10. Collecting integrated

The plans De la Beche had made for the Survey during 1840 came into fruition in the following Spring; on a salary of £300, Phillips was to ‘superintend’ the collection and description of fossils during the survey of South Wales. The new look Survey consisted of a team which would both trace the lines of strata and collect the supporting fossil evidence.^[1] Phillips and Sanders had already proven the efficacy of direct collecting during their time in Devon. This collecting could be supplemented by the use of more perfect specimens from amateur collections as the need arose.

Phillips arrived in Usk on 1 April 1841 ready to begin his Welsh survey. Here he aimed to examine the Silurian fossils Trevor James, one of the Geological Assistants, had been gathering. This consisted of about 150lb of specimens: ‘James’s box of fossils is very full indeed, & really rich, as well it may be in this country which makes me think of Devonshire with a laugh!’^[2] Based on an inspection of these Phillips could judge what else might be expected and establish the aim of further collecting.^[3] This, Phillips suggested, was not to search for novelties but a better understanding of the distribution^[4] of the now extensive list of Silurian species. On the following days, with James as his guide, he traversed the local terrain examining the relationship between the Old Red Sandstone and the Lower Palaeozoic/Silurian rocks. From this preliminary tour he could already discern some variation in the abundance of fossils.

Phillips’ initial intention had been to examine, note and draw James’s material as an aid to fieldwork here and elsewhere in Wales, but this was lost as he became increasingly drawn to the field and the gathering of ever increasing quantities of fossils. De la Beche urged Phillips to move on to Tenby, his original destination, where his palaeontological skills would help unravel more complex geology. Phillips, however, resisted the move for a few more days, so that he could not only examine James’s fossils in detail but also take in two important local collections: those belonging to a Mr Conway and those of his old friend John Edward Lee who was now newly ensconced in Caerleon.^[5] William Sanders also came over from Bristol to meet with Phillips in order to learn the ‘Silurian grammar’ and by the time they left Usk another box had been filled.

As yet no decision had been made on what should be done with the rapidly accumulating pile of fossils; technically they belonged to the Ordnance Survey of which the Geological Survey was simply a part. Phillips suggested that they would be better stored in the Museum of Economic Geology – another of De la Beche’s creations but one under an entirely different government department – ‘we can then supervise them quietly’, he wrote.^[6] De la Beche, however, favoured a more local store, at least until Phillips had had time to view them. Using his contacts in Bristol, De la Beche had the fossils dispatched with James, to be held temporarily by Samuel Stutchbury, Curator of the Bristol Institution, until a decision had been made regarding their London destination.

Pembrokeshire teamwork

From Tenby, and later Dale, Phillips’ first task was to record the coastal sections that held vital clues to structure and correlation inland. The team of Phillips, James, Andrew Crombie Ramsay, Sanders, and occasionally De la Beche, investigated the rocks of Skrinkle, West Angle, Marloes, Stackpole and other localities for the first time. Here at last Phillips found the kindred souls apparently missing from in Yorkshire in 1828. Fieldwork took on a new lease of life:

I hope Ramsay told you of our doings at Stackpole not omitting his own feat of swimming to an island & battering in manibus, pedibus, omnibusque nudis. I question if such a thing has been done before unless by the Director of the Survey.^[7]

As on-site palaeontological expert, Phillips provided other members of the team with indications of what they should be looking for, that is what might be of particular interest stratigraphically or geographically.^[8] Fossils which appeared identical to those from established localities such as May Hill were collected in abundance in order to make identification certain. Initially, Phillips’ recent knowledge of the Devon fauna would also motivate collecting or at least his interest in what was being collected. He not only wished to add to his Devon lists but also hoped to obtain a better understanding of that region by studying Welsh fossils. Devon would not hold the key to South Wales but the converse might be true. Progressively, local lithologies, faunas and correlations would dominate collecting interests in Wales.

Of particular interest to Phillips were those species which appeared to cross major boundaries. These provided the key to the process of deduction traditionally used to assign a relative age to strata.

Possibly as we have now got Old Red fossils in Mtn. Limestone shales, we may at last get Silurians really in Old Red, but I doubt. Murchison seems in a state of fluctuation as to this matter; & evidently was unsatisfied in this district.^[9]

With teams working in two or more locations at any one time, De la Beche instigated a plan utilising numbers and colours with which to mark the collections and thus maintain their order as they moved between temporary stores.^[10]

The pleasures of Dale were, for Phillips, short-lived, however, and by the middle of June he was packing his bags for Plymouth, there to spend 42 days in the service of the British Association. Before leaving he briefed James and Sanders on what to collect at West Angle Bay, a locality producing some interesting crinoids. Two large crinoids had already been found and these Phillips recommended sending on to Bristol and then London. At Dale he had already examined two barrels of fossils and one each was sent to Tenby and Bristol, the Survey’s palaeontological bases. This kept the specimens within easy reach for both description and reference. These fossils, which had been measured into the coastal sections, would allow Phillips to draw up a stratigraphic outline of local fossil distribution for the inland investigations which lay ahead.

