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Alexander Catcott: Glory and Geology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Michael Neve  and
Roy Porter
Michael Neve
Affiliation:
62 Southfield Road, Oxford
Roy Porter
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge CBs oDS
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Extract

Central to the development of geology has been the growth of systematic empirical observation as a programme of scientific practice. Fieldwork has focused on many objects—strata, fossils, and landforms—and has issued in a variety of products, such as maps, sections, and monographs on regional geology, particular rock formations and fossils. Early in the nineteenth century, above all, many influential geologists sought to define their science as one exclusively of field observation, description, and the accumulation of data. The rise of fieldwork, in Britain as elsewhere, is an important phenomenon in the making of geology. It must be explained.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 37 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1977

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References

NOTES

For their courteous help, and for permission to cite from materials in their possession, we are grateful to the staffs of the Bristol Central Library, the Archives Office of Bristol Corporation, and the Bodleian Library. For helpful comments and guidance in writing this article, we should like to thank Ludmilla Jordanova, Mary Mackenzie, Jack Morrell, Martin Rudwick, Steven Shapin, and (on many important points of detail) Hugh Torrens.

1 For historically sensitive modern surveys of the emergence of geology, see: Davies, G. L., The earth in decay (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Rudwick, M. J. S., The meaning of fossils (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Schneer, C. J. (ed.), Toward a history of geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar. The general interpretation of the history of geology in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain presupposed by this article is set out in Porter, Roy, ‘The making of the science of geology in Britain, 1660–1815’ (Cambridge University Ph.D thesis, 1974).Google Scholar

2 For this mythology, cf. Lyell, Charles, Principles of geology, vol. i (London, 1830)Google Scholar, chapters i–v; Ramsay, Andrew, Passages in the history of geology (London, 1848)Google Scholar; SirGeikie, A., The founders of geology (London, 1897; reprinted, New York, 1962)Google Scholar —for Desmarest's ‘go and see’, cf. 1962 edn., p. 175. For the aims of the Geological Society of London, cf. Rudwick, M. J. S., ‘The founding of the Geological Society of London’, The British journal for the history of science, i (1962–1963). 325–55.Google Scholar

3 Davies, , op. cit. (1), pp. 108f.Google Scholar, has a sensitive account of Catcott as a fine field geomorphologist contaminated by physico-theology. Collier, K., Cosmogonies of our fathers (New York, 1934), pp. 234–41Google Scholar, summarizes his theories. The Catcott family has attracted some interest because of its connexions with poet Chatterton. Cf. Meyerstein, E. H. W., A life of Thomas Chatterton (London, 1930), extensive refs. in index, p. 558Google Scholar, and George, W., Thomas Chatterton, and the vicar of Bristol Temple Church (Bristol, 1888Google Scholar; a reprint of an article which first appeared in the Bristol times and mirror, July 1887). Dr Hugh Torrens, of the University of Keele, is preparing an edition of a Catcott manuscript he has discovered, of which he has deposited a photocopy in the Bristol Central Library. This is ‘A description of Loxton Cavern, Somersetshire, together with an account of the bones and teeth of an elephant and some other foreign animals that were dug out of Loxton Hill, Transcribed by C. J. Harford, N.d. Photocopy of MS’; presented in 1974, ref. no. 26684.

4 Cf. the amused dismissal in Lyell, , op. cit. (2), chapter iii, p. 50.Google Scholar For a characteristically broken-backed account, see [Copleston, E.], ‘Review of Reliquiae diluvianae’, Quarterly review, xxix (1823), 138–65, especially p. 139.Google Scholar

5 Buckland, W., Reliquiae diluvianae (London, 1823)Google Scholar, refers extensively to Catcott; see especially ‘On other caves in England’, pp. 57–60. Buckland was relying heavily on notes taken from the Catcott manuscripts in Bristol by Conybeare, W. D.. Greenough, G. B. evaluated Catcott's work in his Critical examination of the first principles of geology (London, 1819)Google Scholar. See also the discussion in Conybeare, W. D. and Phillips, J., An outline of the geology of England and Wales (London, 1822), p. xxvGoogle Scholar, where Catcott's observations on breaks in lines of valley strata were praised. The auction catalogue of Conybeare's library—a copy of which is in the Bodleian Library—shows copies of Catcott's works bound up with Burnet, Thomas and Ray, John; see Auction catalogue of W. D. Conybeare's extensive and valuable library (London, 1857)Google Scholar (MS. Bibl. III 528.9).

