Emily Dix, plant biostratigrapher (1904-1972) - Women's History Month

From Geologists' Association Carreck Archive.

Emily Dix (1904-1972). A Carboniferous palaeobotanist from South Wales. Graduating in Geology from University College, Swansea in 1925, she undertook further research in the western part of the South Wales Coalfield under A.E. Trueman, gaining a MSc in 1926. After an early career as a field geologist she gained a post as Lecturer in Paleontology at Bedford College, London, a position she retained all her working life. Dix wrote many scientific papers especially on the geology of South Wales and later on plant biostratigraphy and was particularly interested in the Westphalian - Stephanian boundary. Tragically, she developed a mental illness c. 1944 which brought to an end a very notable but short career.

International Organization for Palaeobotany. Emily Dix (1904-1972). [Biography]

Bob McIntosh

New Cook's Kitchen Shaft headgear, South Crofty Mine, Carn Brea, Cornwall

BGS image: P208023

New Cook's Kitchen Shaft headgear, South Crofty Mine, Carn Brea. Looking north-east, Cornwall. 

South Crofty Mine headgear. Ore is hoisted by self-dumping skip to the ore bin, left of the headgear, waste rock is fed into trucks and conveyed to the dump (left in foreground). The pump, made in 1873, has an unequal beam (10 feet stroke in the cylinder and 9 feet in the shaft) and plungers are 20 feet diameter down to 1,150 feet below the surface. The shaft is 340 fms. deep. The headgear of Robinson's Shaft (335 fms. deep) is seen on the right. The Carn Brea area embraces the northern slopes of the Carn Brea granite and the thermally metamorphosed killas and greenstone that overlie the northern flank. Practically all fissures in the area have yielded copper in the upper levels with tin beneath to a proved depth of 2,500 feet.  Date of image: 1945. BGS Old Photograph number A08101. Photographer: Jack Rhodes.

Bob McIntosh

Portrait of Henry De la Beche

BGS image ID: P718393

This portrait, on enamel, was painted by Henry Pierce  Bone (1779-1855) who was the son of noted enamel painter Henry Bone. A note on the back of the frame says that Bone presented it to the Museum of Practical Geology.

Henry Thomas De la Beche was born on 10 February 1796. He spent much of his early life at Lyme Regis and developed an interest in geology. He was responsible for the creation of the Geological Survey (then called the Ordnance Geological Survey) in 1835 and he remained Director up to his death on 13 April 1855. He was knighted in 1848.

Andrew L Morrison

Prisoners of War building a 'steam navvy', Raasay ironstone mines

BGS image ID: P000048

Near entrance to No. 1 Mine in Raasay Ironstone Mines, 1.9 km. east of Raasay House. Inverness-shire. Building of 'steam navvy' or dragline for removal of superficial deposits.  A Bucyrus Steam Dragline or Steam Navvy (Class 14 DL Ex No.838) under construction by German prisoners-of-war, almost certainly in the summer of 1917. It was used for opencast mining. Notice the armed guard on the left. Strewn in front are empty packing cases. Photographer R. Lunn. Old BGS Photo number C02188. Date, almost certainly 1917.

Bob McIntosh

Exploratory oil drilling, D'Arcy, Midlothian. 1919-1922

BGS image ID: P000056

D'Arcy, 4.0 km. south-east of Dalkeith and 1.6 km. south-south-west of the mining village of Chesterhill, Midlothian. Site of borehole, 1919-1922.

The boring commenced on the Carboniferous Lower Limestone Group which rises as a clearly defined anticline and which was believed to be favourable to oil accumulation. The boring is situated on the crest of this anticline. The boring produced gas at 724 feet (mainly a mixture of methane and ethane). This was sealed off. At 1810 feet some good quality oil was struck in a sandstone; the bore was stopped at 1820 feet. General view of oil well drilling rig, showing derrick and pile or casing against wall in foreground. A length of casing is suspended in the derrick by the travelling block. Photographer: D. Tait. BGS old photograph number: C02882.

For a short account of other notable and interesting boreholes in the UK visit the Geoscience Data Blog.

Bob McIntosh

Eruption of Etna, August 1892

BGS image: P711317

The eruption of Mount Etna has been in the news recently, and here is a photograph of the eruption on the flank of Etna 9th August 1892, 120 years ago. This was one of a series from July to September 1892 that gave rise to the Monti Silvestri crater row. 

Presented by Professor G. Platania of Aci Reale, Sicily. Photograph held in the BGS Archives, Keyworth. Archive reference GSM/GX/Pa/1.

Bob McIntosh

Man power - Old Cleft Mine, Box, near Corsham Wiltshire

BGS Image: P539527

Stone Firms Limited (Bath and Portland) underground workings, Old Cleft Mine, Box. Working on Bath Stone near Corsham Wiltshire. Lifting blocks with eye bolt. This image is from the early 1960s. From the Hugh O'Neill Collection. 

Hugh O'Neill was a Special Correspondent of the Quarry Managers Journal back in the 1960s and visited many of the active quarries in the UK and a few in Europe. His collection of over 3000 images is now on Geoscenic.

Bob McIntosh

Mr and Mrs. Edmund Oswald Teale - at home in the bush

BGS Image: P776383

Edmund Oswald Teale (formerly Thiele) Kt. Bach., D.Sc., F.G.S., F.R.G.S., M.Inst.M.M. 1874-1971. Born, brought up and studied geology in Australia, Teale worked much of his life geological surveying in the Colonial Service in Tanganyika, East Africa. He was knighted on retirement to the UK in 1936. BGS has Teale's extensive archive of letters, diaries, field notebooks, a handwritten autobiography and many photographs. This image is probably from the 1920s.

Bob McIntosh

Scrablag

BGS image no: P804274 (not available on Geoscenic yet)

Scrablag, Ible Sill near Matlock, Derbyshire. From the T.W. Reader album of photographs of the Geologists' Association excursion to Derbyshire on July 28th 1914, in the G.A. Carreck Archive. An adjacent photograph in the archive states that scrablag is a local name for peculiarly shaped concretions in sand. Scrablag also seems to be a local term in the Isle of Man where it is used for gravels and sands that are cemented into hardpan. Does anyone know of any references to it in Derbyshire?

Bob McIntosh

Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, first floor

BGS image: P640479

The Survey had a museum from as early as 1841 at Craig’s Court, London, known as the Museum of Economic Geology. Its name reflects the nature of the collections. It housed a large number of specimens of building stones collected by the Commissioners appointed to find the most suitable stone for the new Houses of Parliament, as well as collections of cements, tiles, pottery and other man-made goods from natural stone materials. The collections and the Geological Survey soon outgrew Craig’s Court and a new Museum, the Museum of Practical Geology, was opened in Jermyn Street, London with a grand ceremony on 12th May 1851. The entrance was by all accounts very gloomy, and it led via stairs to the galleries shown in the picture with their neatly stacked shelves of rocks, minerals, ores, gems, fossils and economic exhibits. The museum also had a tiered lecture theatre reputedly capable of holding as many as six hundred people, where regular ‘penny lectures’ were given. The museum had a long life, eventually being replaced by the Geological Museum in Exhibition Road in 1935.

Bob McIntosh