In August, Phillips returned to the Survey’s Bristol headquarters with the aim of examining the collections stored there. Having been cooped up on British Association business for the past month or so, he was now eager to re-enter the field; spending the remaining summer on museum work held no appeal. Instead he sought fossil correlations with the strata he had a few months earlier observed in Wales. These he found and wrote to De la Beche, in boastful tone:

let me lay on your breakfast table a small dish of Cypridiform Crustacea, such as we found at Caldy [Caldey], &c. &c. and which I have now found by searching in the coral beds of the “Lower Limestone Shale” of the Avon Bank. I looked for them & I found them in shale & in a bone bed. This is a pleasant coincidence.^[11]

His fossil collecting continued to progress by problem solving, rather than simple inductivism. With fond memories of his time in Dale, he longed to return to the field permanently; this was essential to his intellectual, spiritual and physical well-being. He needed to convince De la Beche:

I do not find the plan of successive stations (as Tenby, Bristol) or centres for my operations quite so efficient as was expected: it neither gives me the home convenience of books, cabinets, & M.S., nor the field advantage of close work with your corps; it is, I fear, a plan which by mixing two objects prevents the perfect accomplishment of either.

A better arrangement would, I believe, be to send all the collections of the Season to one place, there to be examined, named, & made ready for their places in the repository to which they should be finally destined. If in my case, if this place were York, & I were required during each winter to classify the gatherings of the previous summer, & prepare figures & descriptions suitable for publication, & during each Summer to be personally aiding & assisting in the field, not at certain centres, but at the actual extremities of your lines, this would have the effect of providing for both the sorts of work entrusted to me, & whether the result was a publication, or a classified collection, you would know whether & in what manner the work commanded was actually done. If this arrangement which would be more convenient to me, as well as (I think) positively more advantageous to the Survey, could be made so that 6 (not 8) months of field work (say between the months of March & November) were appointed me & in addition I were required to classify in the remainder of the year, at home, the fruits of the Summer Work, it need not require any change of the money grant, but I am sure you would get more work out of me, & part of it would perhaps be better done.^[12]

De la Beche was easily convinced and Phillips returned to Wales at the end of September to guide collecting in the field but without knowing exactly what use would be made of what was collected. Collecting would need to cater for all future eventualities:

From York I should wish to join you in Wales, to collect, at all events, as much stuff for future study, as possible, whatever use we may find it best, & in whatever manner most convenient, to employ them in hereafter.^[13]

At this time Trevor James was tracing the boundary between the Old Red Sandstone and the Silurian rocks around St Clears and Carmarthen.^[14] Here James had had considerable success in gathering fossils in an area generally poorly endowed with organic remains. Amongst these were crinoid heads like those found in the neighbourhood of Haverfordwest. He had also found fossils in the ‘Black Shales’ at Llanddowror, just two miles South West of St Clears. These shales formed an important lithological marker but had resisted releasing any organic indicators.

Like other Assistants in the Survey, James was not well-versed in fossils and had only rudimentary knowledge of geology. For the purposes of the Survey this was immaterial: the task of spotting contacts did not require more than a locally evolved knowledge and the fossils gathered inductively could be interpreted by the Survey palaeontologist. The obvious imperfections in this fieldwork model could be corrected by on-the-spot training and guidance. James, for example, had spent much time mapping the ‘Old Red’ boundary around St Clears but the nature of this rock made this difficult for the novice. From Phillips he learnt that the ‘Old Red’ was grey – ‘grown gray with age’ and had to undertake a certain amount of remapping.^[15] Even so, Phillips was pleased to see that James’s lines were much better than those Murchison had drawn in the previous decade: Murchison’s map was in part ‘utterly at fault, owing to some unaccountable error’.^[16]

By the bye we have reason to think that since Mr. Murchison’s map (1837) there has been a volcanic eruption near Caermarthen. This at least is certain that a very bold Trap hill exists with abundance of felsp. trap where in Mr. Murchison’s day it was Lower Silurian!^[17]

In contrast to James, Phillips’ intimate and fully integrated knowledge of strata and fossils made him particularly effective at finding fossils where others did not. Despite this, fossil collecting was seen as a laborious and fairly routine task; one which could easily be delegated to a lowly geological assistant such as James. Thus, despite his specialist skills Phillips recorded barometer readings whilst James collected fossils. Alternatively, two assistants might be brought in to gather up fossils from localities noted during the tracing of boundaries. In general, a geological framework was built up from boundary chasing largely based upon lithological information. Fossils might be collected, but were more often marked for future collecting on ‘fossil days’. Phillips could thus advise other members of the Survey where to look:

The fossil gathering between St. Clairs [St Clears] & Llandilo, N. of the Towy, has been very limited. The country is very unproductive, except at Mydrim, Melin Ricket, Bwlch Capel, & N.E. of Aberguilli. We have searched the whole of the Limestone patches near the Towy (including all Williams’s), & pretty thoroughly too. It would probably be well to try a few more points, & repeat the operation at a point or two near Aberguilli, particularly as Ramsay will most likely pass from Fishguard with the New Year or soon after.^[18]

In the following year, Phillips, then in Malvern, continued to tell the Welsh field parties where fossils should be sought:

1 M. W.N.W. of Caermarthen is the great contortion of Beds at Penglan. Both James & I searched here for fossils in vain. I hope Ramsay may have been more fortunate. West of Merthyr I found a Trilobite (Berthllwyd) in shale. In Bwlch Capel Slate quarry are Graptolites. 1 quarter M. N.E. of Aberguilli, fossils in slaty rock above Letty. In the conglom. S.E. of Caermarthen Encrinites in the quarry near Logyn dwr TP.^[19]

De la Beche had taken on the difficult conglomerates around Fishguard, where the presence and absence of fossils appeared a useful tool in correlation. As for collecting, Phillips continued to recommend the abandonment of caution:

The more duplicates the better, I think, as it costs only a little more labour & a little more time (when on the spot) to get a good lot, than a few specimens, & this sort of work will not be repeated for many years.^[20]

It was largely impossible for the fieldworker to determine what was important, so uncontrolled collecting made sense.

In November, it was intended that Phillips move northwards to provide palaeontological support to De la Beche’s party. But he preferred to maintain a broader remit, and stayed in the vicinity of Llandeilo tracing boundaries, unravelling structural and stratigraphic relationships and bringing these into line with what was known of the rocks further west. James continued to undertake most of the fossil gathering. The work was easier than he expected. In October, Phillips had found what he thought was a trilobite in the Black Shales, and sought information from De la Beche on the geological relations of this bed in his part of the country. By the end of November, Phillips could distinguish three separate beds of Black Shales, two of which held graptolites. Indeed at Narbeth, Phillips now found ‘graps above the Limestone, in black shales at two or three points as clear & plain as a.b.c’ and ‘by thousands’ at measured intervals beneath the junction of the Old Red Sandstone.^[21] As Phillips became increasingly sure of the stratigraphic relations of the different districts he began to pursue more focused research, anticipating and searching out particular faunas. Just north of St Clears, which had been Phillips’ centre of research for many months, he found a standard sequence of Silurian rocks containing numerous trilobites.

Think of that Mr. Director. What will you now expect but that some of these wayward Lower Silurians should come to poach in your country and even fish in the Teivy? How far that may be the case it is for you to decide. I thought you would like to know of this new thing, because it was no accident, but a result of reasoning & right research. I fully believed from dips (not cleavage) that the country was gathering beds to North & here is the confirmation thereof.^[22]

Beneath these beds were graptolite rich shales: ‘These graptolithes will be to us what an imaginary centre of stability would have been to Archimedes. They will move all the rocks into their right places’.^[23] That these fossils had not been well recorded during the survey undertaken to date may have been the result of using a largely untrained workforce and an obvious belief in inductivism. Phillips had now proven that more persistent searching would reveal them, and he advised De la Beche, ‘Pray do not omit to look for them in all your black shales and slates. I have got them in almost any spot where I searched well’. Phillips’ celebrations, however, were not long lived as towards the end of the year the Survey once again became lost in the confusion of correlation.

Barrels of fossils, were by this time, arriving in York, Swansea and London: material for description and identification, for local reference and for the promotion of science, respectively. In December, 15 barrels from Bristol at last arrived in York, having apparently travelled there by canal. Phillips was now desperate to return to York and he advised De la Beche to delay colouring the maps until he could undertake a statistical analysis of the fossils in the hope that this would indicate the relative age of the strata. Whilst data and fossil collecting had been far more comprehensive and sophisticated during the Welsh survey than the piecemeal methods employed in Devon, understanding that data would remain an intellectual jigsaw in large part undertaken away from the field.

As the work had progressed in Wales the future of the Survey itself had come into doubt, and there were grave fears that the work would cease in the following March.^[24] However, by mid-November its future was assured^[25] and during the spring of 1842 the Survey began to be viewed as a permanent organisation. In Phillips’ opinion De la Beche had built his own monument: ‘you will hammer out for yourself a monument of fitting dimensions & worth, & confer a real benefit on the Scientific & Practical applications of Geology’.^[26]Science in itself was all well and good, but its participants demanded recognition. As Phillips put it, remarking with anger on Murchison’s undoing of his own discoveries, ‘It is a sort of précis on a passage of Scripture which may be falsely rendered: Let others praise thee; (if) not – (praise) thyself.’^[27]