6 For these theories, see Collier, , op. cit. (3)Google Scholar; Davies, , op. cit. (1), chapter iiiGoogle Scholar; Tuveson, E. L., Millenium and utopia (Berkeley, 1949)Google Scholar; Porter, , op. cit (i), part iGoogle Scholar; Kubrin, D., ‘Newton and the cyclical cosmos’, Journal of the history of ideas, xxviii (1967), 325–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the important article by Roger, J., ‘La théorie de la terre au XVIIe siécle’, Revue d'histoire des sciences, xxvi (1973), 23–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, whose interpretation broadly runs parallel to ours.

7 For recent discussion of Newtonianism, see, for example: Heimann, P. M. and McGuire, J. E., ‘Newtonian forces and Lockean powers: concepts of matter in eighteenth century thought’, Historical studies in the physical sciences, iii (1971), 233–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schofield, R. E., Mechanism and materialism (Princeton, N.J., 1970)Google Scholar; Thackray, Arnold, Atoms and powers (Cambridge, Mass., 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacob, M. C., The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689–1710 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1976)Google Scholar. Heimann and McGuire rightly pinpoint the important role of active powers in Newton and his followers. Nevertheless, the theorists of the earth here discussed who saw themselves as ‘Newton ians’, viewed the earth as a stable, passive mechanism.

8 Cf. Horne, George, A fair, candid, and impartial statement of the state of the case between Sir Isaac Newton and Mr Hutchinson (Oxford, 1753).Google Scholar

9 For confirmation, see Raven, C. E., John Ray (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1950).Google Scholar

10 From a letter of Lhwyd printed in Gunther, R. W. T., Early science in Oxford, vol. xiv (1945), p. 269Google Scholar; and a letter of Lhwyd to Ray, ibid., p. 283. The distinction we are making between theorists and fieldworkers is admittedly ad hoc, and is meant to be suggestive rather than exclusive. Ray and Woodward are obvious examples of men who partially combined both.

11 For the popularization of fieldwork, see Porter, , op. cit. (1)Google Scholar, chapter iv. For science as rational culture, cf. Shapin, Steven and Thackray, Arnold, ‘Prosopography as a research tool in the history of science’, History of science, xii (1974), 1–28Google Scholar, and Musson, A. E. and Robinson, E., Science and technology in the industrial revolution (Manchester, 1969).Google Scholar

12 There is little secondary literature on the development of fieldwork in the eighteenth century. For what there is, see the references in Porter, , op. cit. (1), chapters ii, v, and viiGoogle Scholar, and Allen, D. E., The naturalist in Britain (London, 1976), chapters i and ii.Google Scholar

13 See, for Strachey, Fuller, John G. C. M., ‘The industrial basis for stratigraphy: John Strachey, 1671–1743, and William Smith, 1769–1839’, The American Association of Petroleum Geologists' bulletin, lii (1969), 2256–73Google Scholar; for Stukeley, Piggott, S., William Stukeley (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, who examines Stukeley's antiquarian interests largely in terms of the relations between empirical discovery and theory. For Michell, see Geikie, A., A memoir of John Michell (Cambridge, 1918).Google Scholar

14 Catcott's main unpublished writings are: (i) a volume entitled ‘Catcott's tours in England and Wales 1748–1774’ (in Bristol Central Library) which contains: (a) The Oxford journal 1748; (b) The tour to Hutton 1750; (c) Welsh journals 1756; (d) Derbyshire journal 1760; (e) Catcott's bibliography of geological works; (f) On the grey weather-stones in Wiltshire Sept. 1757; (g) Boston, Hutton, Loxton, etc. 1757; (h) Elmore and Watchet, September 1758; (i) Preliminary Derbyshire tour (undated); (j) Journey to Portland September 1763; (k) Journey to Ilminster, Exeter, Hay Tor, Plymouth, 1765; (1) Tour through South Wales 1770; (m) Journey to Kenilworth July 1774; (n) Some queries and observations with relation to the West Indies, with directions for collecting shells, fossils etc.; (o) A catalogue of the more scarce plants growing near Bristol.

(ii) Correspondence of the Revd Alexander Stopford Catcott and the Revd Alexander Catcott (1733–74) in the Jefferies Collection, Bristol Central Library, vol. xx, ref. no. 26063.

