ABSTRACT The National Museum of Ireland’s natural history collections include a range of large format artworks, many of paleontological subjects, which were painted by George Victor Du Noyer, the celebrated nineteenth-century geologist, antiquarian, and artist who worked for both the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI). Letterbook references in the archives of GSI indicate that most, if not all of these, were commissioned by Joseph Beete Jukes, director of the GSI, for different public lecture series. The artistic qualities of the work suggest they were done at speed. However, they also are designed to be seen from a distance within a lecture hall, so an apparently crude technique is appropriate to the purpose. In effect, the watercolor paintings in this series are the PowerPoint presentation of the 1850s.

Abstract Although modern geotourism, as a form of sustainable geoheritage tourism, was only recognized as such in the 1990s, its roots lie in the seventeenth century and the Grand Tour with its domestic equivalents. At that time, a few elite travellers recorded their experiences of landscapes, natural wonders, quarries and mines. Such travellers’ observations were supplemented by those of the antiquarians for much of the eighteenth century; at that century’s close, the first modern geologists were recording their observations. The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion in public interest and engagement with geology, and field excursions were provided by the burgeoning natural history and geology societies. By the close of the nineteenth century, the Romantic movement had successfully promoted wild landscapes to a newly expanding urban population. The development of the Grand Tour and the landscape aesthetic movements, the various influential institutions, key personalities and locations are considered insofar as they provide an overview of the background to historical geotourism. All are underpinned by a theoretical consideration of the geotourism paradigm and how geotourism historical studies can contextualize modern geotourism.

Abstract In 1884, Arthur Smith Woodward first met Charles Dawson, a solicitor and industrious amateur collector, antiquarian, geologist, archaeologist and palaeontologist. This began a long association and friendship centred on their mutual interest in palaeontology and human evolution. Dawson devised a complicated plot focused around the ancient river gravel deposits at Barkham Manor near the village of Piltdown, Sussex. In these gravels he planted stone tools and fossil mammal remains together with the lower jaw of an ape and numerous modern human cranial bones to deceive the scientific establishment into believing an early human ancestor had been found in his own back yard. Cleverly devised to provide anatomists and archaeologists with evidence for concepts that they wanted to believe were true, Dawson fuelled numerous contentious debates among scientists that quickly attracted international attention. Nothing could be more unfortunate than such a respectable scientist as Arthur Smith Woodward being taken in by the events of 1912, and then subsequently swept along by them well into his retirement right up to the time of his death in 1944.

Abstract Thomas Webster published his earliest geological observations by commission in Sir Henry Englefield’s Description of the Isle of Wight (1816), a work concerned as much with historic architecture and picturesque landscape as with geology. This paper shows how Englefield’s broad three-part agenda fostered the development of Webster’s specifically geological competence and sensibility. As a professional draftsman and architect, Webster was especially well equipped to translate Englefield’s architectural and picturesque idiom into a more geological register. Their collaboration also illustrates how well the style and content of local history – a traditional literary and learned genre – could be applied to geology. For Webster in particular, the image of ruins was essential for representing the historicity of geological phenomena. This paper adduces close readings of numerous passages from Englefield and Webster’s work to show how strongly the traditional language and research questions of antiquarianism continued to shape geology even as it became a professional specialization.