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Charles Lapworth's "The Moffat Series", 1878

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Charles Lapworth's 194 Classic Paper Classic Paper in the History of Geology Charles Lapworth's "The Moffat Series", 1878 The investigation of the geol- quent repetition of beds. By working in the same meticulous way as ogy of the Southern Uplands, he had done in the south, and applying what he had read of discover- which form the border region ies in the Alps, he worked out the succession and structures, and between Scotland and Eng- again stimulated the Survey and others to re-map the area and revise land, has played an important their thinking. role in the history of geological research, from the time of Hut- ton, through the nineteenth century, and to the present. The problems in the geology of the The 1878 paper, the 'Moffat Series' by Charles Lapworth Southern Uplands (see Figure 1) was a major part in the development of the According to William Watts, writing an appreciation of Charles Lap- understanding of the geology worth in 1921, the problems in the understanding of the Lower Pal- of the area. Dealing with a aeozoic of the Southern Uplands was similar to those of the Lower region of complex deforma- Palaeozoic elsewhere. Trilobites and brachiopods had been used for tion, he worked out the bio- correlation, but had led to contradictions and inconsistencies. There stratigraphy and structure, was little or no confidence in graptolites as a stratigraphic tool. The using a hitherto largely main body of the Southern Uplands were considered to be virtually neglected fossil group, the barren and to have a total thickness of greywackes, with shale bands, Figure 1 Charles Lapworth. graptolites. Twenty-one years Photograph from family archives, of 26,000 feet. It was thought that the graptolites collected from one after its publication, the history reproduced by kind permission of shale band were comparable to those found in all the others, i.e. the of research of this area the late Patricia Lapworth. fauna from the lowest band was thought similar to that of the high- included in the Memoir pub- est. It was assumed that the whole series of greywackes and shales lished by the Geological Sur- must belong to the same epoch, the Llandeilo, because the few rec- vey in 1899, stated that: '[t]he publication of this [Moffat] paper ognizable fossils were dated as that. Because the graptolites were marks an epoch in the history of the Silurian Geology of the South of supposedly all found from the same epoch, they were thought to be Scotland. It remains the greatest and most original contribution to useless as time indices. The supposition that 26,000 of rock had been the study of the life-sequence and structural relations of these highly deposited in the Llandeilo alone suggested either that deposition had convoluted rocks'. been very rapid or that graptolites had not evolved during this time. In addition, the physical conditions in the Southern Uplands posed further problems. As Lapworth wrote: Background [244] [A]ll the rocks of the district . [245] dip uniformly to the N.N.W. at high angles. Faults, folds, and inversions are Charles Lapworth (1842–1920) was born at Buckden, near Faring- occasionally visible among the greywackes; but in the dark don, Berkshire, England. He was educated at the local village school shales they are astonishingly abundant. In every known and later went to Culham College, near Oxford, to train as a teacher. locality where the Graptolitic beds are exposed, the majority His first post was at St Peter's Episcopalian School at Galashiels, in are in this contorted and dislocated condition, and the attempt the Scottish Borders, where he and his friends took up the hobby of to ascertain their interrelationship by lithological and natural history, especially the study of the local geology. Lapworth stratigraphical evidence has soon to be abandoned as became a gifted amateur geologist and acknowledged expert on hopeless. Their separation by zoological characters appears graptolites, discovering many new species. Between 1870 and 1878 to be quite as desperate; for in many localities every trace of he published a series of papers on graptolites and on the geology of their former prolific fauna has been obliterated; in others the Southern Uplands. Initially, he worked according to the estab- only one or two fragmentary forms are obtainable, and these lished ideas on the succession as stated by earlier workers, especially are limited to a few inches of thickness of the less altered Sir Roderick Murchison, whose Geological Survey officers investi- zones. Even in those bands where the fossils are numerous gated the area between 1863 and 1873. But Lapworth gradually and well preserved, the neighbouring exposures have came to the conclusion that their ideas were untenable, and his work frequently not a single fossil in common. in the area developed on more individual lines, culminating in the Moffat paper. This paper stimulated further research by the Survey and