Assembling the jigsaw

Phillips returned to York by train on 2 January 1842. During the previous year fossils had been sent to London by steamer. The train, which was ‘extravagantly cheap’^[28] for the conveyance of parcels, would revolutionise the movement of fossils from rockface to museum. It also meant that Phillips could meet lecturing engagements in distant parts of Britain without the need for overnight accommodation. The railway was just one of a number of factors revolutionising communication at this time. The penny post was begun in 1840 and the Survey men experimented with this as a means of transporting small specimens. James, however, discovered its limitations having placed some curious fossils in an envelope for Phillips’ opinion only to hear that they had been crushed by the letter stampers.^[29] Even fieldwork was undertaken at a more rapid pace. In the past season this had largely been undertaken on foot – this being the preferred mode of transport in the rain – and it had often been wet and unpleasant. On occasion Phillips had travelled by carriage but had found the locals all too willing to make a profit – having once been charged one shilling a mile rather than the nine pence charged to the locals. However, towards the end of the season the Survey workers had been taken over by ‘hippomania’ and there was talk of a subscription horse for the following season.

In Phillips’ absence from Wales, the junior members of the survey would continue to work out the area. Two fieldparties were to be established for the winter consisting of the ‘Noviciates’ with an ‘Orderly’ in each. Aveline and James would continue to work under Phillips’ guidance from York. Local men were to be recruited.

I hope Williams^[30] will do extremely well, yet it seems to me that he will often think of your indulgent mastership & the care of horses, with some regret, when he gets a big basket of Bellerophons (fine alliteration) for the Survey. David Lewis, the Cooper, is a most excellent Welshman, but married, & I fear not to be had away from wife & shop. He is singularly disinterested & a great lover of the sport, but as I said before, I fear not to be had.^[31]

Phillips’ work on the collections during the winter months involved some drawing of species but was primarily aimed at providing the underpinning correlations for colouring the map. Fossils would make sense of the ‘rolly polly’ landscape of folded and tilted rocks which repeatedly thrust the same beds to the surface. He would also try to understand the geographical distribution of faunas which might indicate a diversity of past environments; a phenomenon which had dominated his interpretation of Devon.

No question but you are right as well as “sublime & beautiful” in your laws of possible variation in mineral deposits of a given geological age – the unequal original conditions of the old sea bed, the local & momentarily changing influences in the waters, the accidental changes in the causes at work on the land, all these sources of diversity must have had their influence, and expectations of universal agreement in the partial results of such agencies must be disappointed. Further in regard to organic life its duration is a complex function of many conditions some of which are those very variables of mineral & other inorganic operations; its diffusion is also a similarly complex function, & thus finally any one who looks for Terebratula every where on a given geological plane will be disappointed for two reasons: first because the life of the said Brachiopod was not ubiquitous at any one epoch, & secondly because there is no such universal plane… What might from analogy be expected in the county of Caermarthen would amaze a Salopian.^[32]

South Wales seemed to expose great variation in contemporary lithologies. If fossils made possible the correlation of these lithologies, then they would allow the reconstruction of the relationships between past environments, their faunas and the associated geomorphological processes. Such information would enable De la Beche’s illustrations of ancient worlds, illustrations which sought to question the validity of the universal System, as extolled by Murchison’s Silurian. De la Beche’s views were adopted by all his disciples and coloured their interpretation of phenomena in the field. As Ramsay and the other field parties began to spread their attentions into new areas they too felt they had found evidence of local environmental regimes.

Strange things are turning up in the world of extinct organisms. During the fair part of today we plied away at the exposed & decomposing section at the private bathing ground. There we found a goodly supply of shells & a vasty proportion of corals, some of them new to this section. Also some bits of Trilobites. But the most singular & to my minds eye the most satisfactory part of the business is, that at that place, where the rocks are decomposed & unaffected by the stream, they present exactly the same appearance as the fossiliferous rocks at Newcastle Emlyn, containing many of the same fossils, developed in exactly the same manner when fractured. This taken in connexion with the Northern dip I take to be a beautiful proof that change of conditions & not difference of age is the main cause of the difference in the rocks N. & S. of Towey.^[33]

By the end of February 1842, sections for Skrinkle and Marloes Bays had been drawn, upon which Phillips marked the lines of fossils. However, he was now beginning to regret his over-enthusiasm for fieldwork and consequent neglect of his palaeontological duties; without an assistant the task of drawing the fossils was too much for the winter period – so vast had been the store of fossils assembled in York. The collection was disorganised and difficult to work through and would occupy six rather than four months.^[34] He would have to work on the Welsh fossils of 1841 in the following winter also; ‘those which may be collected this year I do not wish to be accumulated so heavily’.^[35] For the next season, Phillips intended to draw, describe and group specimens in the field as they were extracted; the mode of operation which had originally been adopted.

