh Miller. That these figures were also inveterate collectors (hoarders) of specimens, who on several occasions strove to acquire proprietary rights over the products they had dug out of the dirt, suggests, perhaps inevitably, a Freudian explanation of their driving motivation.

Buckland , Reliquiae diluvianae (ref. 180), 11.

ibid., 20.

ibid., 10.

Clark and Hughes , Reverend Adam Sedgwick (ref. 8), ii, 72.

Some samples of Buckland's excrement was passed round hand to hand by a group of gentlemanly experts — to William Wollaston, thence to Fitton W. H. , then to the proprietor of a menagerie, who at once exclaimed, “Ah, that is the dung of our hyaena!”, an identification subsequently confirmed by chemical analysis ( Lyell , Life, letters (ref. 175), i, 115).

Ibid., i, 145.

The quotation in Rupke appears to have been mistakenly transcribed to read, “it may as as well for you”. I have not seen the original in the letter in the Royal Society but have corrected the text to bring out its sense.

Kirkdaliensis , “The wonders of the antediluvian cave!”, Gentleman's magazine, xcii (1822), 491–4, p. 492. For a satiral jibe on the charms of Buckland's album graecum, see William Conybeare's poem, “On the hyaenas’ den at Kirkdale” in Dauberny C. G. B. , Fugitive poems connected with natural history and physical science (Oxford, 1861), 92–94.

Buckland William , “On the dens of living hyaenas”, Edinburgh new philosophical journal, ii (1827), 377–86, p. 379.

Buckland William , “On the discovery of coprolites, or fossil faeces, in the lias at Lyme Regis, and in other formations”, Transactions of the Geological Society of London, 2nd ser., iii (1835), 223–36; [ Phillips J. ], “The Rev. William Buckland”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, viii (1857), 264–8, p. 266; “Kirkdaliensis”, writing in the Gentleman's magazine, poked fun at Buckland's investigations which “must doubtless afford a high treat, and perhaps relish, to the real lover of antiquity. The Keeper of Wild-Beasts at Exeter ‘Change ought certainly, for his deep knowledge of this feculent matter of Hyaenas … to be immediately created an A.S.S.” (“The wonders” (ref. 192), 492).

Buckland , “On the discovery of coprolites” (ref. 194), 235.

Gordon , William Buckland (ref. 138), 31.

Rupke , Great chain (ref. 164), 142.

See Buckland , Reliquiae diluvianae (ref. 180), 38.

One of the rare occasions in which he lapses in poetics is in contemplating the quantity of animal matter accumulated on the floor of a cave in Germany: “the only thing of the kind I ever witnessed”, writes Buckland, “and many hundred, I may say thousand, individuals must have contributed their remains to make up this appalling mass of the dust of death”, a comment which prompted one reviewer to consider the cave as a large church ( Buckland , Reliquiae diluvianae (ref. 180), 138; Copleston E. , “Buckland — Reliquiae diluvianae”, Quarterly review, xxix (1823), 138–65, p. 149).

For some examples of pictorial and verbal caricatures, see North , “Paviland Cave” (ref. 179). In his anonymous review of Reliquiae diluvianae, Fitton W. H. permitted himself a jibe at some of Buckland's infelicities of expression which, he says, “could not have been written at Oxford” (see “Geology of the deluge”, Edinburgh review, xxxix (1823), 196–234, p. 207).

