SIMON WINCHESTER

STER .iON WINCHE +

�racture Zone n Jr and the Madma Holy Terror THE MAP -ican Heartbeat Noble Lordships 1nes of Empire Sun NeTJ er Sets Diary: Argentina ns mg: Here Be Drago Miracles Through the Land of PacificRis ing Small World acific Nightmare WORLD World at the Center of the

William Smith and the Birth ofModern Geologg

Perennial

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishm HAROLD READING FOR

Ilwstrations!f P Copyright and illustrationSounacknowledgments Vannitlione follow page329. A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers.

TI:IE MAP THAT CHANGED TI:IE WORLD. Copyright© 2001 by Simon Winchester. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. HarperCollins books may be purchased foreducational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, HarperCollinsPublishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. First Perennial editionpublished 2002. Designed byKate Nichols The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Winchester, Simon. The map that changed the world : William Smith and the birth of moderngeology / by Simon Winchester; illustrations by Soun Vannithone-lst ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-06-019361-1 1. Smith, William, 1769-1839. 2. Geology, Stratigraphic­ History. 3. Geologists-Great Britain-Biography.I. Title. QE22.S6 WSS 2001 550'.92-dc21 [BJ 2001016603 ISBN 0-06-093180-9 (pbk.) 0-00-639422-1 (Canadian edition) 02 03 04 05 06 +/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents

List ofIllustrations xi

Prologue xv One Escape on the Northbound Stage 1 Two A Land Awakening from Sleep 11 Three TheMystery of the Chedworth Bun 27 .Four TheDuke and the Barone�s Widow 42 Five A Lightin the Underworld 59 Six TheSlicing of Somerset 79 Seven The Viewfrom York Minster 92 Eight Notes fromthe Swan 106 Nine TheDictator in the Drawing Room 121 Ten The Great Map Conceived 139 Eleven A JurassicInterlude 163 Twelve TheMap That Changed the World 192 Thirteen An Ungentlemanly Act 222 Fourteen The Sale of the Century 239 X CONTENTS 251 Fifteen The Wrath of Leviathan 465 Sixteen The Lost and Found Man 281 Seventeen All Honor to the Doctor 291 Epilogue Glossary of Geological and Other Unfamiliar Terms Found in ThisBook 303 Sources and Recommended Reading 311 317 Acknowledgments 321 Index

Map insert follows page 140. :,LUSTRATIONS .s 181 188 unStr eet 205 L Prison 259 ;,is 271 ·Museum 274 Prologue 277 edal 283 ['heatre 293 ,tonework at mmons 296 Scale 302 bove �ne of th� n.1any grand mar­ ble staircases within the east wing 6>.P INSERT of Burlington House, the great .am Smith's achievement can be amply PalladianA mansion on the north side of aring his greatmap of 1815 with the one London's Piccadilly, hangs a pair of huge sky British Geological Survey. The similarity blue velvet curtains, twisted and tasseled silk tail-visible even at a scale where much ropes beside them. Although many may Psilocerasplanorhis proof absolute of the accuracy and wonder in passing, rarely does any one of the vork, yet does not admit of the one signal scores of people who climb and descend the stairs inquire as to :: two productions: that while the survey w at lies behind the drapes. A blocked-offwindow, perhaps? A � _ 1e labors of thousands, William Smith's pamtmg too grotesque to show? A rare Continental tapestry, y and a half before, is the result of the faded by the sunlight? mination of one man who worked for Once in a while someone curious and bold will demand a lways entirely alone. look, whereupon a functionary will emerge frombehind a door marked Private, and with practiced hand will tug gently on the silk ropes. The curtains will slowly part, revealing an enormous and magnificent map of England and Wales, engraved and col­ ored-in sea blue, green, bright yellow, orange, umber-in a beguiling and unfamiliar mixture of lines, patches, and stippled shapes. "The German Ocean," it says to the east of the English coast, . mstead of today's '�North Sea." There is, in an inset, a small xvi PROLOGUE PROLOGUE Xvii cross-section of what is said to be the underside of the country tions of its day. It was, like so many other grand projects that sur­ fromWales to the river Thames. Otherwise all is readily familiar, vive as testament to their times-the Oxford English Dictionary, comfortingly recognizable. The document is exquisitely beauti­ the Grand Triangulation of India, the Manhattan Project, the ful-a beauty set off by its great size, more than eight feet by Concorde, the Human Genome-a project of almost unimagin­ six-and by the fact that it towers-looms, indeed-above those ably vast scope that required great vision, energy, patience, and who stand on the staircase to see it. The care and attentionto its commitment to complete. detail is clear: This is the work of a craftsman,lovingly done, the But a signal difference sets the map apart. Each of the other culmination of years of study, months of careful labor. projects, grand in scale, formidable in execution, and unassail­ At the top right is its description, engraved in copperplate able in historical importance, required the labor of thousands. flourishes: "A Delineation of The Strata of England and Wales The OED needed entire armies of volunteers. To build the with part of Scotland; exhibiting the Collieries and Mines; the Concorde demanded the participation of two entire govern­ Marshes and Fen Lands originally Overflowed by the Sea; and ments. More men died during the Indian triangulation than in the Varieties of Soil according to the Variations in the Sub Strata; scores of modest wars. The offices at Los Alamos may have illustrated by the Most Descriptive Names." There is a signature: housed behind their chain-link fences shadowy figures who "By W. Smith." There is a date: "Aug" 1, 1815." would turn out to be Nobel laureates or spies, but t:hey were all This, the official will explain, is the first true geological map hemmed in by immense battalions of physicists. And to attend to of anywhere in the world. It is a map that heralded the begin­ all their various needs-be they bomb maicers, plane builders, nings of a whole new science. It is a document that laid the lexicographers, codifiers of chemistry, or measurers of the land­ groundwork for the making of great fortunes-inoil, in iron, in were legionsupon legions of minions, runners, amanuenses, and coal, and in other countries in diamonds, tin, platinum, and sil­ drones. ver-that were won by explorers who used such maps. It is a map The incomparably beautiful geological map ofl815, however, that laid the foundationsof a fieldof study that culminated in the required none of these. As vit.µ as it turned out to be for the work of Charles Darwin. It is a map whose making signifiedthe future of humankind, it stands apart-because it was conceived, beginnings of an era not yet over, that has been marked ever imagined, begun, undertaken, and continued and completed since by the excitement and astonishment of scientific discover­ against all odds by just one man. All the Herculean labors ies that allowed human beings to start at last to stagger out from involved in the mapping of the imagined underside of an entire the fogs of religious dogma, and to come to understand some­ country were accomplished not by an army or a legion or a com­ thing certain about their own origins-and those of the planet mittee or a team, but by the single individual who finally put his they inhabit. It is a map that had an importance, symbolic and signature to the completed document-William Smith, then real, for the development of one of the great fundamental fields forty-six years old, the orphaned son of the village blacksmith of study-geology-which, arguably like physics and mathemat­ from the unsung hamlet of Churchill, in Oxfordshire. ics, is a field of learning and endeavor that underpins all knowl­ And yet William Smith, who created this great map in solitary edge, all understanding. endeavor, and from whose work all manner of benefits�om­ The map is in many ways a classic representation of the ambi- mercial, intellectual, and nationalistic-thenflowed, was truly at xviii PROLOGUE PROLOGUE xix first a prophet without honor. Smith had little enough going for people-know about the man he had discovered. He reported him: He was of simple yeoman stock, more or less self-taught, that he was hidden, incognito, in the depths of the English coun­ stubborn and visionary, highly motivated, and single-minded. tryside. He supposedly had no expectation that anyone would Although he had to suffer the most horrendous frustrationsdur­ now ever remember, or would ever recognize, the solitary mas­ ing the long making of the map, he never once gave up or even terpiece that he once had made. He imagined he was doomed to thought of doing so. And yet very soon after the map was made, suffer an undeserved oblivion. he became ruined, completely. But on this occasion his pessimism was misplaced: The mes­ He was forced to leaveLondon, where he had drawn and fin­ sages that had been sent did get through-with the consequence ished the map and which he considered home. All that he owned that, eventually, William Smith was persuaded to return to was confiscated. He was compelled to live as a homeless man for London, to receive at last the honors and rewards that were due years, utterly without recognition. His life was wretched: His him, and to be acknowledged as the founding father of the wife went mad-nymphomania being but one of her recorded whole new science of English geology, a science that remains at symptoms-he fell ill, he had few friends, and his work seemed the core of intellectual endeavor to this day. to him to have been without point, without merit. It is now exactly two hundred years since William Smith Ironically and cruelly, part of the reason for his humiliation began work on the map that changed the world. What follows, lies behind another set of faded velvet curtains that ha�g nearby, drawn from his diaries and letters, is a portrait of both a long­ on another of Burlington House's many elaborate staircases. forgotten man and the world in which he lived and worked, as There, it turns out, is quite another map, made and published well as the story of his great map, which has remained hidden shortly afterWilliam Smith's. It was in all essentials a copy, made behind the blue velvet curtains of a great house in London far by rivals, and it was made-if not expressly then at least in part­ too long. with the intention of ruining the reputation of this great and unsung pioneer from Oxfordshire: a man who was not gently born, and who was therefore compelled, like so many others in those times, to bear the ungenerous consequences of his class. + ut in the very long run William Smith was fortunate. A long Bwhile after the map had been published, a kindly and liberal­ minded nobleman for whom Smith had been performing tasks on his estate in a small village in Yorkshire, recognized him­ knew, somehow, that this was the man who had created the extraordinary and beautiful map about which, it was said, all learnedEngland and all the world of science outside was talking. This aristocratic figure let people-influential and connected SIMON WINCHESTER l0

