Abstract
The theme which unites this article came to me as a charge – a charge I brought upon myself, but a charge nevertheless. An international group of historians of geology (INHIGEO) was to meet in Cape Town in 2016. Our group had no active members in South Africa, which presented a problem for the conference organizers: How could we have a history of geology field trip? I volunteered that John Herschel had lived at the Cape in the 1830s and that there must be a story and a field trip to be found there. I did lead a field trip “On the Trail of Charles Darwin and John Herschel: The Cape in the 1830s.” I also discovered an unanticipated depth of archival material, which I will be exploring for some time, and which informs this story of the encounter between John Herschel, the astronomer, and the geology of Cape Town, South Africa, in in the 1830s.
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Notes
- 1.
David S. Evans, Terence J. Deeming, Betty Hall Evans, and Stephen Goldfarb, eds., Herschel at the Cape: Diaries and Correspondence of Sir John Herschel, 1834–1838. (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1969), 37. Evans selected passages, in particular, from John Herschel’s Travel Journal XIII, 1829–1837. This is in the Herschel Family Papers, Container 22.14 (W0063a on the old numbering system), University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center. Note that although Evans calls these “diary” entries, in the Herschel Family Papers, this series of books is termed “Travel Journals,” the series “Diaries” being entirely different. Brian Warner includes many of Herschel’s camera lucida sketches in Cape Landscapes: Sir John Herschel’s Sketches 1834–1838.(Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2006). Warner’s book, with Herschel’s camera lucida sketches, illustrates well Herschel’s fascination with landscape and its connection to geology.
- 2.
There are a number of secondary works, reflecting on and analyzing the activities of Herschel at the Cape. Donald Fernie’s The Whisper and the Vision: The Voyages of the Astronomers (Toronto/Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1976), 57–106, includes a chapter on Herschel’s years at the Cape. A more recent scholarly account sets Herschel’s time at the Cape in a broader cultural and political context: Steven Ruskin, John Herschel’s Cape Voyage: Private Science, Public Imagination and the Ambitions of Empire (Aldershot, Hants, England and Burlington, Vermont, USA: Ashgate, 2004).
- 3.
Omar W. Nasim, Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
- 4.
Gregory A. Good, “A Shift of View: Meteorology in John Herschel’s Terrestrial Physics.” In Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate, eds. J.R. Fleming, V. Jankovic, and D.R. Coen (New York: Science History Publications, 2006), 35–67.
- 5.
Gregory A. Good, “John Herschel’s Optical Researches and the Development of his Ideas on Method and Causality,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 18 (1987), 1–41. Herschel used polarized light to probe crystalline structure.
- 6.
Brian Warner provides a useful summary of Herschel’s travels around the Cape in Cape Landscapes, the chapter “Journeys into the Interior,” at 131–161. Warner reproduces 21 of Herschel’s camera lucida drawings.
- 7.
Brian Warner, “The Years at the Cape of Good Hope,” in D.G. King-Hele, ed., John Herschel 1792–1871: A Bicentennial Commemoration (London: The Royal Society, 1992), 51–66, quote at 51.
- 8.
Evans, Herschel at the Cape, 37–38, Herschel’s journal entry for 19 January 1834.
- 9.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 44, Herschel’s journal entry for 3 February 1834.
- 10.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 45, Herschel’s journal entry for 3 February 1834.
- 11.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 63, Herschel’s journal entry for 20 April 1834.
- 12.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 58, Herschel’s journal entry for 30 March 1834.
- 13.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 65, Herschel’s journal entry for 4 May 1834.
- 14.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 70, Herschel’s journal entry for 4 June 1834.
- 15.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 82 and 85, Herschel’s diary entries for 21 July 1834, and for 31 July 1834.
- 16.
Warner, Cape Landscapes, 128, Figure 6.13. Warner dates Figure 6.13 to May 1836, hence not the drawing mentioned here. His landscape (126, Figure 6.12) eastward in 1834 was much more romantic, the mountains far away, rendered in an India ink wash.
- 17.
Constantiaberg is now reckoned to be 3041 feet (927 meters) high.
- 18.
This panorama is not reproduced in Warner’s Cape Landscapes. The original is in the National Library of South Africa, Cape Town, Herschel Portfolio II, INIL 9214.
- 19.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 100. The extended diary entry is not reproduced in this book. The manuscript (see footnote 1) contains much more, including sketches. If Herschel used the camera lucida on this first ascent, no drawings made with it are in the archives.
- 20.
Evans includes much of the relevant portion of Travel Journal XIII in Herschel at the Cape, pp. 100–106. He again omits rough sketches in the journal. Note that several peaks bear variations of the name Drachenstein. Warner discusses this first trip to the eastern mountains in Cape Landscapes, pp. 131–133.