Gordon , William Buckland (ref. 138), 13–14. Gordon also relates another tale of codes, class and clothing. Buckland was in the habit of carrying with him everwhere he went his blue bag of specimen fossils and minerals, and he did so when he called upon Humphry Davy. On several occasions, he was met with the curt reply that Sir Humphry was not at home. At last, Sir Humphry asked his servant, “Has Dr. Buckland not called to-day?” “No, sir; there has been nobody here to-day but a man with a bag, who has been here three or four times, and I always told him you were out” (ibid., 86). Similar stories could easily be multiplied. Edward Forbes, who on fieldwork would wrap himself in an old plaid, thick boots, was wont to terrify the locals with his “weird, uncanny look”, “like a gigantic green toadstool”. When he and his fellow geologists arrived an at inn at night, their appearance aroused distrust. “The landlord at Milford received the naturalists with not a little suspicion, and seemed evidently at a loss to reconcile their easy gentlemanly manner with the travel-stained state of their attire. Next morning, indeed, he could hardly refrain his surprise, when he found his bill not only paid, but paid well” (George Wilson and Archibald Geikie, Memoir of Edward Forbes, f.r.s. (Cambridge, 1861), 402, 434). Hugh Miller was another geologist whose appearance caused consternation and confusion. “Generally wrapped in a bulky plaid, and with a garb ready for any work”, wrote one observer, “he had the appearance of a shepherd from the Rosshire hills rather than an author and a man of science” (Anon., “Memorials of the death and character of Hugh Miller, with an account of his funeral obsequies”, in Miller Hugh , Testimony of the rocks; or, geology in its bearings on the two theologies, natural and revealed (Boston, 1857), 27). There was certainly a romance in the “conjunction of Poverty and Passion”, as the Duke of Somerset noted in a letter lauding the heroic figure of Michael Faraday, and this was often expressed in the figure of the wild-eyed, tumble-haired natural philosopher (see Morus I. R. , “Different experimental lives: Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon”, History of science, xxx (1992), 1–28, pp. 4, 13). Finally, Richard Owen's experience of escorting an inappropriately-attired Mrs Livingstone to a London reception conveys everything of the ineffably painful sense of being hors de société (see Owen R. , The life of Richard Owen (2 vols, London, 1894), ii, 25).

Kingsley Charles , Town geology (London, 1872), 30.

Lyell Charles , The geological evidences of the antiquity of man with remarks on theories of the origin of species by variation (London, 1863), 68–69.

One of Adam Sedgwick's students wrote in 1849 of Sedgwick's “time-worn, weather-beaten face”, adding that he was “one of the veterans of modern science” who had “himself groped in dark caves in search of wild beasts' bones, and dredged whole days, through shine and shade, in river-beds …” ( Rupke , Great chain (ref. 164), 69).

[Phillips], “The Rev. William Buckland” (ref. 194), 268; Portlock Colonel , “Obituary of William Buckland”, Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London, xiii (1857), pp. xxvi–xlv, p. xliv.

See North , “Paviland Cave” (ref. 179).

Buckland William , “Notice of the hyaenas’ den near Torquay”, Edinburgh philosophical journal, xiv (1826), 363–4, p. 363 and “On the dens” (ref. 193), 380. Boylan , “Dean William Buckland” (ref. 16), 248–9; Daniel G. , A hundred and fifty years of archaeology (London, 1978), 37; Alexander E. M. M. , “Father John MacEnery: Scientist or charlatan?”, Reports and transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, xcvi (1964), 113–46. Buckland's work at Kirkdale was presented to the Royal Society on 7, 14, and 21 February 1822 ( Rupke , Great chain (ref. 164), 35). On 15 and 21 December 1821, the Rev. George Young presented two letters about the cave to the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh and published in the Society's Memoirs his description of the fossil remains several weeks before Buckland's paper appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society (Boylan (ref. 16), 241; Rupke (ref. 164), 43–44). More recently, the anthropologist Raymond Dart has accused Buckland of falsifying his conclusions and covering up data, a charge keenly rebutted by Boylan P. J. (see Dart R. , “The myth of the bone-accumulating hyena”, American anthropologist, lviii (1956), 40–62; Boylan P. J. , “A new revision of the Pleistocene mammalian faunas of Kirkdale Cave, Yorkshire”, Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, xliii (1981), 253–80).

On the importance of deference as the binding keeping together British society, see Berman Morris , “‘Hegemony’ and the amateur tradition in British science”, Journal of social history, viii (1975), 30–50.

Forbes Edward , “Geology, popular and artistic”, Dublin University magazine, xlii (1853), 338–49, p. 339; Wilson and Geikie , Memoir (ref. 201), 361. For an early sneer at those that “sit in their carriage and view the rocks as they pass along” and the development of a political criticism of sedentary geology, see Jameson's remarks in his Mineralogy of the Scottish Isles, with mineralogical observations made in a tour through different parts of the mainland of Scotland, and dissertations upon peat and kelp (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1800), i, 29, 81.

Knight David , “Romanticism and the sciences”, in Romanticism and the sciences (ref. 74), 13–24; Paradis , “Darwin and landscape” (ref. 51), 96.

Knight David M. , “The scientist as sage”, Studies in romanticism, vi (1967), 65–89.

See, for an interesting case study, Neubauer John , “The Mines of Falun: Temporal fortunes of a romantic myth of time”, Studies in romanticism, xix (1980), 475–95.

Darwin Charles , The origin of species by natural selection (Harmondsworth, 1981), 316.