'{- 2-

before *li:"Ïr*:i;::ît"[tJ: rrt was to be nverve Years A Lønl I"'ff tîilîüîi*rî,ï,trxni;'***** AutøÃ.eníny S[eeV at the low p"l"t been ¡hom was then "-]j:':^^l'^*-- tt."rns out ro have the evidence allows' full a manner as world scale in as honored' and on a to'i'lJ;;ì; have more honoruutt, nt' that moment' could much more i-po*"i'*'n* "t imagined'

i':xi T i:#: :iî;: :î ; \Ã/ certainty, V V into a conscrvative English society that his own discoveries and theories would one day help shake to its very foundations. And yet already-however conserva- tive the mood of the early eighteenth cen- tury may Aynøltheus have seemed-there are signs rnørgøritøtøs that' viewed from today's perspective' suggest that even at the time of his birth it was imperceptibly readyi'g itself for all that discoverers like smith would find and do. In countless ways, both great and small, the faiths and certainties of centuries past were bei'g edged aside , and the world was being prepared, if gently and unknowingl¡ ro receive the shocking news of scientific revelation. Not that any of the vague subtleties of coming change had reached very far. William Smith was born, the first son of the local blacksmith i' the hamlet of Churchill i' Oxfordshire, on March 23,1769.It was a measure of the rigor and certitude of both the place and the times that there could be great canonical

i t THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD I3 SIMON WINCHESTER T2 number of human generations most they believed to have come and religious folk-and such a moment' To gone between the making of Adam and the begetting of Christ. Drecision about relisious' their daily of the time were On the basis of their workings it was reckoned, ar English courìtry folk the close of the i he sixteenth century) that the world was, give or take, six thousand ;;;il, s e, bv iî'i'::',i¡ i :::*:: il* :; mX i üi years old. the sreen in churchilr rfi:"Jåi:ilÏ:J'åt,ö ¡* edge of It was left to the genial lrish prelate "'^ James lJssher, while he ä il;.'Ï.t. was bishop of Armagh, to fix the date with absolure precision. pr ac e, u..o'a'' i'iT rook-J,lriyears, day ii':, Ï¡''ii'ï'yt four mouths' and sixtecu According to his workings, which he managed to convince his clerical colleagues were impeccably accurate, God had created

B i b I e courd rr:::::::J: the world and all its creatures in one swift 'n' Äî11" oent of the J::as ito and uninterrllpted t""to quite[: J::ïÏ certain figure-i" rutt itl ãtîi" process of divine mechanics that began on the dot of the all-too- this Y":^:tt"Creadon' had dre Churchill *'ii'^since dre decent hour of 9 .{.M.) orl a Monday, October 23,4004 ø.c. the very number time of the infant's enough to note the The cynical and been scrupulous of an the skeptical rnay need some reminding of midwife be made on the basis quick calJrtutio" toot¿ the fine prir-rt-of just rvhat was preached in the church in which birth. A oriqins that was then about human William Smith was baptized, of the kind of firm beließ with almost unchallengei^Otlitf dãep in the English who.tived lvhich his community was invested. Whatever interest Srnith the held bv -o" -t"î;d;;;t" brought swiftly into had been man might later develop in fossils, geology, shires-the nodon;;;;;"rld and the makings of yt"" Utfot" the birth of Christ' existence exactly 4'004 '¡ *:* in use at the dme GEI*TESIS. forget' all the Bibles lf est anYone :hot margins) anno- t" oold scarlet lefters in the n'"iJ to act as a L;:ïffi Testament' designed ofor the verses oitt'" Old DcÈÐ and ss tations to cã8r8? ye9,r¡8: 15 Ând'lel ä;,.-10*,;.11'*ir',,îïrr;:::r;r"iiiJiËi:.i tbe ûnns,m€ had progres-' and Aber onward' Itght upon tì until epp çirl,l,t*eilú f6ADdGod ,f|""-tJ;:;'oîi,iliu";il fisu.res in the margin' the grm,ter lower t";;;t¿-p'i"tta figure s sively by which time the and the I "^d ãttnttntJ' å¿ æ events i" trt" *u""j"'ìi n8ht: the wlt&out form, l? And Go¡ *ttiïïJffiflilJ;iíJi;' an idea or the rater ment of tb ver1 mucrr unon ühe ea to come up with u¡¡oÉ &ge decades for anvone ùho fa a¡u to Middle Ages' It n"¿"t"ftt" of scholarly oron tås ni ;;; effort to ao' scores üsüt ûom credible numbers' 1"' had oc Ohc| rT r basic biblical idea-which Iames ussher's dating of creation is zealots had carefulÇ;Å'J;e merely the man- part of the rubric of a Bible from u" for the earth' William Smith's after all' t"t;;;; the lifetime. never, "" sedulously counting I it h";'t;-e about-by Ì ner in which ì l

