¹ For sensitive and illuminating critique of the model, and for excellent introductory bibliography to the sociology of professionalization, see Reingold, Nathan, ‘Definitions and speculations: the professionalization of science in America in the nineteenth century’, in Oleson, A. and Brown, S. C. (eds.), The pursuit of knowledge in the early American republic (Baltimore and London, 1976), pp. 33–69Google Scholar, and the review of that volume by Morrell, Jack in Nature, CCLXV (1977), 191CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hahn, R., ‘Scientific careers in eighteenth-century France’, in Crosland, M. (ed.), The emergence of science in western Europe (London, 1975), pp. 127–38.Google Scholar The writings of Ivan Illich provide another critical perspective upon the common wisdom about professionalization: see most recently Illich, Ivan et al. , Disabling professions (London, 1977).Google Scholar And see now Susan Faye Cannon's important Science in culture (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

² Knight, D. M., ‘Science and professionalism in England, 1770–1830’, Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of the History of Science (Tokyo, 1971), I, 53–67Google Scholar: nevertheless, this discussion is stimulating, and should be consulted.

³ There is of course an important semantic dimension, for it had been recognized at least as early as the days of Babbage and Whewell that the ‘want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively’ signalled the absence of a scientific profession. Little research has unfortunately been done, though see Ross, Sydney, ‘Scientist’: the story of a word', Annals of Science, XVIII (1962), 65–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and more generally Williams, R., Keywords (London, 1976).Google Scholar

⁴ For a well-documented exception see Russell, C. A., Coley, N. G. and Roberts, G. K., Chemists by profession. The origins and rise of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (Milton Keynes, 1977).Google Scholar For the traditional professions in England see Carr-Saunders, A. M. and Wilson, P. A., The professions (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar; Reader, W. J., Professional men (London, 1966)Google Scholar; and , N. and Parry, J., The rise of the medical profession (London, 1976).Google Scholar See also Reingold, , ‘Definitions and speculations’, p. 48.Google Scholar

⁵ In this article I concentrate on those who spent a significant amount of their lives doing geology. Using Reingold's distinction of men of science into ‘researchers’, ‘practitioners’, and ‘cultivators’, I am writing almost exclusively about ‘researchers’. I shall however suggest that the other two groups have a history shaped by their relations to the ‘researchers’.

⁶ See O'Connor, J. G. and Meadows, A. J., ‘Specialization and professionalization in British geology’, Social Studies of Science, VI (1976), 77–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roy Porter, ‘The Natural Sciences Tripos and the “Cambridge School of Geology” 1850–1914’ (unpublished typescript); and Allen, D. E., The naturalist in Britain (London, 1976), ch. 3.Google Scholar

⁷ Sociology emanating from the Weberian idea of a scientific vocation is important: Weber, M., ‘Science as a vocation’, in (eds.) Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, From Max Weber: essays in sociology (Routledge paperback, London, 1970), pp. 129–56Google Scholar; Merton, R. K., ‘Science and democratic social structure’, in Social theory and social structure (rev. edn, Glencoe, 1968), pp. 550–61Google Scholar; Veblen, T., The place of science in modern civilization and other essays (3rd printing, New York, 1932)Google Scholar; and on a somewhat different tack, Ben-David, J., The scientist's role in society (Englewood Cliffs, 1971)Google Scholar, and Feuer, L. S., The scientific intellectual (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

The secondary nature of professionalization in Britain spotlights the primacy of the amateur tradition. For this, see Allen, , The naturalist; Cardwell, D. S. L., The organisation of science in England (rev. edn, London, 1972)Google Scholar; Berman, Morris, ‘“Hegemony” and the amateur tradition in British science’, Journal of Social History, Winter, 1975), pp. 30–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and more generally, Anderson, Perry, ‘Origins of the present crisis’, in Anderson, P. et al. (eds.), Towards socialism (London, 1965), pp. 11–52.Google Scholar

⁸ For exceptions to the disappointingly small amount of work done on the history of the scientific ethos, see Outram, Dorinda, ‘The language of natural power: the Eloges of Georges Cuvier and the public language of nineteenth century science’, History of Science, XVI (1978), 153–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sonntag, Otto, ‘The motivations of the scientist: the self-image of Albrecht von Haller’, Isis, LXV (1974), 336–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knight, David, ‘The scientist as sage’, Studies in Romanticism, VI (1967), 65–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ For British geology up to the early nineteenth century see Porter, Roy, The making of geology (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar, and the literature listed in its bibliography.

