Scottish island of Staffa, through William Book Review Buckland's beautifully-composed Homeric monograph, Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823), to Section William Whewell's decidedly peculiar letters to Lady Malcolm (dispatched from the 'Underground Chamber' of Dolcoath Mine in Compiled by John Jenkin* 1828), caves attracted quite extraordinary attention for a while, and seem to have It has been suggested that this section of our brought out the best and the worst in visi- journal might carry brief reviews of museum tors. Then, by around 1840, caves fell from exhibitions when appropriate subjects arise; favour, like catastrophist geology and ecstatic that is, when an exhibition is clearly related aesthetics, never again to assume a promi- to the history of science in Australasia or the nent place on our intellectual horizons. south-west Pacific region. In the late decades of the eighteenth cen- At first sight this may seem a curious tury and especially during the opening dec- suggestion, since most exhibitions are likely ades of the nineteenth, caves were the rage to be closed before the review appears; but across Europe, and especially in Britain. there are other considerations. Reviews can Everyone - geologist or not - paid a visit inform readers who weren't able to see the to such sites as Fingal's Cave, Peak Cavern exhibition; they can enlighten researchers to and Speedwell Mine. Poems (Erasmus Dar- the riches often held invisibly in our win, Scott, Keats), paintings (Turner), music museums and awaken interest in the pri- (Mendelssohn), books of views (William mary objects, photographs and related docu- Westall), novels (Scott) and dozens of articles ments that are sometimes neglected by and scientific treatises resulted from such historians of science; and they can recognize visits and kept cave-lore and cave-worship and encourage the work of museums in pre- alive. senting the history of science in our region It is quite impossible for us to recapture and generally enhance the academic credibil- today either the frisson experienced by Buck- ity of museum work. land when he first crept into the bone-bear- We have decided, therefore, to accept this ing cave at Kirkdale in Yorkshire, or the suggestion for a trial period, and the first foreboding of Walter Scott as he listened to such review appears below. The book review the unearthly music emitted by the basalt editor would welcome information on forth- 'organ pipes9 at Fingal's Cave. We no longer coming exhibitions, people willing to write breathe in the thick atmosphere of myths reviews, and reader reaction to this and legends that surrounded caves two cen- innovation. turies ago, the 'sublime9 (the most common adjective associated with caves) is no longer Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, part of our vocabulary, and we are all, more Wellington Caves: From History to Prehistory or less, uniformitarian geologists and evolu- - an exhibition. tionary biologists, so that the deep issues which cave exploration might clear up have The abode of the sibyls and nymphs of no hold on us. Roman mythology, a site for the worship of This exhibition, put together with care, Mithras in Persia, the refuge of the five kings intelligence and obvious enthusiasm by of the Canaanites, lair of the terrible Cyclops Julian Holland (Curator of Scientific Instru- and sensual Calypso . caves have been ments at the Macleay Museum), tried never- home, prison and temple to some remarkable theless to convey the dynamics, the thrill and beings in our history. Our culture is, if one the substance of cave research in the early may say so, full of caves, those dark, often nineteenth century. The visitor who paid empty spaces at once fascinating and danger- attention to the subtle mix of visual and ous, seductive yet repellent. verbal materials would have obtained from For a few decades which overlap, not coin- this exhibition a strong sense that caves were cidentally, the golden age of geology and the not only a basis for the ever-so-slow-to- great era of Romanticism, caves burst onto develop science of vertebrate palaeontology the scientific scene. From Joseph Banks' 1774 in Australia but also for the somewhat more enthusiastic report of Fingal's Cave on the rapid transition to Lyellian geology in Britain. The exhibition offered some familiar items * Dr J.G. Jenkin is a Reader in Physics at La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083. (works by ~~~kl~~dand cueer), but most items on display related to the discovery and Historical Records of Australian Science, 9(2) (December 1992) exploration in 1830 of the famous bones cave' 189 Historical Records of Australian Science, Volume 9, Number 2 in Wellington Valley, NSW. It was the 'very to be done there, and he had faith in the respectable Colonist and Magistrate' George abilities of astronomers and potential astron- Ranken who, in the words of John Dunmore