See Dean Dennis R. , ‘“Through science to despair’: Geology and the Victorians”, in Victorian science (ref. 48), 111–36, p. 124; and, for Richard Owen's depiction of nature as a museum, Owen , Life (ref. 201), ii, 126.

Geikie Archibald , The story of a boulder, or, gleanings from the note-book of afield geologist (Edinburgh, 1858), p. xi. See also Geikie's remarks in Murchison (ref. 7), i, 113–14 and, for other examples of geology as the reading of the book of nature, Miller Hugh , Foot-prints of the creator: Or, the Asterolepis of Stromness (Edinburgh, 1861), 254 (citing Robert Chambers), and Gosse P. H. , Omphalos: An attempt to untie the geological knot (London, 1857), 8. Some eighteenth-century accounts of the reading of stones and fossils are presented in Stafford B. M. , “Toward romantic landscape perception: Illustrated travels and the rise of ‘singularity’ as an aesthetic category”, Studies in eighteenth-century culture, x (1981), 17–75, pp. 21–28.

Shakespeare, quoted in Herschel J. F. W. , A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy (Chicago, 1987), 15.

See Rosen C. and Zerner H. , Romanticism and realism: The mythology of nineteenth century art (London, 1984), 51–59.

See Secord , Controversy (ref. 7), 29.

Merchant Carolyn , The death of nature: Women, ecology and the scientific revolution (San Francisco, 1980); Easlea Brian , Witch-hunting, magic and the new philosophy: An introduction to debates of the scientific revolution, 1450–1750 (Brighton, 1980); idem, Science and sexual oppression: Patriarchy's confrontation with woman and nature (London, 1981); idem, Fathering the unthinkable: Masculinity, scientists and the arms race (London, 1983).

Richards Evelleen , “Huxley and woman's place in science: The ‘woman question’ and the control of Victorian anthropology”, in Moore , History, humanity (ref. 162), 253–84, p. 253.

See [ Brewster David ], “Hugh Miller's Footprints of the creator”, North British review, xii (1850), 443–81, pp. 444, 450, 454.

Ibid., 443; Morris A. D. , James Parkinson: His life and times (Boston, 1989), 18 and 115; Clark and Hughes , Sedgwick (ref. 8), ii, 72.

McCartney , Henry De la Beche (ref. 14), 26; Secord , Controversy (ref. 7), 64.

Forbes , “Geology” (ref. 209), 340.

de Vries L. and Fryer P. , Venus unmasked or, an inquiry into the nature and origin of the passion of love (London, 1967), 197–205; Hyde H. M. , A history of pornography (London, 1964), 100; Ashbee H. S. , Index of forbidden books (London, 1969), 306–17.

Marcus Steven , The other Victorians: A study of sexuality and pornography in mid-nineteenth-century England (London, 1966). Stimulating studies which illuminate these issues include Lansbury Carol , “Gynaecology, pornography, and the antivivisection movement”, Victorian studies, xxviii (1985), 413–37; Scott Rebecca , “The dark continent: Africa as female body in Haggard's adventure fiction”, Feminist review, xxxii (1989), 69–89; Boucé Paul-Gabriel , “Chthonic and pelagic metaphorization in eighteenth-century English erotica”, Eighteenth-century life, ix (1985), 202–16; and Fabricant Carole , “Binding and dressing nature's loose tresses: The ideology of Augustan landscape design”, Studies in eighteenth-century culture, xviii (1979), 10–35. A contemporary mapping of the underground with female anatomy is provided in the work of the influential French public reformer, Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Parent-Duchâtelet, who worked amongst prostitutes and sewermen; see Reid Donald , Paris sewers and sewermen: Realities and representations (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 23, 41.

Botting Douglas , Humboldt and the cosmos (London, 1973), 43; Secord James A. , “Salter: The rise and fall of a palaeontological career”, in From Linnaeus to Darwin (ref. 28), 61–75, p. 71. For samples of Forbes's poetry (drawn to my attention by Janet Browne), see Wilson and Geikie , Memoir (ref. 201) and Forbes's anonymously published “Valentine by a palaeontologist”, Literary gazette, 18 February 1845, 110. Male camaraderie and bonding are themes central to the life of Forbes (as recorded by Wilson and Geikie) and, through such congregations as the Brotherhood of the Friends of Truth, the Brethren, and other informal drinking and singing male clubs, involved many other geologists, such as Playfair, Chambers and Ramsay (see Memoir, 248–9, 352, 388).