¹⁰ It is not worth documenting such commonplace phrases. See however the terms used by William Nicolson to describe William Whiston: Nichols, J. (ed.), Letters on various subjects…to and from William Nicolson (London, 1809), pp. 90 ff.Google Scholar For a teasing, disapproving characterization of a virtuoso see Sharp, L. W. (ed. ), Early letters of Robert Woodrow, 1698–1709 (Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1937), p. xxviiGoogle Scholar; but Edward Lhwyd was happy to apply the term to himself: Nichols, J. (ed.), Literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century, 9 vols (London, 1812–1816), I, 318.Google Scholar See also Houghton, W. E. Jr, ‘The English virtuoso in the seventeenth century’, Journal of the History of Ideas, III (1942), 51–73, 190–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Thus Ray called ‘Divinity’ his ‘proper function’. Gunther, R. W. T., Further correspondence of John Ray (London, 1928), p. 163.Google Scholar See Porter, , Making of geology, pp. 22–30.Google Scholar

¹² Thus Martin Lister was more involved in other field-sciences and in medicine; Ralph Thoresby was chiefly an antiquarian; Robert Hooke predominantly an experimental Natural philosopher. Both William Nicolson and Robert Wodrow effectively abandoned their interest as their clerical careers prospered.

¹³ Publishing constituted practically the only source of income from Earth science. But their works were perforce for a narrow, scholarly market. Readership limitations precluded seventeenth-century Earth scientists from writing best-sellers in the manner of Lyell, Mantell or Geikie in the nineteenth. For the trials suffered by Lhwyd in securing even publication of his Lithophylacii Britannici ichnographia (London, 1699)Google Scholar, see Gunther, R. W. T., Early science in Oxford, XIV (Oxford, 1945), 360 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Cf. Porter, Roy, ‘The industrial revolution and the rise of the science of geology’, in Teich, M. and Young, R. M. (eds.), New perspectives in the history of science (London, 1973), pp. 320–43.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cf. Porter, Roy, ‘William Hobbs of Weymouth and his The earth generated and anatomized (?1715)’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, VII (1976), 333–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Porter, , Making of geology, p. 23.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Porter, , Making of geology, pp. 32 f.Google Scholar; and Neve, M. and Porter, R., ‘Alexander Catcott, glory and geology’, The British Journal for the History of Science, X (1977), 37–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Thus for Burnet see Jacob, M. C. and Lockwood, W. A., ‘Political millenarianism and Burnet's Sacred theory’, Science Studies, II (1972), 265–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, more generally, for theories, Collier, K. B., Cosmogonies of our fathers (New York, 1934).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The one exception is John Hutchinson who did produce a chain of disciples to popularize his Moses's Principia (London, 1724–1727). The reason here is because he was also founding a semi-schismatic sect within the Church of England. See Kuhn, A., ‘Glory or gravity: Hutchinson vs Newton’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXII (1961), 303–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²¹ Cf. Porter, , Making of geology, p. 115.Google Scholar

²² Which of course differentiates Britain's experience considerably from that of central European absolutisms, where science tended to become professionalized as part of a bureaucratic Kameralwissenschaft.