others on Southern Uplands geology. It also enabled Lapworth (1879) to reclassify the Lower Palaeozoic in Britain into the tripar- Lapworth's initial mapping tite system of Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian. Shortly after the publication of the Moffat paper, Lapworth, until then a schoolmas- As mentioned, Lapworth's intellectual legacy came from Murchison, ter, was appointed the first Professor of Geology at Birmingham who had postulated a relatively simple set of parallel southwest- University. northeast folds, seemingly open and gently dipping, but showing Lapworth's next piece of research was an application of the considerable faulting. Any graptolites that were found were dis- detailed stratigraphic procedures he had developed in southern Scot- counted for dating and correlation, and generally the fossil content in land to the complex region of Scotland's Northwest Highlands these shales and sandstones was thought to be patchy and poor. Dat- (though this time with less dependence on fossils). Here he estab- ing was done on a macro-scale, using lithology as a basis for corre- lished the nature of great lateral movements of the crust and conse- lation with Welsh (rather than Lake District or Scandinavian) rocks. September 2001 195 Lapworth reported that Murchison had thought that the struc- overlap to explain this, not re-examining the earlier work of his col- ture consisted of leagues in this highly disturbed area. [246] great folds, the upper arches of which had been At this time, during his early work, which was done close to denuded. At the same time he emphatically assigned to the Galashiels, working with the accepted succession, Lapworth began whole of the rocks of the district a geological position inferior to find many graptolites. Some were hitherto unknown in the area, to that of the Bala Limestone of North Wales. while others were completely new species. These came from the While acknowledging that this method was adequate for work- black shales that were being exposed by the many new civil engi- ing out a sequence among slightly disturbed rocks, Lapworth stated neering works being undertaken in the area. It is possible, indeed that it failed where there were structural complexities. Lithostratig- probable, that the finding of graptolites in these new, more extensive raphy alone was not equal to the task of unravelling the structure of exposures was the trigger and stimulus for developing his new the Southern Uplands. methodology and there is evidence in his 1872 paper, 'Graptolites of Archibald Geikie, one of the Survey officers, interpreted the the Gala Group', that Lapworth was already using graptolites as a structure as being that of a grand anticline running from Dumfries in stratigraphic tool. He rapidly expanded his fieldwork area from Galashiels to the neighbouring countryside, eventually covering all the west to St. Abb's Head in the east, with the youngest rocks the part of the Southern Uplands known as the Scottish Borders. The (Caradoc) in a central syncline. However, he found it difficult to only method Lapworth found trustworthy was the use of palaeonto- determine the succession: 'at the best the decision in most cases logical zones allied to lithology. He found historical justification for rested only on a combination of probabilities' (Geikie 1863, p. 8). what he now termed his zonal approach, and he referred to the work Graptolites, thought to be Caradoc or younger, were sometimes of William Smith, James Hall, Albert Oppel, and Alcide d'Orbigny found mixed with Llandeilo forms, but this problem was brushed and their earlier, if cruder, zonal methodology. Other geologists aside using Joachim Barrande's (1799–1883) theory of 'colonies', from Britain, Scandinavia, North America, and France had also which suggested that on occasions 'precursorial' forms might be come to recognize the value of the zonal approach. found in strata, out of order with the usual stratigraphic sequence. By the mid-1870s, Lapworth had become an acknowledged The Survey published an account of the geology of the area immedi- expert on graptolites and corresponded extensively with other geol- ately west of Moffat (Sheet 15, Leadhills) in 1871. It had been ogists who worked in this field. He collaborated with (among others) mapped by Robert Logan Jack (1845–1921) as a syncline of black Henry Alleyne Nicholson of St Andrews and Aberdeen Universities, graptolitic shales, dated as Upper Llandeilo. Nearby grits were dated and with William Swanston of Belfast and John Hopkinson from as Caradoc and were thought similar to ones found elsewhere above Hertford, an authority on Welsh graptolites. Lapworth's correspon- the Llandeilo. Two years later (1873), Geikie, working in adjacent dence with Gustav Linnarsson of the Swedish Geological Survey areas, found that the Caradoc did not always lie above the same part was particularly important as both men were working on rocks of of the supposed Llandeilo and he proposed an unconformity with similar age and type.
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