- 21.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 101–102, Herschel’s journal entry for 11 November 1834.
- 22.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 102–103, Herschel’s journal entry for 12 November 1834.
- 23.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 103–1-4, Herschel’s journal entry for 13 November 1834.
- 24.
Warner, Cape Landscapes, 141, identifies this as today’s Drakensteinpiek.
- 25.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 105–106, Herschel’s journal entries for 14 and 15 November 1834.
- 26.
Margaret Herschel to Duncan Stewart (her brother), 6 June 1835, printed in Brian Warner, ed., Lady Herschel’s Letters from the Cape, 1834–1838(Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library, 1991), 73–79.
- 27.
Herschel’s connection to Murchison, going back 10 years, was strengthened by the presence of Murchison’s brother at the Cape: John Herschel to Roderick Impey Murchison, 8 March 1835, Geological Society (London).
- 28.
Warner, Cape Landscapes, 132. Warner quotes Herschel’s journal for 3 September 1835.
- 29.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 195–196.
- 30.
Evans, et al., Herschel at the Cape, 211–213. Warner points out that Maclear and Herschel timed this trip to avoid attending a dinner in honor of the Cape governor whose policy toward indigenous peoples they strongly opposed.
- 31.
John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 20 February 1836, American Philosophical Society Archives, B.D25.L.1 Another copy is at the Royal Society, RS:HS 25.4.20. The APS manuscript was transcribed and published with commentary by Walter F. Cannon, “The Impact of Uniformitarianism: Two Letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836–1837,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 105(1961), 301–314. Herschel referred to passages in Lyell’s fourth edition: Principles of Geology, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1835). Lyell’s version appeared as “Extracts from a Letter from Sir John F.W. Herschel to C. Lyell…,” Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 2 (1833–1838),548–552, 596–598.
- 32.
Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 84–85; Sandra Herbert, Charles Darwin, Geologist. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 317–318.
- 33.
Ruse, Darwinian Revolution, 56–61. This issue requires extensive re-examination since new sources and perspectives have appeared.
- 34.
Cannon, “Impact of Uniformitarianism,” 302–303. Cannon discussed the species question, but asserted that the rest of the letter was “still of greater importance to the historian.” (p. 302).
- 35.
Leonard Wilson, Charles Lyell, the Years to 1841: The Revolution in Geology.(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 286 ff.
- 36.
Martin J.S. Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 479–481.
- 37.
Herbert, Charles Darwin, Geologist, 209–212. Herbert’s case is based on Darwin’s post-Beagle notebooks and demonstrate his familiarity with Herschel’s letter and ideas.
- 38.
Herschel to Whewell, 28 January 1834, Trinity College Archives, Cambridge, UK, Add.Ms.a.20723.
- 39.
Herschel to Lyell, 20 February 1834, paragraphs 8 through 14 concern physical theory of Earth processes in Cannnon, “Impact of Uniformitarianism,” 306–307.
- 40.
Herschel to Lyell, 20 February 1834, paragraphs 17 through 28 concern climate and geological field work, Cannon, “Impact of Uniformitarianism,” 308–311.
- 41.
Herschel to Lyell, 20 February 1834, paragraph 21, in Cannon, “Impact of Uniformitarianism,” 309.
- 42.
Herschel to Lyell, 20 February 1834, paragraph 23, in Cannon, “Impact of Uniformitarianism,” 309–310.
- 43.
John F.W. Herschel, “Extracts from a letter from Sir John F.W. Herschel to C. Lyell, Esq., dated Fredhausen (sic), Cape of Good Hope, 20th February, 1836,” Proceedings of the Geological Society of London 2(1833–1838)548–552 and 596–598. Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, A Fragment (London: John Murray, 1838), 225–236. Babbage also prints part of Herschel’s letter to Roderick Murchison, 15 November 1836, at 237–241 and an extract of a later one to Lyell on 12 June 1837, at 241–247.
- 44.
The extracts of Herschel’s February 1836 letter to Lyell both leave out large, and different, passages of Herschel’s manuscript versions at the Royal Society of London and the American Philosophical Society.
- 45.
Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam, 548.
- 46.
Herschel to Lyell, 20 February 1836. The passage is in Cannon, “Impact of Uniformitarianism,” 308–309.
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Good, G.A. (2017). John Herschel’s Geology: The Cape of Good Hope in the 1830s. In: Buchwald, J., Stewart, L. (eds) The Romance of Science: Essays in Honour of Trevor H. Levere. Archimedes, vol 52. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58436-2_8
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