²³ And this is not to include aristocratic collectors, like the earl of Bute, the duchess of Portland and Charles Greville. Furthermore, second and third lines of dilettante gentlemen backed up the chief work of the researchers: men such as the ‘humble admirer of the fossil study’, Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's friend, Dr Robert Taylor: see Nichols, J. (ed.), Illustrations of the literary history of the eighteenth century (8 vols., London, 1817–1858), IV, 775.Google Scholar

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²⁹ Cf. SirGeikie, A., Memoir of John Michell (Cambridge, 1918).Google Scholar

³⁰ Cf. Harvey, R. A., ‘The life of Henry Cavendish, 1731–1810’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sheffield, 1971).Google Scholar

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³⁴ Cf. Pollard, S., The genesis of modern management (London, 1965).Google Scholar Of course, such professional engineers and consultants shunned some aspects of gentlemanly, amateur geology, e.g. Smith's rejection of ‘dilettante’ collecting habits (see Porter, , The making of geology, p. 157Google Scholar). Yet they were also in fact deeply beholden to upper-class employers – for instance, John Farey worked for the duke of Bedford – or scientific patrons – Sir Joseph Banks was patron of Farey and Smith, and the earl of Buchan the patron of John Williams. Hence, willy-nilly, they adopted features of its tone and values. William Hooson opened his Miners dictionary (Wrexham, 1747), ‘Gentle Readers’. Robert Bakewell, the surveyor, could stress almost as strongly as Hutton, the gentleman, that the apex of geology was the cultivation of wonder at Nature. They themselves stressed of course the professional capacities which elevated them above ‘uneducated working miners’. Cf. Weindling, P. J., ‘Geological controversy and its historiography: The pre-history of the Geological Society of London’, in Jordanova, L. J. and Porter, Roy, Images of the earth (Chalfont St Giles, forthcoming 1979).Google Scholar

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³⁶ Inkster, Ian, ‘Science and society in the metropolis: a preliminary examination of the social and institutional context of the Askesian Society of London, 1796–1807’, Annals of Science, XXXIV (1977), 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁸ Some were complicit – willy-nilly – in the snobberies of gentlemanly advancement. Thus the peppery De La Beche came from a family which had been plain Beach two generations back. George Poulett Thompson's name mutated to Scrope on his marrying the heiress, Emma Phipps Scrope.

³⁹ Edmonds, J. M., ‘The first geological lecture course at the University of London 1831’, Annals of Science, XXXII (1975), 257–75. p. 260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A man had to be moderately affluent to accept such a chair, its remuneration being slight.

⁴⁰ For such snobberies, see Page, Leroy E., ‘The rivalry between Charles Lyell and Roderick Murchison’, The British Journal for the History of Science, IX (1976), 156–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bynum, W. F., ‘Charles Lyell and the antiquity of man’ (unpublished paper given to the Lyell Centenary Conference, London, 1975)Google Scholar; Geikie, A., Life of Sir Roderick I. Murchison (2 vols., London, 1875), 11, 179.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Cf. the letter from Aikin to Greenough, 17 May 1813, in the Greenough Correspondence, Cambridge University Library; and Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘Charles Lyell, F.R.S. (1797–1875), and his London lectures on geology, 1832–3’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, XXIX (1975), 231–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴³ [Fitton, William], ‘Review of Transactions of the Geological Society of London, vol. iii’, Edinburgh Review, XXIX (1818), 70–94, at p. 70.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Buckland, William, Vindiciae geologicae, or the connexion of geology with religion explained (Oxford, 1820), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For Sedgwick's style of teaching, see Porter, , ‘The Natural Sciences Tripos’, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ For elaboration of the points to be made in the succeeding paragraphs, see Porter, , ‘The Natural Sciences Tripos’, pp. 5f.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Quixote of course being the quintessential, pure, disinterested distrait gentleman. Note the aristocratic superiority in Conybeare's phrase, ‘I partake more largely of the spirit of the Knight of La Mancha than of his craven squire, and prefer the enterprise and adventure of geological errantry to rich castles and luxurious entertainments’ (quoted in Porter, , The making of geology, p. 141).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Quoted in Gordon, Mrs, The life and correspondence of William Buckland, DD, FRS (London, 1894), p. xGoogle Scholar. Romantic and military metaphors for geological activity were rooted deep in the consciousness. ‘The history of geology is the chronicle of a brilliant succession of forced marches’: Judd, J. J., ‘Anniversary address of the president’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, XLIII (1887), 38–82, at p. 54.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Buckland deemed geology ‘nobler’ than mineralogy: Vindictae geologicae, p. 5. For this ladder of ideality, in which geology claimed a high rung, see Cannon, W. F., ‘The normative role of science in early Victorian thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXV (1964), 487–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whence this urgent need to present geology as a gentlemanly science? In part it was because it was new. In part it was to counter the deep-rooted satirical tradition which had represented investigation of mere mineral objects as dirty, demeaning, and small minded. Eighteenth-century fieldworkers had moreover been harrassed as spies, exciseofficers and poachers, and this continued into the nineteenth century. Hence geologists sought oblique integration by making a conspicuous show of themselves, enjoying their own oddity. For confirmation of this, see Geikie, A., A long life's work: an autobiography (London, 1934), pp. 47f.Google Scholar; Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, pp. 48fGoogle Scholar. Also, the only people, apart from geologists, who applied hammers to stones were stonebreakers, i.e. parish paupers for whom sometimes geologists were mistaken. Cf. Sedgwick's tale of the day he was thus misidentified, and given a charity shilling: Clark, J. W. and Hughes, T. McK., The life and letters of A. Sedgwick (2 vols., Cambridge, 1890), 11, 573–4Google Scholar. The gentlemanly Sedgwick relished the irony of thus earning a shilling.