ì THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORI,I) t5 WIN CHESTER t4 SIMON The ready to begin the adventuring he had ordained for it for the born there'wâs no question: at the dme he was next six thousand years and more.* humankind, God the familiar six days' n"å t"ut" Yet, when endre proce* tf c'J;;; William Smith was born, the unquestioning accep- years before.' begun ft5'772 that a mod- tance of a notion such as this was beginning to change. There "Tä'i.'n"o titåott week' in the vear At the ,tu't of thut"i"t organized were vague stirrings of enlightenment from among the nation,s 4004 s'c'' the Deity tult"du' *""" styte dry' chattering classes. Some cynical views-in law, criminally heretical ern Christian ,"'-' ard moon' wet and ãurk, ones-that wafted up from the fashionable salons and the basic conceprs "irrrna ""¿ meadoq desert' drawing oäurr, inret, river, sandbar, He then made every world' its rooms of London challenged the very likelihood of Divine The of the q"'¿' Creation. Among them was a new notion, still curious mountaiu, icecap' ""J ^structure and outra- t'!tJr" gy tl-tt""tTt geous to most in the topo graphy,''''a't.' eighteenth century, that Earth might in fact ot' rlTI i:ï: JH :tï: BY the morning by be a very good deal older than the human race rhat inhabited it, ;;* .;;olete' had been begun' and h"dr":* such that humankind and its planet might not in fact have been Thursday, c"d '"'1tüît"t* serpent' eagle' cat' evening tutty n'* -icrobe' crall' of near-simultaneous origin. that it*::îldtt'set in place' to creep) bttt duly There was no evidence whatsoever for horse, and monkeyhud thumb to climb' such views-those who deploy its opposable *p'ing'ts and doubted Creation were indulging in little more than inspired swim, fly, tt'p, t By th e n n.*i ;' ;i;il.'o"',""'. hunches. In later years the hunches became more certain, and savanna) p"itÏ;rrh,';"r.".áåU"*niïå :LÏ, ill,i, Every rain forest' grassland' .o indeed it would be William Smith's discoveries that would go been left ot nna áaisv had dens" some long way toward confirming them. But at the time he was ;;;i:,'fin', tuut'"lakes' fens' bogs' bloom. All of *t'i;ti""";"Jit set, ready born they were very much the idle speculations of a tiny group earthly paradise was Á sophisticates in London. ,A¡rd were now r*'y "..'ä*ha.d of the capital was a very long way from northwestern Oxfordshire, both to." be lost' emerged those in distance and in temper. I -- most imPortaimnortaflt of all' ¡"¿ bY the SaurdaY' -^ôr of ør' The muddy and rutted roads that passed across the ridges of the n' The two examples creaftrres *h" ;;;-ïàtt "fìr*t subdy differ- Chiltern Hills, between Oxford and London, did rnuch to keep uttã op'igt" (but otherwise human, in the bipä at bay any such wild and disagreeable ideas as these. i;;;,:{À**1ii:",î,i"1åï"J,',',äi,I Where Smith was born, among that small muddle of warm- ",,tr,o-"".r,",i"If colored stone cottages, with thatched rooß and climbing roses, serpent the village green and the inn and the duck pond and the old Í-*:J:lin,:.i,:å':,":itüî"î"îuo'nJ'"'(whichof the already created would t"'tt '"toii"ini'"*" rFew Human beinøs outsicle the rvorld ofthe rigid Christian funcian.rentalists toclay accept the strict inter- ""t#Ji,Id could now t:T"lY:^'"tf: pretation of ]ar.'es ussher's arithrnetic, rvhich he historv and thev could explai'ed in his monume'tal work of th; MJkt'' 1658, Annølis wteris et Not¡i restît?tlenti. But nonetheless a l99l survey showecl that fully in between 100 million were n'"tt, -li?r"ärt"g" "f and their Maker Americans still believed that "God creatcd man prcrty much in his own image c,t rt* as thev atone time do with *cliä-"" on the during the last ter thousand years,', ancl anecdotal evidence now suggests that Co-e midnight is 'r'tit it all do"t' * :,:T.9"t climtring. This might suggesr thar aspecs of tl.re religious climate into pleased' ;;;;"s Diviniry which William them done' the weary Snith was bon-ancl thui h" *., to h.lp ,,"rt changing-are now starr- frantic labor ing to saturday' *t'h ;ii ;; good' and tullv return. all he had -*ttâwas slept' having dJil;;;t THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD ).7 SIMON WINCHESTER 1ó ing, and changing fast. In the year of his birth-which according to parislr records at Churchill was 1769-there were, for exam- sr e e p r e d o : iTÏ ÄiT;:: i :,,:begtnnu :l-"j*, î:','jï li: :j.::iü ï ple, three developments, nicely coincident, that in retrospect sug- humankind's on r^iirt as the revelations ;;t" gest all too powerfully that change was in the wind. indeed it of too much thougnt]T'nln'*t;; fu .;ä.*. *1 i:'å was: For tlre first time in British history the word ind,østry was no t:;åî* *::l;:iJ.',:îï:'i".'åî longer being used simply to describe the nobility of human labor larded with aPProPrtr and had come instead to mean what it does today: the systemat- tn'i;."1,.,?:1"iìli' were an essen- ratn¡r-an! ic and organized use that labor, generally whose a world of with the assistance of was lotherthus born into tJ;;;;t;tple* on- mechanical devices and machines, to create what would thence- dallv unremarkable had a certainry' The tnt ;;;'"i t-L""tt forth be called m.ønwføctrzred.g00d.s. The Industrial Revolution, in .,r *t i.t', at least -" ;ä:,'""'l näiJj' '" short, was at hand, and three creations from Srnith's birth year are il tìi.iljo'ïr'.'* :"::î well worth noting, since they more than anything suggest the o: -iîiJi, ' ;*: - temper of the times. As it happened, for instance) 1769 was the iïîlîl;Jiîffåru, years i."#:*:îiw' next hundred year of grant of patent for Watt's first condensing steam tn ,o, U.fo'e the findings' along James S*ttn't geolouical the most important it was to otîtfit"* things' His engine-perhaps invention of the entire era. degrce that *"" change of other discoveries' 'ã losiah Wedgwood, who had been busily making fine pottery in with a raft in triggering the colli- to ptou" uit"tly important Staffordshire for some years past) opened his great factory, known fìndings were benveen the religious t., ortt place near FIanley, that *"' scientific as Etruria, also in 1769. And the great field of tex- sion "ut''lãrv ;t the time and the were tile making, which was being steadily revolurionized by a can- beliefs that for the intellectual activi- '"':i*""J;t;; spur nonade of new inventions, was rnost notably advanced by the reasoning trtut *oorTi;;;;" cre- ations of Richard Arkwright-who made the first water-powered ."'r:jå::îîrt scientific method, with with the. cotton-spinning frame, also L769.* i-'Tï.y--"ro,,g and rational in Watt, Wedgwood, and observation' deduction' all its unde'pirrti"g"of Arkwright-a holy trinity from the brave new world that was coming into being-were now unknowingly ushering in the man thought'rn"o"J's;o*';';i';;t':Ïî','ir:::l;tåt?ÏäTtnl *u'. had to sink who would change the view of that world for all time. t" f?,t*t"' .begun th:"?h'::li"ä.;;.ì.rr' "^¿ "r all corners waY in which PeoPle given the In of the industrial world there was change , devel- ;fil. more appropriate' Wnitn it all the opment, innovation, the shock of the new. Coal, iron, ships, themselves' "-'"tås i"io u ii-t of suddenly have' that it *u' pottery, cloth, steam-these mantras his ideas ;*tt application were the of the moment. impact and technological ;;ìtuå-t"t The great English ironmasters, for example, approaching accelerating were "t"";ät their zenith: Cranage, Smeaton, and Cort were developing the born' things were chang' '1i:i:i. ".liX*::ï"' he was processes for "puddling" iron and rolling molten metal. j determined r)ames about his forebears' Hargrcaves, whose mechanical spinning jenny embarrassed in later Years he was a was clestroyed by fearful proto- *Smith was to feel somewhat through his mother L¡ddites, anci hard to prove that the Samuel Crornpron) whose ipinning mrle a hybricl of its two predeces- ì long and abandoned -a, and he tried ancl eventuallY ¡ors, canle orrly a litrle ordinariness, He convinced no one later. i of Sir Walter Raleigh I descenclant quest.