Into the Malverns

With his house rented for a whole year from April 1842,^[36] Phillips sought to plan his time carefully. The work of the Survey during this season was to extend the mapping from Llandovery to the Severn (i.e. the Brecon and Ross Sheets). Phillips would take up station at Ledbury on the edge of the Malverns, ‘in the centre of three Silurian districts’, for the first two months with the aim of joining up with Williams’ work in the Forest of Dean. The younger workers would undertake to complete the work in South Wales. All this would prepare them well for an invasion of Wales: ‘we can rush into the wilderness of Wales with all our forces & strength of acquired knowledge and there remain till the weather & winter drive us out’, Phillips told De la Beche.^[37] The invasion would begin after Phillips’ summer recess in Manchester to make preparations for the meeting of the British Association.

In April, he set off for the Malverns, his first instinct being to trace the lines of strata and not collect fossils.^[38] His winter work had taught him the consequences of unbridled collecting. Each day, however, he met with temptation: ‘Fossils abound, & compel me to fill my pockets but I do not yet mean to collect any thing till I have well traced the geographical areas in the districts hereabouts’.^[39] ‘These I avoid collecting till the whole physique is understood, and the right points for collecting well determined’.^[40] ‘This is a beautiful fossil region, & I am marking a series of points for collection but at present collect not at all’.^[41] Rocks, however, were collected.

Whilst Phillips resolved himself to mapmaking, his sister Ann who generally accompanied him to his summer locations was less constrained and often, in the company of her maid, took to collecting fossils while Phillips traced boundaries.^[42] These assistants made some useful fossil discoveries later exploited by the Survey collectors but none more so than a fossiliferous conglomerate:

My Sister has made a very curious discovery, while I was shewing Sedgwick some of my discoveries in the Malverns… My Sister, meanwhile, took a careful walk on the West side of the mountains & found the Silurian fossils in abundance in masses of felspathose conglomerates, in fact Malvern rocks recomposed!^[43]

This provided a relative date for some of the igneous rocks found in the hills; Phillips sought to publish notice of it immediately.^[44] The fossil bed was to remain in situ and kept away from the fossil collecting hammers of James and Aveline, reserved for a ‘special hammering’ when De la Beche was next in the area.

Phillips found fieldwork in the Malverns easy. After one month, he felt it would just take one more month to make it ‘all clear as sunshine’,^[45] and indeed by the end of May he had mapped virtually all of the Malvern Hills but had not ‘fossilized’. Once again, Phillips suggested that the act of fossil collecting should be delegated to lowlier members of the team: ‘It is rich & would be a capital bit of a school for the younger members of the body, in every respect’.^[46]

Just after Phillips’ return, in early July, the ‘younger members’ – James and Aveline – arrived to take up fossil collecting. With Phillips’ directions, ‘they will soon clear this district of fossils’ while he extended his lines southwards.^[47] The young David Williams also arrived, having already proven his ‘reputed skill & good eye for fossils’.^[48] By the end of August, Phillips had all but finished his geological map of the region. The Malverns were to Siluria, what Scarborough Castle Hill had been to Yorkshire; he wrote to De la Beche urging him to come – ‘upon the whole the Malvern section is the best you can see, in this land’.^[49]

Phillips intended to draw up an account of the Malvern fossils before leaving the area and had, by the end of October, completed the report, map and sections.^[50] The fossil plates and descriptions still awaited completion. The remainder of the year involved more map work, this time in Gloucestershire where he found the base maps laughably inaccurate with seas replacing hills, probably with the intent of foiling the French but also confounding the English. Murchison’s geological map again showed errors: ‘Then as to Murchison, he has been in a mesmeric dream. Where for above 5 sq. miles he marks Lias, ‘by the Erythrean Sea’ it is all Red & Keuper!’^[51] Lonsdale’s mapping proved far more reliable. In December, Phillips returned to York in fine spirits – the result of walking some 1500 to 2000 miles.^[52] The 12 casks of fossils which had been collected remained in Malvern.

Progress on the Welsh front

During his summer in the Malverns, Phillips also guided Aveline and James in their fossil collecting and mapping work in Wales. Indeed, Wales remained of constant interest to his interpretation of the geology of the Malverns and the other related exposures at Usk, May Hill, Woolhope and Shropshire. These localities appeared to Phillips to lie in a different faunal province from those seen in Wales in the previous year. The sediments also differed. Phillips saw the boundary between these faunal provinces as running along ‘the Brecon road’ and urgently sought boxes of fossils from Llandovery which lay on this line of parting. ‘This is very curious & leads to very fine reflections concerning the Antient ranges of sediments and the distributions of organic life’.^[53] In Manchester he had also been able to draw up fossil lists based on those specimens he and his sister had collected in May which showed the mixing of Upper and Lower Ludlow fossils in one bed but with no sign of Caradoc forms. He intended to extend these faunal comparisons to the Wenlock limestone as well.^[54]