⁵⁰ See Porter, , The making of geology, p. 176f.Google Scholar; and Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘The foundation of the Geological Society of London’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 1 (1963), 325–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ See Nicolson, M. H., Mountain gloom and mountain glory (Ithaca, New York, 1959), pp. 371f.Google Scholar; for religious romanticism in Davy as a geologist, see Treneer, A., The mercurial chemist: a life of Sir Humphry Davy (London, 1963)Google Scholar. For nineteenth-century modifications of the ideal of a gentleman see Newsome, D. H., Two classes of men: Platonism and English Romantic thought (London, 1974)Google Scholar; id., Godliness and good learning: four studies on a Victorian ideal (London, 1961)Google Scholar; and Wright, C., ‘The philosophical and historical background to theories of liberal education, 1780–1850’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1974).Google Scholar

⁵² Geikie, Archibald, Outlines of field geology (5th edn, London, 1902), p. 9.Google Scholar

⁵³ Page, D., Chips and chapters (Edinburgh, 1869), pp. 183–4Google Scholar. Page himself was chiefly a general scientific writer, who undertook little original fieldwork of his own. He was here in effect mediating hegemonic gentlemanly values.

⁵⁴ Davy's letter is quoted by Treneer, , Mercurial chemist, p. 80Google Scholar; Arber's letter is taken from his obituary in the Geological Magazine, n.s. decade 6, v (1918), 426–31, p. 428. Compare Murchison's statement ‘geology has fortified in me this sense of natural religion’: Geikie, , Life of Murchison, 1, 263Google Scholar. For an admirable exploration of the traditions of pastoral developed within the myth of the field, see Outram, ‘The language of natural power’.

⁵⁵ Buckland expounded a similar pedagogics in his Vindiciae geologicae, arguing that the real utility of the science lay not in economic advantage but in broadening the mind towards knowledge of God.

⁵⁶ Weindling, ‘Pre-history’. See also Rudwick, ‘Founding’, and Porter, , The making of geology, ch. 8.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The Geological Society continued through the century to be remarkably indifferent to practical geology. The first presidential address which dealt primarily with national resources was that by Prestwich, Joseph, ‘Anniversary address of the president’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, XXVIII (1872), xxvii–xcGoogle Scholar; the first dealing almost exclusively with coal was by Watts: ‘Anniversary address of the president’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, LXVIII (1912), xlviii–ci.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ See Porter, ‘The Industrial revolution’.