¡ THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD t9

But then in 1787, under the usual pressure from the local squirearchy and the more powerful farmers, an enclosure act was passed for both the village and its surrounding countryside. Gone, within ayear) were the ragged strþs of new-plowed land and the mean acres of wood. The gendy dipping fields and meadows that are still to be seen today were all hedged and ditched and ha-ha'd into exisrence when Smith was srill a young- ster. It was a development that had profound importance for the English farmer and the English countryside. ft was also to be of profound importance for the beginning of career and inspiration for the young William Smith. There was more to the farming revolution than the fashion- ing of a handsome landscape. To add lusrer to the newly made meadows there came new breeds of cattle and sheep-Hereford cows, Southdown sheep among them-that started to be intro- duced in the late eighteenth centurg with the animals at last approximating in appearance (fatter, srurdier, and healthier than their bony and goadike forebears) the look of the breeds to be seen today. Well-to-do farmers were so proud of their new beasts that they had paintings of them commissioned, and by doing so founded an entirely new artistic school of domestic animal por- traiture. Farming methods improved at a staggering rate) and in con- sequence the output of grain and potatoes and meat rose huge- ly. White bread became a commonplace in the diet of rich and poor. Cheese became hugely popular. An abundance of cattle feed all year round meant that at long last the winter ritual of eat- only salted beef-the cattle hitherto had all died in the first snap for want of feed-could now be ended: A joint of roasr prompdy became a central feature of the national dinner part of England's national mystique (and, of course, the 's French nickname, Le Rosbif) And this all led ro somerhing else. In fact it was during the eighteenth cenrury-most probably for the first time-that THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 2l SIMON WINCHESTER 20 such a vastly com- developmenrs, all occurring in the latter half of the eigh_ realize it h1d become seemed to teenth cenrury) society suddenly"""*,, helped ro ensure that chirdbirrh was far ress risþ ;ï;:. - îï];i.:å? î*,Ïïïi:iÏi an adventure than before. another t"*n*f *n"':t-..:::ì:;;;;.".u'.d, turn of Moreover, people simply with one *-1t-:: u, the knew much more than before. Their apparent whtn effects first became ,tt lives were more efficient and comfortable than no tonse¡ feed itself' they had ever tt'"'g'it"i; could been. There the century, *alast beef' for example' was ample reason for a new degree of physical con_ The consumput"ä;;;ot"1a consequences' tentment-an atmosphere that, for those who were ãito-pt"t"ly unanticioated so predis_ led indirectþ to a set p'ådt"td a lot-being posed, was highly conducive to srudy, to pondering tt"uinly "rrJ -orr_ Although th" nution'î';;;" inventions of dering. There had been steady improvements education as the crop-sowing in and with such *ån"* literacy (Samuel armed land management methods lohnson's great Dictionøry had been published Tull, and tå*f"tionary in f755). There Jethro 'f't ;"*fit' of enclosure-and although was now a marure newspaper industry. The coke' ;';;; delight postal system was of Thomas th";;t"o the meat' was a becoming reliable and even efficient_a letter what they p'oaotta' d; 1lo moment mailed in London could reach realiry that from that Chipping Norton, which was it became ;';ã;"ate close to Churchill, the ,.on to eat, not produce enough' England afternoon of tåe following day, every until todav, ;;';;;îJ net importer day except Monday"-meaning that people, on rot iht fitt' time a even in so remote a part of became during 'hi';t"t;;""¿ the country as Oxfordshire, could now keep abreast of and corn' fact national of wheat rusian reasons-the developments, could tap into an ever_running well_ to the simplest of M'altl This was due n"l to rise significantlv spring of advice and information. that the !l?* up not because They could learn, and by comparison with what 'oon*r"';lï'É;" had to inch had gone since midcent"'r' ;;;ã;ures ?tgÏn the rising before, they could learn in double-quick nand' i" hand with rime, somerhing of the increa" ;;;;;it" trivia of trends-as of an '" '"t"' when eighteenth-century gentlemen farmers p,o,p.,i,y.'*''T'iljiil:Xnf iJ'"'i,Hïlî:iiä:i: were beginning to buy pianos for their newly carpeted living *. rooms. They could know how a Mr. Chippendale began to trrn ilåJ ;* Britainfi i;":.' as a out enchanting new styles furniture Ï:î,ï'å'3::îJif. part of the.i"::x making ::îå of of from a new wood, play of factors' t"ittdåi itself for mod- mahogany, which had been discovered in a society readying South America. They modern, tomptitä-'oti"ry' could read how ladies in Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh ideas' were starting ern, comPlicated wâs rmprov- ,i, to supplement their inelegant skirt pockets o"it' átto" in play as well' Health by carry_ There *t'" Smith could be ing with them what they wourd cal "indispensables," which *orrid A child like young Wiltiam ing, for example' was better mid be later called handbags. people in of survival: There Churchill knew that young assured th;";;;;'utro" of ladies of fashion, reading more of doctors' the construction the new colored style journalr, -.r. rori after preferring to sport wifery, " "t"ti*'lùotãu^t" in.labor' ih" i"ttodoction interestingly pale faces instead of the s'nburned lying-in r'o'pitut" ;;;;;t" of dis- cheeks of the peasanrry. The women the wiáespread opening of churchill could learn a[ orr_npo* irro.ot",iorrs, good for too rapidly rT60 that fresh air was how-in parr to achieve this look-the recently invent_ agreement ed ,.quite pensaries, be regulated-all parasols and umbrellas were becoming the tJring.,, ""d "-gt""taland ventif"tit" lt't"fd one and that ttyiiene THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 23