Kingsley Charles , Glaucus; or, the wonders of the shore (London, 1890), 40–51. Writing in the North British review, Kingsley added that “the kingdom of nature, like the kingdom of heaven, must be taken by violence, and only to those who knock earnestly and long, does the Great Mother open the doors to her sanctuary” ( Kingsley F. E. , Charles Kingsley: His life and memories of his life, 8th edn (2 vols, London, 1877), i, 406). Forbes's description of geologists as troops, soldiers and militia-men in “The future of geology”, Westminster review, lviii (1852), 67–94, and his Literary papers … selected from his writings for “The literary review” (London, 1855), 35. On the reading of novels as a feminine activity, and a sensual one as well, see Ferris I. , The achievement of literary authority: Gender, history, and the Waverley novels (Ithaca, 1991), 40–41, and Flint Kate , “The woman reader and the opiate of fiction: 1855–1879”, in The nineteenth-century British novel, ed. by Hawthorn J. (London, 1986).

Kingsley Charles , Scientific lectures and essays (London, 1885), 196–7. Kingsley here equates the habit of mind required to pursue geology with the “successful military mind” (ibid., 185).

See Bailey Edward , Geological survey of Great Britain (London, 1952), 18; Geikie , A long life's work (ref. 15), 47; Stafford , “Geological surveys” (ref. 103); Secord , “King of Siluria” (ref. 9); Oldroyd David R. , The Highlands controversy: Constructing geological knowledge through fieldwork in nineteenth-century Britain (Chicago, 1990).

The importance of caves and cave sites to these disputes has so far failed to attract attention. It is clear, though, that Staffa and Fingal's Cave offered an important site of contestation between (amongst others) the Neptunists and the Vulcanists. B. Faujas de Saint Fond described Staffa as a volcanic island in 1797, which drew the ire of Robert Jameson three years later. See de Saint Fond Faujas , Journey through England (ref. 33), ii, 37–62, and Jameson , Mineralogy (ref. 209), i, pp. xxvi, 5 and ii, pp. 7–13. Jameson was not able to reach Staffa but analysed basalt samples from the island; his description is taken from Banks's account. See also [ Darwin Erasmus ], The botanic garden, Part II. Containing the loves of plants, a poem. With philosophical notes (Lichfield, 1789; repr. Oxford, 1991), 161 [IV, 349–54].

Rudwick M. J. S. , The Great Devonian controversy: The shaping of scientific knowledge among gentlemanly specialists (Chicago, 1985); Oldroyd , The Highlands controversy (ref. 230), 344. The use of military metaphors comes to dominate nineteenth-century debates over the relationship of science and religion, as has been shown in Moore James R. , The post-Darwinian controversies: A study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (New York, 1979), 19–76.

Clark and Hughes , Adam Sedgwick (ref. 8), ii, 73.

See ref. 205 (Buckland); Owen , Life (ref. 201), i, 8–9 (Whewell); ibid., ii, 62, 162 (Owen); Wilson and Geikie , Memoir (ref. 201), 166 (Forbes); [ Mackay L. M. ], “Mrs Hugh Miller's journal”, Chambers's journal, 6th ser., v (1902), 305–8, 369–72, 461–4, 513–16, and Bayne Peter , Life and letters of Hugh Miller (2 vols, London, 1871), ii, 382 (Miller); Geikie , Long life's work (ref. 15), 31 (men of the Survey).

The work of Samuel Smiles is paradigmatic in establishing the importance of energy and work to stable, manly character, but his writings (such as Self-help (1859), Character (1871) and Life and labour (1887)) merely codify views dominant since the turn of the century. A key source (and survey) is Bain Alexander , On the study of character (London, 1861), but authors as varied as Thomas Malthus, Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Carlyle all extol the virtues of exertion, strength and energy. See Burn W. L. , The age of equipoise: A study of the mid-Victorian generation (New York, 1965), 106 (Malthus); Smiles Samuel , Character (London, 1910), 204 (Scott); and Evans , Victorians (ref. 47), 33 (Carlyle).

Forbes , “The future” (ref. 228), 72.

ibid., 69.

Ibid., 68. For further comment on the link between the geological and mining communities, see [Edward Forbes], “Review of Ansted D. T. , Geology, introductory, descriptive, and practicar, Athenaeum, no. 894 (1844), 1136–7, p. 1137, and Forbes , “Geology” (ref. 209), 339–40.

By Torrens Hugh Secord James A. Shortland Michael , and Dean Dennis , respectively.