Abstract Dr John MacCulloch MD was a pioneer of geological cartography. Prior to his surveys there had been few attempts to map and survey Scotland. Of these few, only the student efforts of Louis-Albert Necker de Saussure and the published map of Aimé Boué have attempted to show the whole country. MacCulloch’s geological map of Scotland, published posthumously in 1836, remains one of the great cartographic milestones in the history of geology. Earlier, MacCulloch was the first government-appointed geologist through his work on the Board of Ordnance whilst carrying out the Millstone, Meridian and Mountain surveys. MacCulloch’s work often generated controversy after 1820 when others began to take an interest in Scottish geology. MacCulloch was an active member of the Geological Society and was quickly recognized as a geologist of rare ability and influence, and was appointed to several committees. He was made Vice-President in 1815 and became its fourth President in 1816. From 1820 his influence and activity in the Society began to wane as the demands of his Survey work and ill health began to take their toll. He finally resigned from the Society in 1832.

Abstract This final chapter is designed primarily for the foreign visitor to Chile who wishes to gain a broad overview of the field geology and scenery of central and northern Chile. We hope that it will also aid an appreciation of the nature of human interaction with this climatically and topographically challenging area, from the early settlers to the modern mining industry. This is a traverse along and across one of the world’s classic compressional ocean–continent subduction zones, where strong coupling between the oceanic and continental plates is linked to active mountain building, dramatic scenery, and frequent earthquake and volcanic activity. The drive moves north from Santiago, which lies in the forearc Central Valley west of the South American Southern Volcanic Zone, into one of the flat-slab Andean segments. Within this flat-slab zone we divert east to describe a west-to-east across-strike traverse from the coast into the High Andes where, because of the low dip of the subducting plate, volcanoes are absent (Chapters 4 and 5). Returning to the coast, the drive continues north into the latitude of the South American Central Volcanic Zone, with its superbly developed line of modern volcanoes in the hyperarid high Atacama Desert. A second west-to-east traverse from the coast to these volcanoes illustrates how the modern continental forearc region is segmented into a series of mountain belts and intervening basins, each with its own distinctive scenery and geology. Additional details on the rock units and places visited, and the tectonic settings of ancient and modern