No matter the outcry that allowing the working classes to become educated was to debauch them and tempt them to abandon the manual labors for which they were best suited. "Nineteen in twenty of the species were designed by nature for trade and manufacturer" said a writer in Tbe Grab-Street Journøl at the time of Smith's birth. "To take them off to read books is the way to do them harm, to make them not wiser or better, but impertinent, troublesome and factious." That kind of thinking was rapidly to become outmoded during the years when Smith was growing up: Whatever the political ourcome- whatever the effect of the new phenomenon of public opinion, which literac¡ communication, newspapers, and libraries encouraged-the nation) save for its most reactionary ele- ments, seemed generally prepared to come to terms with the new mood for change. ,l

\\ /illiam Smith's formative years unrolled through a period V V that was both astonishingly vibrant and deeply challeng- ing. Advances were firmly under way in almost all applied areas of science and philosophy, and in social change and arristic endeavor as well. But there was still a terrible hesitation about humans' understanding of the most fundamental questions of why they were where they were, who had placed rhem there, what was the point, what were their origins, what was their fatef The hesitation was deep rooted; it stemmed) at least in part, from the frank reluctance of eighteenth-century men and women to accept that there even wñ,s a need to know and won- der at such things. To inquire with true rigor into matters that lay at the heart and soul of his and all sociery's beließ smacked, indisputably, of heresy. Bven by the time that young William Smith was starting to take advantage of the world's new and inquiring mood, there was still the wide acceptance-not yet contradicted by any evidence that seemed to matter-that God had created both human beings and all the world in which they THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 25 WINCHESTER 24 SIMON wñ,s the worldl How had it, and all that was to be said' in it, really come that: No more needed aboutl lived. That was inclined Was it sacrilege ro wonder such a thingl Was it blasphemy few bold and more radically And yet. A very and to askf would lightning srrike down anyone who questioned discoverers of oxygen' the i l'it'ttlg o"t of the likelihood L thinkers-lor.pt' of lames lJssher's numbers being correctf wourd grandfather' among them*-were Erasmus Darwin, d;t;" plague and boils tear at the vitals of yeârs' to take a more anyone who asked out loud beginning, in these just what story might it be that lay buried in the '"Àt "*""rdinaryto received wisdom of the srones beneath muscular and skeptiä'tpnt"*ft {e ques- our feetf was coming to his maturity' Church. By the ti-;Sråith And all this questioning tended to coalesce around one new were being asked by tions about,t"" ¡"t¿""-*'als T":t :hi1 and barely structured field of study and hunch that God might fascination. Could it per_ the mere -.t'opolit^ä;no*""-':Tht or dur- haps be that geology,* the frail and stripling science that had first Ussher had suggested' dor,. p"tiJit been established to inquire not have "i*1tn"n to be tested by real into the narure of the earth before he *""utginning and after ing the time t"ttiå"d' who were the Deluge, could it be that geologicøl inquiry might by'radicatþinclined scientists thinkers, uv the cler- hold the answer| This was a science rhat, after all, had ut le"st ihe 'utio"uiJi the dogma and the law' bold enougn t" tf'jft"ge'both potential-if it could be divorced from churchly dogma-to at least define and questioning.than then ask the questions to which answers now earry days much more "'îriåï::TiL",. bewilder- seemed so urgently needed. i' *"' period more marked by there was un'*"'i"g' " Scriptures At the time of Smith,s birrh, geology and those few men who most still believed that the ment than tt"ui"ti'Wttile called themselves geologists saw it as no part of their duties to provide answers to all the O*:Ï:::O:I could comfortably and inquire more fullr to delve more deeply, into what were still seen purpose' there was a growing earthly origin ll-"" as the realms of the Divine. And yet some scientists "t'¿ of puzzlement as well-a plJZ- were begin- admittt¿ ning to wonder more frequentty '""" among those if geology really was ro be confined rike this-if n"ut Ut"" mtst keenly felt zlement ,t laws of it was obliged to function only within the framework of faith, "t ""-l'tot"gi"t*s who were observing the natural scientists or fashion- and not to challenge it one whit-then was ir truly worthy of ""a were w.orking with steam physics tt"-i"i;;; others being called a science at alll "n¿ th'oogh clifß' Among those and ing iron o, aiggi";i"t' sci¡1ce' Maybe, though, it could rehabilitate itself. Maybe geology was iewlv.formulated t*Yt'ot who knew the the one new scientific discipline that, "-toit;;;f that hinted that maybe, if applied courageously, was a new of questioning might be able rhere -.ã¿ acceptance of to help answer the fundamental and unasked ques_ oiJ btli"f" rooted in the blind just maybe, trtt tions that were beginning to trouble those tentative, nervous not have been wholly uue' churchly teachings, might questioners. Perhaps geology could be the began-about what exactly key for those who, in A febrile ft"tt;ilgãf qo"'tioti"g

ir fi^:.u::1-i" English in its modern sense in t73S, though only rarely_and probâblyll1. ï*O *rosephpriesdev"'o''j:Tä8,1'J,î;#;ïJlî.';:':åJi^lff *,1i"'llll!tijltl not unril 1795 can it be considered a marure and ful-fledled .o,r."pr. Th"r. of geotogy in the t797 all LunaÚcks, members by a that wâs- Third Editio' of rhe Encyi-topad.iø Biitønnicø; were "t :tt1--t':1Ï::.i"ì. *"r. *a.omed Sroup I::1.Dut the T.*i:"lourth, which came out in lgl0, had a lengthy entr¡ thcscilnce by now fullf h*ffi *ît[*"ïJ,lìli']i.l?JitÎ;ffi :n:"'-';î;ili"ng*oaa'r established. industrY.

THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD l 07 ison with those of fossils two centuries ago--in that they are 8 proud and protective, given to learning and (usually) the posses­ sion of some social standing. The clear and important difference is that the intricacies of objects made of jade are the artifice of Notes_from the Swan human beings, while the strangely beautiful shapes and marks that delineate a fossil are the evidence-if ever in eighteenth.­ century Britain there was agreement on this matter-of the work of God. The Dictionary of National Biography records the occurrence of the plural wordfossils293 times, and 177 prominent men and women from British history are listed as having had an interest in, or more likely a collection of, such treasures. Most of the list­ ed collectors appear to have lived between the mid-eighteenth n eighteenth-century Britain it was a and mid-nineteenth centuries. Few people whose lives are other­ mark of refinement and impeccable wise worthy of recording seem to have collected fossils before good taste to own and display a collec­ 1700; and as with postage stamps and coins, few contemporary I amateur fossilists will admit to a mania forcollecting them. tion of fossils. Not only were the objects themselves rare and beautiful, well worthy Indeed the fashion-for that is all it was, a fashion-began to of display in specially constructed glass die in mid-Victorian times. The spread of travel and a growing cabinets; the simple possession of them amazement with the outside world suddenly began to make an an hinted at a thirst for knowledge, an aware- thropological souvenirs more valued as icons th dirt­ Parkinsonia ness of natural philosophy, a sympathetic encrusted items from earth history. All of a sudden drawing parkinsoni understanding of the mysterious processes rooms became places to record and show off the material of the earth. And gradually it was from within the world of fos­ rewards of journeying through space, rather than the dusty and sil hunting-a world that would soon be inhabited most promi­ mysterious objects that came from journeying through time. nently by William Smith-that the ideas emerged that would What had hitherto been a signifier of drawing-room decorum eventually lead Charles Darwinan d AlfredWallace to reach their seemed overnight to become the pastime of the dull, and then profound conclusions about the origins of species. steadily to evolve into what amateur paleontology is now: no Perhaps for the British boulevardier in the eighteenth centu­ more than the mark of the nerd. an ry, the interest in fossils was for their beauty and rarity, little There is much to learn from the DNB about the nature d more. The items, be they small or large, plant or animal, or the habits of onetime fossil collectors. The 177 entries show the merely the mysterious results of the fossil-making "plastic force," typicalcollector of the time to have had certain outward similar­ an would be displayed with reverence, handled with delicacy, ities of background, knowledge, and social st ding. Most of viewed with awe. Collectors of fine jade today are a fair compar- them-this being the less sexually enlightened end of the nine- IO 8 109 SIMON WINCHESTER THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD teenth century-happened to be men, although by chance it was named a plesiosaur, * and not yet thirty when she found a near­ a young Dorset woman who was perhaps the most famous fossil perfect specimen of the bird progenitor, the pterodactyl, and collector of them all. sent it offto Oxford. Mary Anning was thirty years younger than William Smith, For a while this untutored young woman made a sizable and there is no record that the pair ever met-but her birthplace income, either by selling fossils to visitors-forwhom Lyme Regis and scene of all her paleontological triumphs, the small seaside is stilla major touristcenter today-orleading town of Lyme Regis, evidently interested Smith: In one of his would-be collectors to the cliffs to find speci­ notebooks there is a rough sketch-map of the Lower Jurassic sea­ mens for themselves. The names of her cus­ cliffs there, dated 1794-five years before Mary Anning was tomers are like a roll call of the leading geolo­ born. gists-of the day-William Conybeare, Sir Her life was short indeed, even by the standards of the day­ Henry de la Beche (who lived nearby), Dean and yet the fa,ct that she survived a lightning strike (which killed William Buckland. But slowly the popular three adults) when she was a year old always lent locals a suspi­ craze for collecting began to wane, and cion that hers would be an eccentric and furious one. Most of it by 1847, when Mary Anning died at she spent carefully prying choice specimens of fossil creatures the age of forty-eight of breast can­ from the Lias cliffs near her home. Her father had taught her cer, she had been all but forgotten something of fossilgathering, since his own business was making and had passed into obscurity. the very cabinets in which the well-heeled local collectors would De la Beche, who went on to keep their specimens. Her best-known find is the original become the first director of the ichthyosaur, a massive confection of shiny brown bones she first British Geological Survey, drew a disposed of to the duke of Buckingham, which is now carefully fanciful cartoon for her, show­ reconstructed in London's Natural History Museum. She was ing what Dorset might have only twelve when she found it, only twenty-two when she dis­ looked like inthe Middle Jurassic, covered a juvenile specimen of the huge marine reptile later with enormous and rather genial- seeming monsters rising from the steam- ' ing deeps. The drawing became rather A fossilplesiosaur. popular, and Sir Henry made sure that all the proceeds went to Mary, to help this modest heroine of the science as her fortunes began to decline.

·She wrote to Buckland, the flamboyant and eccentric professor of geology at Oxford, _ about her discovery of the baby plcsiosaur, well knowing that he would find delightfulher observation that the animal's neck "had a most graceful curve," and more charming still her discovery that, lodged above its pelvic bone, right where its colon would have passed, was a newly formed coprolite, a fossilised version of the item that, had it lived, the beast A fossilichthyosaur. was just about to leave steaming in its wake. 110 1 1 1

SIMON WINCHESTER THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD There was another woman geologist and collector whose Then there was, at almost exactly the same time, the East India name does not figure in the existingDNB, but should.* She was Company's naval officer, London banker and magnificently Etheldred Bennett, a great-granddaughter of a seventeenth­ named Searles Valentine Wood the Elder, whose curiosity was century Archbishop of Canterbury. She was born in 1776, and firststirred while he was convalescing in Norfolk, but who, once she definitely met William Smith-indeed, gave him a piece of recovered, embarked on a lifelong study of the fossilmollusks to the well-known Tisbury coral, of which she was England's best­ be foundin the constructionsites of London. He was a member known collector. She made a specialty of exploring the Middle of the little-known body the London Clay Club, and wrote book Cretaceous upper greensand in the Vale of Wardour, in after book on his enormous collection of fossilbivalves, which he Wiltshire: As a relative wrote, "while other ladies of her time eventually donated to the BritishMuseum. The Natural History were doing needlepoint and chattering over their cups of India Museum in South Kensington, where they rest today, is replete tea, she became competent at systematic scientific research, as with the evidence of a century's worth of enthusiasms like well as the vigorous fieldwork of fossil hunting." She had a Valentine's-collectionafter collection, testimonyto the value of monograph privately printed: A Catalogue of the Organic the amateur scientists who so flourished in this remarkable time Remains of the County of Wilts. All evidence suggests she died a in British history. maiden aunt; her family insisted that one of the specimens later Many of the most assiduous fossilists were what used to be placed in her collection, nestled among her sponges and her called "divines"-a curious happenstance, considering the corals, and thanks presumably to a cooperative undertaker, was assault that any intelligent understanding of fossils would later her own heart, unbroken but quite petrified-transformed to have on divinity's most firmlyheld notions, like the Creationand resemble a stone, as a geologist's heart perhaps deserves to be. the Flood. The Reverend Thomas Lewis of Ross-on-Wye is char­ Most amateur collectors were comfortably established, for acteristic of the type: He is proud enough to offer a self-descrip­ fossil collecting was widely seen as a fashion for gentlemen of tion-"geologist and antiquary"-rather than to note his formal leisure. Men like, for example, the redoubtable Sir John St. Aubyn, position as vicar of Bridstow. His name may be forgotten by the fifthbaronet, sheriffof Cornwall untilhis death in 1839, a grand curacy, but it is remembered in at least three Silurian fossil master of the Freemasons, and a man who augmented his species that were named afterhim, all of them appropriately wor­ immense collectionof minerals by buying for one hundred pounds thy (as may befit a clergyman) and rather dull. the entire fossil collection of the remarkable Richard Greene of Many of the priestly collectors found in fossil hunting a Lichfield. Greene, so far as we know, was a like-minded swell much-needed intellectual stimulus, a relief from the unengaging who had amassed ( to the approval of his friend and relative topics that normally fill a parson's life. The Reverend George Samuel Johnson) a houseful of "coins, crucifixes, watches, min­ Young, from the Scottish village of Co:xiedean, was a theologian erals, orreries, deeds and manuscripts, missals, muskets, and attracted to the mysteries of fossils. He had been taught by John specimens of armour," as well as hundreds of ancient shells, Playfair, one of the giants of early academic geology, and he came graptolite etchings, and ammonites made of iron pyrite. to prominence in 1819 with his discovery, in Yorkshire, of a gigantic reptileichthyosaur since identifiedas Leptopterygius acu­ tirostris. * And indeed will appear in the New DNB, thanks to the efforts of her champion, Hugh Torrens. Though the findbrought the enthusiastic Presbyterian minis- 112 11 3