News of the Llandovery fauna would come from Ramsay who spent much of the summer tracing boundaries, and with Williams’ occasional help, collecting fossils in those areas largely left unexplored by Phillips and the others in the preceding year. To Ramsay’s surprise normally rather barren strata, such as conglomerates, which the collectors may have overlooked, were now generating an interesting fauna. Ramsay, a twenty eight year old bachelor, was also able to use his popularity with the native women to organise large informal collecting parties which succeeded in locating ‘Caradoc’ fossils, including new species, where previously none were known. On this occasion there were nine in the group:

Miss Williams is a first rate hand, & would make a valuable assistant!! In fact all the ladies deserve an especial vote of thanks for their obliging perseverance & admirable skill. Mrs. Johnes blistered her neck in the good cause.^[55]

Ramsay, however, was able to drag himself away – although a little altered around the edges his ‘stony heart’ was ‘not of the Metamorphic order… With £500 a year, there is no saying what a man might be weak enough to do, but with £150 he must sing dumb’.^[56]

Amongst barren layers of flags and grits he found ‘rocks full of fossil bands’ but few of these would find their way into museum drawers – ‘yet so cut up by cleavage, that I question if it is possible to get a single tolerable specimen out of them’.^[57] The fossils which entered the museum cabinet were generally not those which had enabled the determination of relationships in the field; they were collected separately for the purposes of illustration both in publication and in the museum once those relations had been established. As with the other wings of the survey, particular days were devoted to fossil collecting when localities known to be productive were revisited.^[58] With David Williams’ help these efforts were proving effective, particularly in locating univalves. Each day’s fossils suggested new correlations, and seemed to undermine preconceptions of the ‘rolly-polly’ geology: the deeply folded and dipping strata, and changing lithology – which might indicate geographical rather than temporal variation in deposition and fauna – made this difficult. Caradoc fossils here and there proved useful for correlation – as they did for Phillips at Malvern.^[59]

In August, progress remained slow as Ramsay attempted to maximise field rigour: ‘I have still a good deal to the north to examine critically, & without such examination one might as well geologise this country on the top of the mail’.^[60] It had been by this latter method that Smith had managed to trace the major formations of Somerset geology into Lincolnshire and Yorkshire; the geology of Wales was an entirely different matter. Even in September, Ramsay’s letters continued to exclaim with excitement the surprising nature of the local landscape. ‘The world is surely coming to an end’, he wrote to De la Beche in September 1842, ‘and the whole of fossiliferous nature as heretofore understood gone to universal & everlasting smash’.^[61] Familiar fossils were turning up where they had, according to the past months of survey work, no right to. Was the range of these fossils greater than previously supposed or were assumed stratigraphically separated strata actually contemporary deposits?

David Williams spent the summer flitting between Survey teams using his special fossil collecting skills to enhance the effectiveness of the work in both South Wales and Malvern. In between times he was engaged in measuring the Carboniferous Limestone in the vicinity of Bristol, where he produced a measured section totalling a thickness of 2296 feet and composed of 500 beds – a mean resolution of about 4ft 6ins.

Mr. Phillips will find no difficulty to identify each bed when he comes to put in the fossils, every care has been taken to describe the characteristic of each bed and I have marked such fossils as I am acquainted with, which I hope will be found to be useful.^[62]

Williams’ findings were, however, debated on the spot by Sanders; the latter preferring fossil evidence to the measured section.

Mr. Sanders is now willing to admit these beds do belong to the upper limestone grits and shale, he declares after all, there is nothing like the Measured Section, that fossils cannot always be depended on, when questions of Junction lines are to be settled.^[63]

De la Beche had, in November 1840 acquired the services of his old friend William Sanders to complete the Survey’s work around Bristol as well as draw sections of the strata exposed during the laying of the Great Western Railway, a project supported by the British Association. Sanders was a man of independent means (though still living with his parents), a reliable geologist – ‘He has cautiousness large’^[64] – and undertook the work for expenses only which De la Beche had at first intimated to be £100 per season.^[65] Sanders was perhaps typical of that class of provincial philosopher whose role would be usurped as regional geology fell under the nationalising influence of the Survey:

I have long intended to complete a Geological map of the Bristol district, but thinking no one would be likely to supersede me I have never worked hard at it – in short only when convenient opportunities presented themselves & the only part completed is the immediate neighbourhood of Bristol – and though I had since determined to proceed with the map without further delay it is now manifest that my time & labour will under present circumstances be thrown away unless they are made subservient to your more finished mode of proceeding – I feel therefore there is no course to take between wholly abandoning an investigation which has hitherto afforded me much gratification, & consenting to devote myself entirely to the matter as you propose – The latter alternative therefore I am inclined to adopt.^[66]

Sanders complied with De la Beche’s request and by the beginning of 1842 had completed the work. He looked forward to the next season and assisting Williams when he arrived.

