Abstract This paper examines the tragic life of William Perceval (wrongly Percival) Hunter (1812–1878), who was active right across natural history in the period 1828–1841. He was a nephew of the ‘father of American Geology’, William Maclure, but, despite this, has been completely forgotten. He produced a number of books and papers, some of which discussed what were to become dinosaurs in 1842, and the Wealden, and adjoining rocks, which had produced so many of them. Hunter was, notably, one of the first to draw attention to the Isle of Wight as a favoured fossil locality for these, among the many other natural history topics he covered. His problems were initially his itinerancy, then his failure to complete projects, coupled with their publication privately, obscurely and abroad. But the major problem comes from his forgotten end; first, in a Scottish medical ‘confinement’ from 1841 and, finally, within a major asylum there, until 1878. This left him unable to complete his projects and with an indelible mark on any reputation he might have acquired.

Abstract Buckman first practised as a chemist. He joined the Botanical Society of London in 1837, and became a significant Cotswold naturalist, in botany and geology. He was elected Fellow of the Geological Society in 1842, when he was Honorary Secretary to the Cheltenham Literary and Philosophical Institution. In 1844 his brother Edwin went bankrupt and Buckman sought a new career. His amateur interests allowed him to become one of the first English professionals across natural science. He was appointed Secretary, Curator and Resident Lecturer to the Birmingham Philosophical Institution in 1846, then Professor of Geology, Botany and Zoology at the new Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester in 1848. Buckman here started botanical experiments to ‘solve the problem of the identity of species’ and read papers to the British Association from 1853. These yielded praise in Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, and led to development of the ‘Student Parsnip’ in 1860. Buckman's 1860 British Association report on his experiments, to the infamous Oxford meeting, supported evolution and the mutability of species. The Anglican Principal of the College found this distasteful and ordered the destruction of Buckman's Botanical Garden in spring 1862. Buckman's life provides a painful demonstration of the tribulations facing newly professional scientists in Victorian England. It also demonstrates the difficulties of then professing geology alone.

Abstract In 1797 Smith recorded his first known ‘Order of Strata’. This was based on his work as a land, colliery and canal surveyor around Bath, Somerset. It already shows a clear awareness of the occurrence of spring lines (especially in the Fuller’s Earth, soon to cause such problems in the construction of the Somerset Coal Canal). In his better known June 1799 version, Smith much extended this, with a new third column showing springs, now tabulated for five of his 23 strata. Smith thus had a keen awareness of both the importance of, and the problems raised by, how water was, or was not, retained in rocks and how it was released at stratigraphically controlled spring lines. This paper briefly reviews five of his involvements with ‘water-related’ geology. The first was as canal engineer. Here one of the two branches of his first canal later had to be abandoned because it could not be made to retain water where it passed over the Dolomitic Conglomerate. The second was as a land drainer. This he first attempted at Camerton in about 1796. This skill brought him most of his early employments after his dismissal from canal work in June 1799. Third, Smith was next a significant exponent of the art of creating water meadows, particularly in Bedfordshire and Norfolk. Smith was active next in a fourth field, erecting sea defences along the east coast of England. Finally he was often consulted on how to find or control new water supplies, as at Swindon or Scarborough. It was this last work which used his stratigraphic skills to their fullest extent.

Abstract Joseph Lucas joined the Geological Survey in 1867 and spent almost 9 years mapping in Yorkshire. Forced to resign in ignominious circumstances, for the rest of his life he earned his living advising on groundwater supplies. In 1874 he was the first to use the term hydrogeology in its modern context and defined this new subject in a series of papers in the 1870s. He drew the first British maps showing groundwater contours and described how to carry out a hydrogeological survey. For many years he lobbied for such a survey to be carried out over the whole country and for it to be used as a basis for water resource planning. He was an accomplished linguist, translating material from a variety of European languages, and wrote books on natural history and genealogy. He and his family lived at Tooting, in south London, where he is buried in the Churchyard of Saint Nicholas.