SIMON WINCHESTER THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORl;D ter some national fame-for a while he was held in almost the Some have alleged . . . that in tracing the beds upwards we same esteem as Mary Anning-itequally confrontedhim with an discern among the inclosed bodies a gradual progress from interesting challenge, an acute mental and moral dilemma. It the more rude and simple creatures, to the more perfect and forced him to ponder two possibilities that his religious beliefs completely organised; as if the Creator's skill had improved sternly discountenanced: animal extinction on the one hand by practice. But for this strange idea there is no foundation: ( there were no living ichthyosaurs-and so this particular species creatures of the most perfect organizationoccur in the lower must have vanished), and animal evolution on the other (the beds as well as the higher. crocodiles and dolphins to which this beast appeared to have been related were much less primitive than this-and so some The Reverend Young could not, however, go any furtherthan advances must have taken place over time; the less fit and able this: The forces ranged against him--of custom, history, doc­ must have been weeded out and left behind to die). Considera­ trine, and common acceptance-were just fartoo formidable. tion of either of these possibilitieswas a heresy and an anathema My own favorite, though sadly no more than a peripheral to contemporary followers of the Bible, who regarded the great player in this story, is Samuel Woodward, a Norfolk collector and book ( as do fundamentalists today) as nothing less than a docu­ almost exact contemporary of Smith's who worked for all of his mentary history of the planet. forty-eight years in either an insurance officeor a bank. He was The ReverendYoung was forcedin consequence to engage in fascinated by fossils and built up a large collection. He was not some interesting spiritual gymnasticsto come to terms with the nobly born, however, nor could he have been described as a gen­ problem. He eventually committed his conclusions to paper in tleman for whom paleontology was merely an idle pursuit for 1840 in a book with what might be considered the somewhat impressing the neighbors. He was ordinariness personified: His contradictory title ScripturalGeology. The science he advanced in fatherhad been a bombazine weaver, and his own apprenticeship it was not overendowed with logic: The ichthyosaur he had was in the making of camlets. * Smith would probably have liked found was not extinct, he declared, because a living specimen him: Both were men of modest beginnings, for whom fossils would probably be foundsooner or later: " ... when the seas and were more a passion, less a pastime forthe au courant. large rivers of our globe shall have been more fully explored, Yet it was not to be one of these modest men but a number of many animals may be brought to knowledge of the naturalist, the more gently born collectors and spiritual figures whose influ­ which at present are known only in the state of fossils." (It would ence was eventually to help place William Smith firmly on the have amused Mr. Young greatly had he been alive at Christmas flood tide of history. There was William Cunnington, a man still 1938, when the first coelacanth was found on the deck of a remembered around Devizes as being the antiquarywho excavated trawler newly come ashore in South Africa. He would doubtless most of the ancient long barrows with which the chalk downs of have thought this vindicated his otherwise dreamily unscientific the country are littered. It was Cunnington who introduced view.) Smith to the aforementioned Miss Bennett, who fascinated him And as for evolution-Darwin's theory was not to be out­ lined foranother twenty years, but men like Young, students of the realities of the fossil world, were already moving hesitantly toward the brink: *Bombazine is a thick fabric that, in black, is often used as mourning dtess;camlcts arc finecloths woven fromangora or mohair, as fashionablein the eighteenth century as pash­ mina was to become in more recent times. 114 11 5

SIMON WINCHESTER THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD with her collection of sponges and corals. The man who would tively good financial condition, his ownership ( even if mort­ later become the Father of English Geology thus briefly encoun­ gaged) of a small and pretty estate at Tucking Mill, his brief tered the person who, in some circles at least, is thought of as occupancy of a substantial terraced house in Bath itself-all these English Geology's First Woman if not quite (since she remained features commended the uneducated Smith to learned men like unmarried, and was described as "somewhat mannish") its Townsend and Richardson, Cunnington and Warner, and mother. allowed them to play a role in his life that he would later There was the Reverend Richard Warner, a great man for acknowledge as of huge importance. both writing and walking,* but a figure who suffered "severe + and reiterated disappointments"-for one of his books was judged a plagiary, another set of volumes was burned by mistake is work on the canal bed and its continuingline of progress at the printer's, and someone "dressed up as a gentleman" (or so Hwas sometimes more confusing than it should be. Smith wrote William Smith) made offwith his immense fossil collection had no problem recognizing the differencesbetween most of the by giving him a check that then promptly bounced. strata, true: there was a very obvious difference between the red There was the somewhat happier Reverend Benjamin marl and the coal measures, an equally obvious difference between Richardson, the rector of the Somerset parish of Farleigh the spawnlike granules in the limestones of the inferior oolite and Hungerford. There was also Richardson's longtime friend, the the arenaceous beds of the Lias. Yet some of the strata through Reverend Joseph Townsend, who was by calling a doctor and a which the excavators were making progress, particularly the Calvinist minister, then living in Bath, who had been well and finer-grained sandstones, looked too similar. From time to time expensively educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh. Townsend it proved very difficult, Smith found, to cµfferentiate one bed had traveled widely in Spain, and had brought back hundreds of from another: In one cutting there may have been a sandstone fossils from the local limestones. He had not, Smith was later to and in another, half a mile away, there may have been another write with relief, drawn any conclusions from his finds, and he that looked identical-and yet, to judge from a dip and strike was to remark later, and ruefully, "Ah,Smith, were I now to go that did not vary between the two outcrops, Logic suggested that over to Spain again I should give a very different account of the the two formations were not the same at all, had been laid down country." at different times, and were in fact separated by hundreds, per­ He would do so because, forthe firsttime, WilliamSmith was haps even thousands, of feet of vertical distance. beginning to take a keenly intelligent interest in not just the To understand the nature of this problem it is perhaps easier rocks in the cuttingsof the coal canal, but of the fossilstoo. And to imagine something of the circumstances when the rocks were once he had begun to do so, then who better with whom to dis­ being Laid down. Think, for example, of the conditions in the cuss his discoveries than the local worthies who had amassed col­ Lower and Middle Jurassic in North Somerset-something, it is lections themselves? His newfoundsocial standing, his now-close worth remembering, that Smith would have_ been quite unable friendship with the widowed Lady Jones of Rugbome, his rela- to imagine since he had no idea of the ages of the rocks he exam­ ined, of the paleogeography of the region,of any of the concepts that permeate modern geology. *His WRJks through W4les was an eighteenth-century bestseller; his English Di4tesseron somewhat lessso. He would not have known what modern science allows us to 116 11

