The King of Siluria's journey

摘要

If you had been rowing across the Volga near Kazan, western Russia, in May 1841, you might have been startled by the sound of raucous singing: Ah, the red sandstone! How bored am I! I'd very well pay a thousand louis Never again in my life to see The new red sandstone of Tartary! The singer (and composer) was Roderick Murchison, the greatest practical geologist of his day and a key player in Queen Victoria's empire. In their search for mineral resources, Britons of the time were organizing and stamping their authority on landscapes past and present, naming periods such as the Cambrian, Silurian and Devonian after British localities and peoples. Strata had become the central concern of geology, not so much for telling the story of life ― though this was a good way of selling books ― as for mapping the positions of rocks and correlating them across the globe.