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Text modified for legibility
"Cause and Effect" title added in since it was cut from the source image
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Date: Early 1830s
Description: A young boy carves out a broad valley by urinating into it. De la Beche is again making fun of Lyell.
De la Beche was making light of "fluvialists", uniformitarians who believed that valleys were carved out by the slow and steady action of rivers. The most obvious objection was "misfit valleys", broad valleys containing small streams, which is what is represented in an extreme form in the cartoon. Today these valleys are mainly recognized as glacially-carved. (In the 1830s there was not yet a theory of glaciation, and Lyell was not a fan of it when it did arrive.)
The signature is a bit hard to read, but says "By [?] H de la beche / [?] F. Buckland". F. Buckland is William Buckland's son, Frank, who is the child drawn. He was born in 1826, and would have been 4 or 5 when Principles was published. I can't find an exact date of composition for Cause and Effect, but it was probably around this time. Suggestions for a better reading of this text are welcome.
20 years later, when De la Beche had at last come around to at least some of Lyell's views, his old rival Murchison wrote to him in a letter, "I could only have wished that it did not seem to me that you favoured the ‘piddling’ school more than of old, when you drew Frank Buckland as a baby denuding a valley. [...] I reserve my say except to hope that you have not actually become an inch by inch geologist."
For more on Lyell himself, see his entry on the biography page.
Unmodified and alternate images:
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| Unmodified image Click image to view larger Image from the History of Geology blog |
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| Image with titles retained, but poor color quality and low resolution. Click image to view larger Image from Clary (2003), pg 218 |
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Sources & further discussion:
Haile, N. S. "The ‘piddling school’of geology." Nature 387.6634 (1997): 650. Link [nature.com]
Clary, Renee M. "Uncovering strata: an investigation into the graphic innovations of geologist Henry T. De la Beche." Thesis. (2003). pg. 218 Link [digitalcommons.lsu.edu]
Images yoinked from:
The History of Geology blog [historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com]
Clary, Renee M. "Uncovering strata: an investigation into the graphic innovations of geologist Henry T. De la Beche." Thesis. (2003). pg. 218 Link [digitalcommons.lsu.edu]
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