Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 05 Nov 2007
The Transmission of Ideas in the Use of Fossils in Stratigraphic Analysis from England to America 1800-1840
The Transmission of Ideas in the Use of Fossils in Stratigraphic Analysis from England to America 1800-1840
Page Range: 108 – 117
Transmission from the Old to the New World, by means other than publication, of the idea that fossils could help in the analysis of stratigraphic problems is discussed, over the period 1800 to 1840. Focus on the single direction of transmission from England to America does not imply that this was either the only or the most important route by which such ideas came to North America. The contribution of William Smith, and his pupil John Farey, is first briefly reviewed in this context. Until their elucidation of an adequate Standard of sequential lithological units in England, no practical transmission of the idea that fossils could help in stratigraphy was possible. Smith's contacts with American visitors are then discussed but the first migrant informed about the ‘new stratigraphy’ was Henry Steinhauer, a Moravian missionary who emigrated to Philadelphia in 1815. He came direct from the Bath circles in which a knowledge of Smith's results was commonplace. As an even more important link in the chain of transmission, Steinhauer took his own large fossil collection with him, arranged in Standard Smithian stratigraphic order. The next such migrant was John Finch, who arrived in America in 1823 to escape his many English creditors! His success in comparing English and Atlantic coast sequences based on fossils is reviewed. Others like Professor William Buckland, who had been brought up as a Smithian stratigrapher, were also then busy in England comparing such sequences, helped, in Buckland's case, by the geologically inclined Martha Hare, aunt of Professor Robert Hare in Pennsylvania. The contribution of two of Smith's own trans-Atlantic pupils, G.W. Featherstonhaugh and R.C. Taylor, is discussed in a final section. Taylor emigrated to North America in 1831, again taking his large fossil collection, arranged in Smithian stratigraphic order, with him. He took it with the specific intention that it be used to advance correlations between America and England. The arrival of such good collections of stratigraphically arranged fossils could have been a most important link in the chain of transmission of ideas in this field. More research is needed at the American end, in particular to discover what survives of the collections of these early scientific migrants.
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