omers in the Commonwealth. He supposed a Lang in the Sydney Gazette, made the dis- telescope such as he envisaged to be beyond covery which, Lang rightly foresaw, would the resources of any one Commonwealth 'excite very considerable interest in the sci- country; it had to be an international enter- entific world'. A large quantity of fossil prise. At first he proposed a joint effort by remains - some of which appeared in the Australia, Canada and the UK. For reasons exhibition - were retrieved and dispatched not immediately scientific, Canada soon to Europe for analysis and classification. The dropped out, and so this book is about an results showed that enormous creatures, now Anglo-Australian enterprise. extinct, formerly roamed not 200 miles from There is a Foreword by Paul Wild (Can- Sydney and that, as Robert Jameson berra) and Sir Robert Wilson (University explained in 1831, earlier catastrophist College, London), successive chairmen of the accounts notwithstanding, 'the same agent AAT Board immediately after 1975. They or agents that brought together the remains write that the AAT 'can lay claim to being of animals met in bone-caves and bone-brec- the best instrumented telescope in the world', cia in Europe, operated on New Holland'. and that it and its accompanying Schmidt While the bones from Wellington caves telescope 'have proved to be the most suc- helped to establish uniformitarian geology in cessful combination of telescopes in the Britain, they did little immediately to help world' for the sorts of astronomy for which a launch Australian earth sciences. Lang wrote combination is designed. Such statements in 1830 that the country was becoming 'daily leave little doubt about the status of the more and more interesting to the geographer book's subject matter! and geolotist', and he called for the establish- A word first about how it was possible to ment of a Lecturer in the Sydney College achieve such status. At the time there was a devoted to natural history and natural phi- general conviction amongst the astronomers losophy. Several decades were to pass before and technologists involved that, having such a position was established, by which regard to all aspects of the available technol- time the flood of interest in caves - at ogy, the optimal size for a large ground-based Wellington and elsewhere - had weakened optical telescope was about 150-inch aper- to a trickle. Julian Holland and the Macleay ture. The pioneering telescope emerging from Museum are to be congratulated for remind- this school of thought, after prolonged design ing us that deep and dark secrets were once studies, was the 150-inch telescope for the concealed in the secluded and sublime cav- Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) in erns of Europe and Australia. Arizona. In 1967, one condition of govern- ment approval for the construction of the Michael Shortland AAT was the acceptance of a generous offer Unit for the History and Philosophy of from KPNO to supply the results of those Science design studies. Also, when in 1967 the UK University of Sydney decided to construct the Schmidt telescope, the US authorities made available the S.C.B. Gascoigne, K.M. Proust and M.O. designs for the Palomar 40-inch Schmidt. Robins, The Creation of the Anglo-Austra- This considerable American generosity lian Observatory. Cambridge: Cambridge meant that the two telescopes for Australia University Press, 1990. xiii + 301 pp., illus., could be made far more speedily than other- $85.00. wise, and also that advantage could be taken of American experience in constructing the H.R.H. The Prince of Wales in 1974 inaugu- designs. At the same time, certain improve- rated the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) ments of more recent date could be on Siding Spring Mountain; it was commis- incorporated. sioned in 1975. In 1953 R.v.d.R. Woolley had This book is an important contribution to launched his proposal for a telescope in the the history of science that is in some respects southern hemisphere that would be at least unique in character. One is the singularly as capable as the best in the north. This appropriate relationship of the team of book is essentially the history of what hap- authors to their subject; intimate without pened between 1953 and 1975. being partisan. Professor Gascoigne is a Woolley was Director of Mt Stromlo highly distinguished Australian astronomer; Observatory from 1939 to 1955. He was over- ever since World War I1 he has been more whelmed by the richness of the southern sky actively involved than any other single indi- and the huge amount of astronomy waiting vidual in the build-up of Australian optical Book Review Section astronomy and its instrumentation. In 1967- account of those 'stormy years', when so 74 he was Astronomical Adviser to the AAT many strong-minded and dedicated person- project; in 1974-75 he was Commissioning alities found themselves in conflict.