(iii) ‘Papers’ of the Revd Alexander Catcott (Bristol Central Library, ref. no. 149.3 H/no. 1154), which includes: (a) Fossil journal kept up from September 1757 to 1778, and full of rough notes; (b) Observations on the surface of the earth; (c) A catalogue of Hutchinsonian tracts; (d) A Hebrew grammar; (e) A set of mathematical definitions; (f) A series of ‘Loose observations’; (g) MS. notes for heathen sources concerning the Flood; (h) ‘Memoranda fossilibus’.

(iv) The Bristol Central Library has a collection of books entitled the ‘Catcott collection’. It clearly contains books belonging to both Catcotts. The main body is a comprehensive collection of Hutchinsonian tracts, but the collection also contains various scientific tracts: for example, Erasmus Warren, Geologia (‘bought by A. Catcott in March 1729’); Woodward, John, Attempt towards a natural history of the fossils of England (London, 1729)Google Scholar; idem, Essay towards a natural history of the earth (London 1695)–this is bound with Woodward's Method of fossils of all kinds and Letters relating to the method of fossils; Steno, Nicholas, The prodromus to a dissertation concerning solids (London, 1671)Google Scholar; Scheuchzer, J. J., Herbarium diluvianum (Tiguri, 1723)Google Scholar. There is a bound volume of ‘scientific tracts’, including: Woodwardum, John, ‘Echinitis Wagricis’ (Lubeck, 1718)Google Scholar; Scheuchzer, J. J., ‘Theses de Diluvio’ (1722)Google Scholar; Ritter, A., ‘Zoolitho dendroidis’ (1736)Google Scholar. Alexander Catcott also kept certain issues of the Philosophical transactions, including those with articles by Lhwyd (no. 243, 1698), J. S. Strachey (no. 391, 1725), Scheuchzer and J. T. Desaguliers (no. 406, 1728), and William Borlase (no. 493, 1749). He also possessed da Costa, E. Mendes, A natural history of fossils, vol. i, part i (London, 1757).Google Scholar

15 Hill, C. P., A history of Bristol Grammar School (London, 1951), especially pp. 40–2.Google Scholar

16 See Catcott, 's ‘Oxford journal 1748’, op. cit. (14)Google Scholar, and Jones, W. of Nayland, Memoirs of the life, studies and writings of the Rev. George Horne, D.D. (London, 1799), p. 23.Google Scholar

17 ‘Further records of Temple Church, Bristol’, in Bristol Corporation Archives Office, The Catcott Bequest, ref. no. P/T/Fa 12.

18 Meyerstein, , op. cit. (3), pp. 306–13.Google Scholar Alexander Catcott approved of Chatterton and his talents, but eventually broke with him. The epistle is a rebuke and attempt at ridicule:

How are your feeble Arguments perplext

To find our meaning in a senseless text

You rack each metaphor upon the wheel

And words can Philosophic Truths conceal

What Paracelsus humor'd as a jest

You realise to prove your system best

Might we not Catcott then infer from hence

Your Zeal for Scripture hath devour'd your Sense.

Epistle to the Revd Mr Catcott, lines 81–8.

19 The fossil collection was destroyed in the second world war. See the brief mention in Eyles, V. A., ‘Scientific activity in the Bristol region in the past’, in MacInnes, C. M. and Whittard, W. F. (eds.), Bristol and its adjoining counties (published for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bristol, 1955), pp. 123–43.Google Scholar See also Perceval, S. G., ‘Journal of an excursion to Eastbury and Bristol etc., in May and June 1767 by Sir Jos. Banks, Bart’, Proceedings of lhe Bristol Naturalists' Society, new ser. ix (1898), 6–37 (24)Google Scholar; Banks wrote that Catcott's fossil collection was ‘possibly the Best, as it is also the most instructing I have seen’.

20 For a brief modern account of Hutchinsonianism, see Kuhn, A. J., ‘Glory or gravity: Hutchinson vs. Newton’, Journal of the history of ideas, xxii (1961), 303–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar An important older account is the entry under Hutchinson in Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia (London, 1819), vol. xviii.

21 Cf. the quotation from Milton used by Catcott in his Treatise on the Deluge (London, 1761), p. 416:Google Scholar

Earth is the shadow of Heaven, the things therein

Each other like, more than on earth is thought.

22 Translated, as The antient principles of true and sacred philosophy, by Maxwell, A. (London, 1822)Google Scholar. Cf. also sections of the correspondence between A. S. Catcott and J. Hutchinson (see note 14).