⁵⁹ For a -good example see the sneers of William Fitton in his (anonymous) review of Smith's, WilliamA delineation of the strata of England and Wales, Edinburgh Review, XXIX (1818), 310–37, at p. 311a.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ It should go without saying that any attempt to hang an evaluative contrast on the distinction between ‘scientists’ and ‘amateurs’ for this period would be gratuitous and misleading. The pejorative term ‘amateurish’ dates only from the 1860s. Highly illuminating on this whole subject is Berman, Morris, Social change and scientific organization: The Royal Institution 1799–1844 (London, 1977).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Sedgwick was one who maintained the gentlemanly trait of never writing a complete geological book: though in his case complex temperamental problems were also responsible.

⁶² Worth noting here is Conybeare's, W. D. dissection of the errors in The character of Moses established for veracity as a historian (2 vols., Bath, 1813–1815)Google Scholar, by Joseph Townsend, one of the older and more wide-ranging amateurs. See Conybeare's letter to Greenough of 18 February 1813 in the Greenough Correspondence, Cambridge University Library.

⁶³ Cf. Porter, , The making of geology, pp. 146f.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Cf. Allen, , The naturalist, ch.3Google Scholar; Babbage, C., Reflections on the decline of science in England and on some of its causes (London, 1830), p. 45.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Babbage, , Reflections, pp. 10–11Google Scholar, wrote that ‘the pursuit of science does not in England constitute a distinct profession, as it does in many other countries. It is therefore, on that ground alone, deprived of many of the advantages which attach to professions’. I do not think these remarks apply to geology.

⁶⁶ Almost no research has been done on geologists' incomes (a mark of gentlemanly historians). None of the printed lives and letters of nineteenth-century geologists delves into so vulgar a subject. I have not here attempted to tabulate incomes, because my information is very partial, and to make it more complete would constitute a research project in itself. Even the salaries and expenses paid by the Geological Survey are not available in a coherent form, and need to be assembled piece-meal (for which see the forthcoming D.Phil, thesis by P. McCartney, Wolfson College, Oxford).

⁶⁷ Rudwick, ‘Charles Lyell’.

⁶⁸ Porter, Roy, ‘Charles Lyell and the principles of the history of geology’, The British Journal for the History of Science, IX (1976), 91–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁹ Thus Lyell scarcely deigned to mention De La Beche's Survey work. Murchison and Sedgwick thought he was threatening their scientific property. Murchison labelled De La Beche a ‘jobber’ – ironically since the epithet applies so nicely to the Lord of Grauwacke himself, during his own later reign over the Survey. See the fundamental article by Morrell, Jack, ‘London institutions and Lyell's career, 1820–41’ The British Journal for the History of Science, IX (1976), 132–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁰ Thus late in the nineteenth century the term amateur came to be used in geology, not so much in contradistinction to ‘professional’, but rather to denote something less full-time and less serious than a career interest. When Lee, John Edward called his volume Notebook of an amateur geologist (London, 1881)Google Scholar he was indicating that his book was aimed to delight, not to impart technical instruction. As late as the 1860s, genuinely amateur geologists were still leading the science on a national level: R. A. C. Godwin-Austen, the Surrey landowner, J.P. and deputy lieutenant, would be a good example. By the end of the century the typical amateur was a part-time geologist, whose innovative work was essentially confined to the local level. A good instance would be John Clavell Mansel-Pleydell, Dorset landowner and high sheriff in 1875, whose obituary described him as‘almost the last of the race of country-gentlemen of high social position who took any deep interest in geology’. Geological Magazine, n.s., decade 4, IX (1902), 335–6.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Geikie, , Life of Murchison, 1, 386–7.Google Scholar

⁷² Morrell, ‘London institutions’, is illuminating here. See also Geikie, Memoir of Ramsay, quoting Ramsay (25 February 1852: p. 197): ‘Good scrimmage between Sedgwick and Murchison on the Lower Silurian and Cambrian question. It was not an enlivening spectacle’. Ramsay simultaneously captures the manliness, and honour, but also the indignity of gentlemen scrapping. Rival claims over scientific priority and property became rife from early Victorian years. For a typical example, see Philip Lake's letter complaining about the behaviour of Aubrey Strahan, and the practices of the Geological Society of London, in Geological Magazine, n.s., decade 4, IX (1902), 333–4. For attempts to clarify issues of priority and property see the letter by Sherborn, C. Davies, ‘Priority of observations’, in Geological Magazine, n.s., decade 4, X (1903), 432CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Geikie, A., ‘Anniversary address of the president’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, LXIV (1908), i–cxxv, at pp. cxxiii f.Google Scholar

