Abstract The history of geology in France benefited from a renewal of interest after the creation of the French Committee for the History of Geology in 1976. This initiative, which was led by F. Ellenberger, resulted in the organization of numerous meetings, symposia and publications that have characterized the last decade of work in the history of the earth sciences in France.

Abstract As Martin Rudwick has emphatically underlined, the beginning of the nineteenth century was marked in France by an intense intellectual awakening that allowed, in the scope of Earth Sciences, new applications of research. Indeed, the joint study of rocks and their associated fossils was made in France in its earliest years by pioneers, afterwards amplified by the endowed work of Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart on the ‘Géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris’. But the integration of the study of fossils into a new geognostic practice was made possible by the combination of a number of favourable circumstances: the presence in France of such new institutions as the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle and the Ecole des Mines where ambitious and rigorous scientific programmes, backed by a determined political power, were brought together. In these institutions young talented naturalists within premises entirely devoted to research and teaching, coupled with the presence of very diverse collections of natural history, the recruitment of competent staff and significant financial support, led to spectacular results. These studies did, of course, contribute to the rise of geology in France, but they also brought celebrity to their authors, increased the prestige of the institutions and of the authorities in place.

Abstract Within the half-century after Guettard's epoch-making journey of 1751, geologists came to see the Auvergne region of France as a place of unusual interest for field investigation. This paper reports on an effort to catalogue instances of scientific travel in Auvergne up to the end of the eighteenth century, before observers during the first decade of the nineteenth century (such as von Buch, d'Aubuisson and Ramond) validated the establishment of Auvergne as an iconic place for geologists. In addition to those who ventured into Auvergne to investigate its geology, a significant number of the eighteenth-century observers were residents of Auvergne; these are tabulated separately from those journeying from elsewhere. Published results of Auvergne observations accomplished by 1800 suggest that the Auvergne geological phenomena were already becoming fixed as part of the geological traveller's canonical itinerary.