From the directions you gave me, I have assumed that you wish me still to continue one of your Honour’s most noble company of Peripatetics & I have been making preparations accordingly. I have enlarged my pony into a horse & the phaeton to match, as better adapted for greater distances without increasing expense & as I shall continue carefully to estimate the time employed, I shall begin work again in the middle of February.^[67]

But to his great disappointment, De la Beche told him his services would not be required, and indeed that his expenses in the previous year had been too much. His employment had simply been a contingency. Sanders felt used and began to express his dissatisfaction widely. In a move to prevent this upwelling of ill-feeling, however, De la Beche stepped in, at Phillips’ request, and encouraged Sanders to complete his work within the vicinity of Bristol. This he did slowly having had to abandon the Phaeton and take to foot in order to cut expenses. He would continue to give De la Beche reason for concern over the following seasons particularly as it appeared that he would not release his documents to the Survey.

Whilst the collections gathered by the Survey in these early years were largely derived directly from its own workers, it would not resist acquiring material from established collections if possible. Thus Benjamin Heywood Bright’s^[68] collection at Brand Lodge, his Malverns residence, and at nearby Colwall Green, were made available to the Survey. Phillips selected about half the collection and curated the rest.^[69] Also at Tortworth, in the yard of the parsonage of the late Rev George Cooke they found a ‘vast’ and ‘melancholy’ heap of fossils, ‘but every individual stone was beautiful’.^[70] Cooke, a keen amateur geologist was well known for his collection, having, like Bright, supplied fossils for Murchison’s The Silurian System. The Survey’s Capt. Henry James attempted to acquire the collection but found local collectors keen to capitalise on the ignorance of Cooke’s beneficiaries who did not know its value. William Walton, a well-known collector from Bath, for example, tried to acquire the fossils for £20 but as James admitted ‘they are well worth a great deal more than that sum’; the offer was rejected.

The Survey’s fieldwork during the summers of 1841 and 1842 transformed the nature of regional geological research. In the 1820s this had largely been the domain of the provincial philosopher, which included the likes of Lonsdale, Conybeare, Phillips and numerous others. The provincial amateur continued to maintain his status even as the science found its ‘heroes’; their local knowledge and collections underpinned higher level research. With the surveys of South Wales and the English borderland local knowledge was dismissed in favour of first-hand observation. Fossil collecting was integrated into this new approach, as juniors in the team followed boundary chasing with cask filling. The new team-based approach would ensure that all shared a mission, deficiencies in rigour could be monitored and corrected, and research would direct both data and fossil gathering.

^[1] For analysis of the Survey’s early years see Secord (1986b) & Cumming (1985); more descriptive accounts can be found in Geikie (1895); North (1936); Flett (1937); Bailey (1952); Wilson (1985).

^[2] Phillips, Usk, to De la Beche, 2 April 1841, NMW.

^[3] Phillips, to De la Beche, 1, 2, 8, 9, 15 April 1841, NMW.

^[4] Stratigraphic and geographic, one supposes.

^[5] His visit to Lee had to be postponed as his fossils were still in packing crates.

^[6] Phillips, Usk, to De la Beche, 2 April 1841, NMW.

^[7] Phillips, Tenby, to De la Beche, 28 May 1841, NMW.

^[8] Phillips, Tenby, to De la Beche, 22 May 1841, NMW.

^[9] Phillips, Tenby, to De la Beche, 28 May 1841, NMW.

^[10] Phillips, Tenby, to De la Beche, 28 May 1841, NMW.

^[11] Phillips, Bristol to De la Beche, London, 18 August 1841, NMW.

^[12] Phillips, Bristol to De la Beche, London, 22 August 1841, NMW.

^[13] Phillips, Bristol to De la Beche, [August 1841]. NMW.

^[14] James, St Clears to De la Beche, Haverfordwest, 31 August 1841, NMW 793.

^[15] Phillips, Carmarthen to De la Beche, 16 & 21 October 1841, NMW.

^[16] Phillips, St Clears to De la Beche, 4 October 1841, NMW.

^[17] Phillips, Carmarthen to De la Beche, 16 October 1841, NMW.

^[18] Phillips, Llandovery to De la Beche, 19 December 1841, NMW.

^[19] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 6 May 1842, NMW.

^[20] Phillips, St Clears to De la Beche, 11 October 1841, NMW. In the event this turned out not to be true as William Salter re-logged the coastal sections of Pembrokeshire for the Geological Survey in the 1850s and collected considerable quantities of fossils.

^[21] Phillips, Narbeth to De la Beche, 28 November 1841, NMW.

^[22] Phillips, Carmarthen to De la Beche, 29 November 1841, NMW.

^[23] Phillips, Carmarthen to De la Beche, 29 November 1841, NMW.

^[24] Phillips asked Harcourt, who apparently knew Peel well, to write in his name to convince the government of the need for its continuance. Phillips to De la Beche, 26 October 1841, NMW. Buckland also sought to sway Peel’s decision. Phillips to De la Beche, 8 November 1841, NMW.