⁷³ Flett, J. S., The first hundred years of the Geological Survey of Great Britain (London, 1937)Google Scholar; SirBailey, E. B., Geological Survey of Great Britain (London, 1952), pp. 21f.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Topley, W., ‘Report upon National Geological Surveys’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Montreal, 1884 (London, 1885), 221–37.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ The Geological Survey, as a fieldworking organization, was set up before the School of Mines. This may indicate that governments could be more easily prevailed upon to support top geologists, than to promote mining industry (although of course one of the tasks of the Survey was to collect economically useful information about natural resources).

⁷⁶ Geikie, , Long life's work, p. 48Google Scholar, wrote that in the early days of the Survey, salaries acted as a kind of ‘supplement’. Survey workers like Beete Jukes found their salaries did not meet their expenses, and dipped into their own pockets.

⁷⁷ This is not to imply that the amount of central control was great – workers in the field were allowed considerable latitude, including control of the pace of their work. Rather my point is that the form of control was personal not bureaucratic. In the first years of the Survey, De Le Beche attempted to standardize its workers in quasi-military uniform, but they rebelled and the attempt had to be abandoned.

⁷⁸ The appointments of Murchison, Ramsay and Geikie bear this out. See Geikie, Life of Murchison; id., Memoir of Ramsay; id., A long life's work.

⁷⁹ Obituary of Ramsay, in Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, XLVIII (1892), 38–47, at p. 39Google Scholar; Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, pp. 26–7Google Scholar; Ramsay knew De La Beche as ‘Daddy’: ibid., p. 95.

⁸⁰ Hull, Edward, Reminiscences of a strenuous life (London, 1910), p. 9.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Geikie, , A long life's work, p. 142.Google Scholar

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⁸³ James Geikie had gentlemanly qualms before accepting. See Newbigin, M. I. and Fielt, J. S., James Geikie: the man and the geologist (Edinburgh, 1917), pp. 93ffGoogle Scholar. Geikie's biographers stress his ‘fundamental repugnance to all the weighing of questions of worldly advantage’ (p. 96).

⁸⁴ Greenly, Edward, A hand through time (2 vols., London, 1938), I, 123.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, chs. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ For this point see Layton, D., Science for the people (London, 1973), pp. 156–9Google Scholar. Survey men could hold teaching posts at the same time – within the amateur tradition pluralism is of course endemic as one form of what Cobbett called Old Corruption. But they were accepted precisely because they were thought of little importance. For the continuing neglect of economic geology see Watts, W. W., ‘Presidentialaddress’, Report of the Seventy-third Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1904), 641–54, at pp. 649–50.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ For the quotation see Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, p. 176Google Scholar. For earnestness, see the title of Edward Hull's biography, Memoirs of a strenuous life. William Watts argued that fieldwork turned boys into men: ‘Presidential address’, p. 643. For geology as a test of integrity see Letters and extracts from the addresses and occasional writings of Joseph Beete Jukes, edited by his sister (London, 1871), pp. 576–7.

⁸⁸ ‘Geology seems to breed stories’: Greenly, , A hand through time, II, 479.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ For Jukes's songs see Letters, pp. 377 f.; for James Geikie's, see Newbigin, and Flett, , James Geikie, pp. 105 ff.Google Scholar; for Murchison's songs see Geikie, , A long life's work, p. 113.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ For this trait in Ramsay, see Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, pp. 291f.Google Scholar; for Geikie himself see A long life's work, pp. 30 f.; for ‘the poetry of geology’ see Greenly, A hand through time, n, 470.

⁹¹ Obituary of Peach, in Transactions of the Edinburgh Geological Society, XII (1924–1931), 1–11, at pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

⁹² Ibid. pp. 10–11.

