Part of Collection

Title

Notebook No.189

Creators/Contributors

Rights

Out of Copyright. Free use.

Collection

Papers of Sir Charles Lyell

Production Date

January 1854

Shelfmark (Identifier)

Coll-203/A1/189

Catalogue Record

https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/180347

Description

This black notebook contains a record of Charles Lyell’s geological travels around Madeira with Georg Hartung, in the company of Mary Lyell, and Charles and Frances Bunbury. This notebook begins January 16th, 1854, covering both Madeira and the Azores archipelago. Specific areas of note include Boaventura, Ponte la Grande, Ponte De Serra, São Jorge, Faial Island, Ribeiro Frio, Arrebentão, Pontinha, Piedade, and Paul da Serra. This notebook primarily focuses on the geological features and formations Lyell saw across Madeira and includes a vast number of drawings and sketches of these geological features, primarily concerning tuff, crystals, buried craters, scoria, and vesicular lava. A drawing of interest can be found on page 33, showing a valley in São Jorge with the remains of a ruined bridge, as well as geological features like columnar and rocks. Lyell mentions using both Georg Hartung and Eckersberg as reference points in his notebook in drawings and writing e.g., ‘see Hartung’s drawing’ (page 18). The painter Johan Frederick Eckersberg was in Maderia at the same time as Lyell and Hartung and has many paintings of places noted in Lyell’s notebooks. Some key geological features Lyell describes in this book include the ‘lime kiln’ in Pontinha, eruption theory, uplift, upheaval, and caldera. Lyell also has Barometers readings included with dethatched and attached readings. Equally he mentions an interesting name for foxglove as ‘Madeira Violet’. An interesting aspect of this notebook is the later additions of Lyell and Hartung from October 19th potentially from the same year, these additions from this date are also in later notebooks on Madeira.

Language

eng