^[25] Phillips, Llandeilo to De la Beche, 13 November 1841, NMW.

^[26] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 14 & 18 April 1842, NMW.

^[27] Phillips complained that Murchison would remove the Magnesian Limestone from the Palaeozoic where Phillips had put it; but Phillips knew the risks of being a ‘plainspoken friend’ to Murchison ‘among so many flatterers’: ‘he might advance (perhaps) & he might check (perhaps) my power of being useful to science’. Phillips, York to De la Beche, 31 March 1842, NMW.

^[28] Phillips, York to De la Beche, 28 March 1842, NMW.

^[29] Phillips, York to De la Beche, 18 March 1842, NMW.

^[30] David Hiram Williams. (d. 15 November 1841) rapidly rose to colonial service only to die tragically in India, [W. Theobold] Calcutta to De la Beche, 7 December 1841, NMW 2025.

^[31] Phillips. Llandovery to De la Beche, 1 January 1842, NMW.

^[32] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 23 May 1842, NMW.

^[33] Ramsay, Llandeilo to De la Beche, 20 June 1842, NMW 1711.

^[34] Phillips, York to De la Beche, 15 March 1842, NMW.

^[35] Phillips, York to De la Beche, 28 March 1842, NMW.

^[36] This was later changed to 9 months.

^[37] Phillips, York to De la Beche, 22 February 1842, NMW.

^[38] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 8 April 1842, NMW.

^[39] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 14 April 1842, NMW.

^[40] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 17 April 1842, NMW.

^[41] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, Saturday 7 May 1842, NMW.

^[42] Phillips, [Malvern] to De la Beche, 10 May 1842, NMW.

^[43] Phillips, Staunton, to De la Beche, 5 August 1842, NMW.

^[44] Phillips (1842).

^[45] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 27 April 1842, NMW.

^[46] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 27 May 1842, NMW.

^[47] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 2 & 8 July 1842 NMW.

^[48] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 21 July 1842, NMW.

^[49] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 7 August 1842, NMW.

^[50] A few gaps in some lines remained in heavily wooded country and under drift which could be investigated in the following year. Phillips, Malverns to De la Beche, 10 October 1842, NMW.

^[51] Phillips, Gloucester to De la Beche, 28 November 1842, NMW.

^[52] Phillips, York to De la Beche, 24 December 1842, NMW.

^[53] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 17 July 1842, NMW.

^[54] Phillips, Malvern to De la Beche, 13 July 1842, NMW.

^[55] Ramsay, Pumsaint to De la Beche, 2 August 1842, NMW 1712.

^[56] Ramsay, Pumsaint to De la Beche, 30 August 1842, NMW 1717. Secord (1986b:241) suggests that De la Beche kept wages low in order to stem their marital desires. As social status was directly proportional to income, the financial costs of marriage became the dominant factor in determining whether it was desirable. ‘The real fear was that the available financial resources were inadequate to sustain the burden of social expectation’ (Bourne 1986:93). Edward Forbes made just this point, in 1850, when Joseph Beete Jukes (10 October 1811 – 29 July 1869) hoped to take the Chair at Trinity College, Dublin, which paid only £250: ‘I quite see that Jukes could not hold a gentlemanly position as a married man without the joint incomes, but trust that will be effected’. Forbes, Dublin to De la Beche, 19 September 1850, NMW 579. However, Ramsay would soon earn his £300 per year and a large number of Survey workers would take wives.

^[57] Ramsay, Pumsaint to De la Beche, 5 August 1842, NMW 1714.

^[58] Ramsay, Pumsaint to De la Beche, 10 August 1842, NMW 1719.

^[59] See Secord (1986a) for significance to stratigraphic debate.

^[60] Ramsay, Pumsaint to De la Beche, 30 August 1842, NMW 1717.

^[61] Ramsay, Pumsaint to De la Beche, 15 September 1842, NMW 1720.

^[62] Williams, Lower Redland to De la Beche, 26 July 1842, NMW 2123.

^[63] Williams, Lower Redland to De la Beche, 26 July 1842, NMW 2123.

^[64] Stutchbury, Bristol to De la Beche, 7 September 1841, NMW 2002.

^[65] Sanders, Bristol to De la Beche, 21 February 1842, NMW 1862.

^[66] Sanders, Bristol to De la Beche, 13 Nov 1840, NMW 1858.

^[67] Sanders, Bristol to De la Beche, 28 January 1842, NMW 1861.

^[68] Benjamin Heywood Bright (14 August 1787 – 26 March 1843).

^[69] Bright, Bath to De la Beche, Brand Lodge, 24 August 1842, NMW 109.

^[70] Phillips, Gloucester to De la Beche, 6 December 1842, NMW Phillips; James, Wotton under Edge to De la Beche, 8 December 1842, NMW 747; Cleevely (1983:87 & 301).

Simon Knell

Books and essays by Simon Knell