⁹³ For Peach's inarticulacy see Geikie, , A long life's work, p. 245Google Scholar. Of course, there was nothing ‘unprofessional’ in Peach's skill as a mapper. For Greenly ‘falling in love with’ Peach on the spot, see A hand through time, I, 22.

⁹⁴ For Survey work as an enviable life see Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, p. 45Google Scholar; Greenly, , A hand through time, I, 121.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ All the directors of the Geological Survey obtained at least a knighthood.

⁹⁶ Intellectually, this continuity may have led to stagnation. British geologists were not: forced to abandon their chosen preference for descriptive stratigraphy and mapping. Thus the Survey under Murchison seems to have been unwilling to utilize the new petrology being developed above all by the Germans. See Hamilton, ‘A case study’. The Survey continued relatively indifferent to economic geology, and did not mediate between geology and industry. The gap between the civil engineer and the geologists was if anything widening. See Woodward, A. W., ‘Field geology and the civil engineer’, Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, n.s. XXXVI (1967–1968), 531–78Google Scholar; Boswell, P. G. H., ‘Anniversary address of the President’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, XCVII (1942: for 1941), xxxvi–lxxv, at pp. xlviiif.Google Scholar

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⁹⁸ Allen, , The naturalist, ch. 8Google Scholar. Important were the close contacts which leading geologists had with local societies. Thus Adam Sedgwick regularly addressed the Kendal Society, and Thomas McKenny Hughes the Chester (as did Charles Kingsley). Cf. Lowe, Philip D., ‘Amateurs and professionals: the institutional emergence of British plant ecology’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, VII, pt. 4 (1976), 517–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁹ Cf. Woodward, Henry, ‘Presidential address’, Report of The Fifty-seventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London, 1888), pp. 673–84, at p. 676Google Scholar, where he also writes of the growing ‘confusion of tongues’.

¹⁰⁰ Quoted in Berman, , ‘Hegemony’, pp. 37–8.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ See Rudier, F. W., ‘Fifty years' progress in British geology’, Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, X (1887–1888), 234–72Google Scholar. For a parallel in natural history and biology see Allen, , The naturalist, ch. 9.Google Scholar

¹⁰² See Hamilton, ‘A case study’; Burchfield, J. D., Lord Kelvin and the age of the earth (London, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰³ See Stoddart, D., ‘The attitudes of geologists to geographers in late Victorian Britain’ (paper for the conference New Perspectives in the History of Geology, New Hall, Cambridge, 1977).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ O'Connor and Meadows, ‘Specialization and professionalization’.

¹⁰⁵ For more extensive discussion, see Porter, ‘The Natural Sciences Tripos’.

¹⁰⁶ Possible evidence of the continued social security of late Victorian geologists in their public role is the absence of any discussion of the matter in Presidential Addresses to the Geological Society of London or in Section C of the British Association.

¹⁰⁷ Obituary of Prestwich, , Geological magazine, n.s. decade 4, VI (1899), 373–81, at p. 381Google Scholar. Compare for its gentlemanly parallels this description of a party returning to Cambridge from a field trip organized by Bonney: … ‘Edmund Kelly, with his clean-cut Greek profile, wearing a Phrygian red cap, takes the helm and steers with the courage of an ancient Viking’, etc. ‘Eminent living geologists: The Rev. Professor T. G. Bonney’, Geological Magazine, n.s. decade 4, VIII (1901), 385–400, at p. 389.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Geikie, , Memoir of Ramsay, pp. 277f.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ See O'Connor and Meadows, ‘Specialization and professionalization’; Bailey, , Geological Survey, p. 100ff.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ Thus Newbigin, and Fleti, , James Geikie, p. 93Google Scholar pointed out that James Geikie's difficulties arose because he was a man of no private wealth, whose books brought him little income. Not all Survey posts were pensionable.

