The Geologists’ Association's annual Festival of Geology is virtual this year on 7th and 8th November 2020. We used to have tables for this one day event to sell our stock, but retired three years ago. However, the virtual fair provides an opportunity to sell again, and all purchases will be discounted by 15% from Friday 6th until Sunday 15th November 2020. Update: this offer has now expired.In other news, the coronavirus lockdown has given me more time for cataloguing and uploading a backlog of maps and books. This includes a new collection of Old Series one inch Geological maps...
As we work from home, Nineteenth Century Geological Maps is continuing to operate and delivery of purchases has not been affected, so far. A silver lining is the increased amount of time available to describe, photograph and upload a large backlog of interesting material, and here is the first instalment – on Oxfordshire and environs.
Maps of the geology of Eastern Europe reflect the historic political instability of the region. Before the First World War, empires prevailed – Austrian /Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German. Within these were provinces or regions, whose names have been lost as they were subsumed and/or divided by subsequent nation states that followed the break-up of empires. With the drastic shifts of population and changes of languages and sometimes of alphabets, place names on early maps are often difficult to locate in the present.
The search for minerals and fuel drove much early geological investigation. The earliest account of mining was Georgius Agricola’s De Re Metallica (on the nature of Metals) and remained the authority for nearly two centuries after its publication, in Latin, in 1556
Best wishes for the New Year to all website visitors and customers. January's article features maps, memoirs and books concerning the geology of Wales and the rich history there of the development of geology. That Wales gives the names of three of the systems of the stratigraphical chart – Silurian, Ordovician and Cambrian and, until recently Precambrian, attests to the early exploration and conceptual thinking that occurred here.