SIMON WINCHESTER THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD 7 know which is that for most of the SI-million-year period of different rock types may be being deposited or created at differ­ time that began 208 million years ago, when the Jurassic opens, ent places; and that over any extended period of time the very most of North Somerset was covered by .a shallow sea, at the same rock--orat least, rocks with the very same lithology-may western edge of a vast ocean called the Tethys. In addition, since be being laid down at different places. all England was then positioned about thirty-five degrees north Hence the confusion.When William Smith was looking at the of the equator, the waters were subtropical, and warm. sandy outcrops of the Upper Lias in a few square miles around But the sea in those days, much like the sea today, was not the village of Midford, say, he might find a succession of sandy uniformly deep, and, since it was at the edge of the Tethyan beds in one valley, and another succession of sandy beds in Ocean it was at times close to landmasses from which, in places, another valley, that looked to all intents and purposes the same, rivers cascaded or seeped, estuaries were formed, volcanoes but that his knowledge of their dip and strike and distance apart erupted, cliffs collapsed, and where currents of sand and water persuaded him were not the same at all-that the bed lying on swept down through deep ocean canyons. Paleogeography is a top was younger than ( that is, had been deposited more recent­ study that involves the constant remembrance of time and space, ly than) the bed that lay below. as well as all the physical conditions in which a particular rock The conditions governing the type of rock, the facies, that type may be laid down-meaning that at any one time, several had been laid down in each of these two valleys had been exact­ ly the same-they had been deposited near the beach of a warm and shallow sea, with maybe some incoming muddy deposits froma nearby river. But their attitude-goingback to the bread­ and-butter analogy he had come up with back in his High Littleton days-still applied: they could not have been the same bed of rock, and they must have been separated by scores, maybe hundreds of feet-and hundreds of feet meant at the very least, a long period of time. What the outcrops indicated was two dif­ ferent periods of time, when the same conditions for deposit obtained. How, then, to tell the rocks apart? The answer lay in Smith's sudden realization that there was just one aspect of the two types of rock, and only one, that dif­ fered. The blocks of stone found in the cuttingsmay have all had the same color, an acid bottle would show them all to have the [:-:_-_! uodmaNModcffl ...... _ SubductiGn 1,onc (triangles potruInc�d"m:ctianol1obdUiCrion) same chemistry, a magnifying lens would show the sandstones as all having the same grain size. But the fossils that were to be found in the two rocks-the bivalves, the ammonites, the gas­ The extent of the Tethyan Ocean in Middle Jurassic times, tropods, the corals-they were allsubtly different. 152 million years ago. Every single one of the specimens of one kind of fossilmight 11 8 119

SIMON WINCHESTER THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD be the same throughout one bed, but would be subtly different incontrovertibly true, could be positively and invariably identi­ from those of the same kind of fossil found in another bed. A fied simply and solely by the fossils that were to be found with­ period of timewould have elapsed between the deposition of the in it. two beds, and thus a period of timebetween the existence of the Wherever in the hills around Bath a sandstone appeared with two kinds of animals it embraced. Evolution-we can say this a particular specimen of fossil enclosed within, then it was cer­ today, but Smith had not even the vaguest conceptionof it back tain that it was the very same rock, laid down at the very same then-would have occurred. Those animals of which there time. And if this rock-and-fossilassemblage appeared not just in would be fossilized remainsthat were found lower down in the the hills around Bath, but in the valleys of Oxfordshire too, and ar an series would be more primitive; those found in the rock layers was found in a qu ry in Rutl d, beside a road in Lincolnshire, above, less so. But that was not the point. The important discov­ on a peak near York, and finally in a cliff nearWhitby, then it, too ery that Smith made was that certain beds had certain fossils, that was the selfsame rock. Not just a similar rock: the same rock. they were unique and peculiar to that bed and to that period of And then, the corollary said, by joining the dots of its occurrence time in geologic history. They were never to be seen again in across the land, one could show just where this particular rock rocks that camelater-in other words, in the rocks that appeared occurred all over the nation, and whether it made an outcrop or above. They were never seen before, either: They were peculiar, not. And one could do this not just in the nation, but in theory that is to say, to a certain and specific period in geologic time; all over the world. One of the enigmas that was central to an they were the key to making a positive identification of what one unraveling of the mysteries of the planet had now demonstrably rock might be in relation to any other. been solved. What he had vaguely imagined might be true when Day after day during the late summer and autumn of 1795, he looked through the mines near High Littleton, was clearly an whether he was working surveying the canal or simply clamber­ axiom, a fundamentalfact of the new geological knowledge. And ing over rocks that interested him while his horse champed con­ he, William Smith, was the first to say so. tentedly beside him, Smith tested and retested his theory. At Smith was exultant at his realization, and committed his each outcrop he came to he would gingerly chip and pry and thoughts to paper with excited promptitude. He was in the Swan prise as many fossils as he could from their enfolding rock. Each Inn at Dunkerton, sheltering from the cold on the evening of evening he would take his specimens back to his elegant new Tuesday, January 5, 1796. He had decided that evening not to terraced home in Bath. He would wash and dry each fossil, be it brave the elements, not to go back home to Bath. He took a a pedestrian looking oyster shell or the magnificent twirling sheet of paper and wrote in his distinctively bold handwriting a fantasy of a full-blownammonite, and lay each carefully,on a pad long single sentence. The note survives, its underlining pre­ of cotton, in drawer after drawer of his cabinets, carefully noting served forposterity . It was a sentence that, of all he wrote, is per­ the rock, the horizon, the facies, and the lithology from which haps most deserving to be his epitaph: each came. And as his systematic collecting proceeded, and as the size Fossils have long been studied as great curiosities, collected and quality of his collection was daily enhanced, so his theory with great pains, treasured with great care and at a great was confirmedan d reconfirmed: A layer of rock, it now seemed expense, and showed and admired with as much pleasure as a 120 SIMON WINCHESTER

child's rattle or a hobby-horse is shown and admired by him­ self and his playfellows, because it is pretty; and this has been done by thousands who have never paid the least regard to that wonderful order and regularity with which Nature has disposed of these singular productions, and assigned to each class its particular stratum.

Later, in more reflective mood, he would write:

For six years I put my notions of stratification to the test of excavation; and I generally pointed out to contractors and others, who came to undertake the work, what the various parts of the canal would be dug through. But the great simi­ larity of the rocks of the Oolite, on and near the end of the canal towards Bath, required more than superficial observa­ tion to determine whether these hills were not composed of one, two or even three of these rocks, as by the distinctions of some parts seemed to appear. These doubts were at length removed by more particularattention to the site of the organ­ ic fossils which I had long collected. This discovery of the mode of identifying the strata by the organised fossils respec­ tively imbedded therein led to the most important distinc­ tions.

In reflective mood Smith seems more the engineer, less the romantic. In middle age he is, and understandably, no longer quite so astonished at the "wonderfulorder" that he had realized the fossils displayed-an astonishment of discovery which today remams the most haunting aspect of that hastily scribbled note made at the Swan Inn. But the message remains the same, how· ever eloquent or sentimental the prose. A puzzle had beer solved. A riddle unscrambled. Now was the time to make some· thing of the answer.