¹¹¹ Though academics tried to maintain liberal values. Thus in the contest for the Cambridge chair in 1873, Archibald Geikie's letter of recommendation for A. T. Green emphasized that he was ‘a man of wide general culture’. Throughout his life Archibald Geikie himself insisted that geology was for himself not a profession but an odyssey through life. Cf. A long life's work, pp. 55–6: ‘The work on which I was now engaged, and to which I had dedicated my. life, was not merely an industrial employment; the means of getting a livelihood; a pleasant occupation for mind and body. It often wore to me an aspect infinitely higher and nobler. It was in reality a methodical study of the works of the Creator of the Universe, a deciphering of His legibly-written record of the stages through which this part of our planet passed in His hands before it was shaped into its present form’.

In similar vein the Geological Magazine obituary of John Home noted: ‘A great gentleman and a great geologist has passed’: LXV (1928), 381–4, at p. 384. Hull's, Edward obituarist wrote of him: ‘He maintained the honour of a gentleman’. Geological Magazine, n.s. decade 6, IV (1917), 553–5, at p. 555.Google Scholar

¹¹² Newbigin, and Flett, , James Geikie, p. 112.Google Scholar

¹¹³ For evidence see Porter, , ‘The Natural Sciences Tripos’, p. 8Google Scholar. Whether geologists really were overworked is of course a subjective matter. But certainly they perceived themselves so to be. Many found lecturing duties exhausting. See Geikie, Memoir of Ramsay, p. 279 for Ramsay: ‘Even up to the end … the formal lecture … was a severe mental strain to him. When it was over he would come out of the lecture-room sometimes so weary that he could only go home and rest. The prospect of the winter session of the School of Mines [1863] was, therefore, at this time so dark to him that he seriously proposed to resign Professors had to try to extend their courses and exam passes in order to succeed in the fight for scarce university resources.

¹¹⁴ See Miall, L. C., Thirty years of teaching (London, 1897).Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Typescript history of the department of geology (Imperial College, London, archives), p. 10. Cf. the discussion of dress in Sennett, R., The fall of public man (Cambridge, 1977). pp. 64 ff.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ Wells, H. G., Experiment in autobiography (2 vols, London, 1934), I, 227.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Ibid. p. 228.

¹¹⁸ Ibid. p. 232.

¹¹⁹ See the very interesting report of Sydney Reynolds, professor of geology at Bristol, on this subject: 22 May 1913, Bristol University Library: ‘I cannot but think it would be more profitable to the University to let me have more time for research’.

¹²⁰ Green, A. H., ‘Presidential address’, Report of the Sixtieth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, (London, 1891), 789–93, at p. 789.Google Scholar

¹²¹ There are of course other signs of the development of a new professional academic ethos. The disclaiming of originality in text-books would perhaps be one. Bonney, Thomas wrote at the beginning of his The story of our planet (London, 1893), p. viGoogle Scholar, ‘a teacher cannot claim copyright in his thoughts’.

¹²² Thus obituaries of Thomas Bonney chorus the view that his scientific originality stemmed from his never having had any formal training. Here the myth of the amateur was being used as a criticism of the new professionalism.

¹²³ Increasing numbers of text-books appeared as part of series, many of them being self-confessedly unoriginal. In many cases (e.g. Archibald Geikie's Text-book of geology) the book comprised distilled lecture-notes.

¹²⁴ Thus Rudler's, Frank obituarist noted that he did little original research. Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, LXXI (1915), lviii–lix.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ Porter, , ‘Natural Sciences Tripos’, p. 14ff.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Harker might be seen as the bridge between the academic gentleman and the academic professional. Unlike, say, Sedgwick, Harker was no flamboyant eccentric, but rather the routine, regular, methodical, retiring, serious-minded academic.

¹²⁷ Rothblatt, S., The revolution of the dons (London, 1968)Google Scholar; id., Tradition and change in English liberal education (London, 1976)Google Scholar. Cf. also Engel, A., ‘The emerging concept of the academic profession at Oxford’, in Stone, L. (ed.), The university in society (2 vols., London, 1975). I, 305–51.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ For a perceptive account of the depressed state of inter-war geology see Professor P. G. H. Boswell, ‘Anniversary address’. One cause of the decline noted by Boswell was the ‘decrease in the number of the leisured class’.