Details
SMITH, WILLIAM. A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales with Part of Scotland. London: John Cary, August 1 1815. Large folding engraved map printed on 15 sheets, divided into 32 sections laid down on publisher's linen backed in marbled paper, overall size approx. 260 x 180 cm. (8 x 6.5 feet), original matching boards slipcase (rubbed), morocco lettering-piece, modern folding cloth chemise and quarter blue mroocco slipcase (slightly rubbed); small ink stain in blank area below title, occasional very light spotting, a few splits along linen folds. FIRST EDITION, hand-colored engraved geological map, signed in ink "Wm Smith. No. 55." Without the engraved "General map," printed on a smaller separate sheet. Joan Eyles, "William Smith... A Bibliography," no. 12, in Journal of the Society of the Bibliography of Natural History 5 (1969), pp. 87-109; Norman 1957; PMM 274.
[With]
A Memoir to Smith's Map and Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales. London: J. Cary 1815. 4to, 268 x 210 mm. (10 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.), original gray-green wrappers, printed paper title label on upper cover, lacking backstrip, dampstaining, a few leaves creased, slight offsetting. FIRST EDITION, two folding tables, the first letterpress, the second engraved and partly hand-colored, the latter table in the second state, with the new title "Geological Table of British Organised Fossils" (originally titled "Explanation of Colours on the Map of Strata"); this table was also issued separately and included in a volume of geological sections of Southern England (see following lot). Eyles 13; Norman 1958.
THE FIRST LARGE-SCALE GEOLOGICAL MAP EVER PRINTED, BY THE FOUNDER OF STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. "A practical surveyor and amateur geologist, Smith [1769-1839] had for many years observed and documented English strata, and had come to recognize two extremely important facts: first, that the strata of England appeared in a regular succession; and second, that many individual strata had a characteristic fossil content that could be used to distinguish them from other lithologically similar strata. Smith used these two discoveries in the preparation of his Delineation... a major cartographical achievement [based entirely on Smith's own discoveries] drawn at a scale of 5 miles to the inch and covering about 65,000 square miles... Smith indicated the succession of twenty-one sedimentary strata by shading the map in different colors and attempted to show superimposition by using a deeper shade at a formation's base..." (Norman). "A comparision of his 1815 map with a modern geological map of England, on the same scale, shows the extent of his knowledge... the amount of correct detail that Smith recorded is amazing and still impresses modern geologists" (DSB). Smith himself ("a surveyor, a working man, not an academic") drew no revolutionary conclusions from his stratigraphical investigations, seeing them primarily as "tools that could be used to promote the economic development of his country" (op. cit.), and, faithful to Biblical tenets of the age of the earth, he recognized no age differences in the beds. Nevertheless, his discoveries persuaded later geologists that the strata in all parts of the earth's crust belonged to a single chronological sequence, and that "it was in the 'testimony of the rocks' and not in the Book of Genesis that the history of the earth must be sought" (Printing and the Mind of Man).
The present copy is one of 100 copies that were numbered and signed by Smith between 2 November and 17 December 1815; this was the second of five series recorded by Eyles (only a few copies are known of the initial, unnumbered, series), totalling approximately 400 copies. Of these less than 100 are known to survive.
Provenance: Robert Honeyman IV (sale, Sotheby's London, Part VII, 19-20 May 1981, lots 2862-3). (2)
[With]
A Memoir to Smith's Map and Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales. London: J. Cary 1815. 4to, 268 x 210 mm. (10 1/2 x 8 1/4 in.), original gray-green wrappers, printed paper title label on upper cover, lacking backstrip, dampstaining, a few leaves creased, slight offsetting. FIRST EDITION, two folding tables, the first letterpress, the second engraved and partly hand-colored, the latter table in the second state, with the new title "Geological Table of British Organised Fossils" (originally titled "Explanation of Colours on the Map of Strata"); this table was also issued separately and included in a volume of geological sections of Southern England (see following lot). Eyles 13; Norman 1958.
THE FIRST LARGE-SCALE GEOLOGICAL MAP EVER PRINTED, BY THE FOUNDER OF STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. "A practical surveyor and amateur geologist, Smith [1769-1839] had for many years observed and documented English strata, and had come to recognize two extremely important facts: first, that the strata of England appeared in a regular succession; and second, that many individual strata had a characteristic fossil content that could be used to distinguish them from other lithologically similar strata. Smith used these two discoveries in the preparation of his Delineation... a major cartographical achievement [based entirely on Smith's own discoveries] drawn at a scale of 5 miles to the inch and covering about 65,000 square miles... Smith indicated the succession of twenty-one sedimentary strata by shading the map in different colors and attempted to show superimposition by using a deeper shade at a formation's base..." (Norman). "A comparision of his 1815 map with a modern geological map of England, on the same scale, shows the extent of his knowledge... the amount of correct detail that Smith recorded is amazing and still impresses modern geologists" (DSB). Smith himself ("a surveyor, a working man, not an academic") drew no revolutionary conclusions from his stratigraphical investigations, seeing them primarily as "tools that could be used to promote the economic development of his country" (op. cit.), and, faithful to Biblical tenets of the age of the earth, he recognized no age differences in the beds. Nevertheless, his discoveries persuaded later geologists that the strata in all parts of the earth's crust belonged to a single chronological sequence, and that "it was in the 'testimony of the rocks' and not in the Book of Genesis that the history of the earth must be sought" (Printing and the Mind of Man).
The present copy is one of 100 copies that were numbered and signed by Smith between 2 November and 17 December 1815; this was the second of five series recorded by Eyles (only a few copies are known of the initial, unnumbered, series), totalling approximately 400 copies. Of these less than 100 are known to survive.
Provenance: Robert Honeyman IV (sale, Sotheby's London, Part VII, 19-20 May 1981, lots 2862-3). (2)