A LOOK AT ‘PART OF SCOTLAND’ ON WILLIAM SMITH'S 1815 MAP

Abstract

William Smith's 1815 geological map A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales with Part of Scotland featured a hundred sites of economic activity in Scotland, such as lead mines, collieries and lime works. Initially, in the ‘Part of Scotland’ portion of the map, very few geological contact lines were engraved on the copper plates to guide the colourists. They would have referred to the Pattern Copy more than they needed to in England. Just three strata dominated north of the Border: ‘Killas’, ‘Red and Dunstone’, and ‘Coalmeasures’. They were mapped principally as five large tracts, following the same southwest to northeast trend Smith had observed in England. In the Midland Valley there was an equally large expanse that was uncoloured until late in the production run. Across the small sample of copies considered here, variations can be seen in the colouring of the strata. Initially this could be attributed to the scarcity of geological contact lines. After some two hundred and seventy copies had been printed, a few more geological contact lines were added, and the approximately forty subsequent copies were fully coloured. However, variations persisted through to the last copies. The colourists had to overcome problems peculiar to ‘Part of Scotland’.