23 See Catcott, A. S., On the Supreme and Inferior Elohim, a sermon preach'd before the corporation of Bristol, at the Mayor's Chapel, August 1735 (London, 1736; 2nd edn., 1742; 3rd edn., Oxford, 1781)Google Scholar. This sermon provoked a long dispute with the Revd Arthur Bedford, who had been vicar of Temple Church from 1692 to 1713, and who believed that A. S. Catcott had maligned the Arabic sources for Biblical scholarship; see Bedford, A., Observations on Mr Catcott's sermon (London, 1736)Google Scholar, which called for, and received, a reply from Hutchinson.

24 See his characteristically Hutchinsonian remark: ‘Moses was superior to any modern philosopher whatever’; Supplement (London, 1768), p. 47.Google Scholar

25 See ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), passim, and Jones, , Life of Horne, op. cit. (16), passim.Google Scholar

26 He was a frequent correspondent of William Jones of Nayland (1726–1800), who contributed to parts of the Treatise; George Horne (1730–92), later Bishop of Norwich; Julius Bate (1711–71); and William Romaine (1714–95), the distinguished London evangelical preacher of Hutchinsonian leanings.

27 Sermons by the late Rev. A. S. Catcott, LL.B., sometime fellow of St John's College, Oxford, and late rector of St Stephen's in the city of Bristol (London, 1753).

28 See the dedication to the second edition of the Treatise, which speaks of ‘this depraved and degenerated period of society’ and of Catcott's patron, David Stuart Erskine, Earl of Buchan, as ‘a Nobleman… not ashamed to own the Holy Scriptures as the only source of irrefrageable truths, and not only consistent but demonstrative, with respect to the philosophical system of the universe in general and this Earth in particular’.

29 Treatise, p. 16.Google Scholar The work of Clayton referred to is his A vindication of the histories of the Old and New Testament (Dublin, 1752)Google Scholar. For a convenient contemporary account of le Cat's theories, see ‘An account of several systems… particularly that of le Cat’, Monthly review, iii (1750), 375–93, 444–59.Google Scholar

30 Cf. a letter from John Stillingfleet, Merton College, Oxford, to Alexander Catcott, 29 March 1756, in ‘Correspondence’ (note 14).

31 Treatise, p. 16.Google Scholar

32 But for Catcott the weather was also the work of a greater Power. Cf. the Catcott Bequest (note 17), P/T/Fa 12, an entry by Alexander Catcott dated 29 July 1777:

‘As I was walking near the borough wall about a quarter of an hour before six o'clock, I saw a small white cloud of a conical shape issuing forth out of a dark black cloud, and pointed towards the earth, just over the house on Totterdown… a woman inquired of me what it meant? I told her that it was a kind of waterspout and that the cloud was dangerous where it fell. About two minutes after a violent shower of rain fell which entirely clouded the heavens and obliged me to retire into the house. Two persons who had been standing at the foot of Totterdown Hill assured me that at the very time I spoke of the water in the river under Totterdown House rose above the height of Totterdown House (which may be about 4O feet above the surface of the water) and played upwards and downwards like a fountain and in a body the size of a hay-mow: that during this time there was a strange noise in the air like the rattling of a multitude of chariots… the inhabitants of Totterdown House told me they had seen nothing but at the time I mentioned there was the most dreadful wind and noise that they had ever heard, and that they were all so affrighted that they began to say their prayers’.

33 Good evidence of this is that he possessed a set of Woodward's Brief instructions for making observations in all parts of the world and expressly followed Woodward's recommended methods in his fieldwork; cf. ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 14 07 1748.Google Scholar One of the reasons why Gatcott was an admirer of Woodward was Woodward's undoubted skill as a fieldworker and the regular accuracy of his published observations; see Eyles, V. A., ‘John Woodward, F.R.S., F.R.C.P., M.D. (1665–1728), a bio-bibliographical account of his life and work’, Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, v (1971), 399–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Catcott himself drew up several agenda for making geological observations: for example, ‘Of making observations in mines, pits, quarries’ and his ‘Directions to procure fossils, shells etc’, both in ‘Papers’ (note 14). We hope to publish later an account and appraisal of Catcott's field-working techniques.

34 Other Hutchinsonians, like John Price, accompanied him on his expeditions. But, except for William Jones, they do not appear to have published on the subject, and treated Catcott as their authority. For Jones's collecting fossils, see ‘Letters’ (note 14), 6 July 1760 and 9 January 1770.

35 Treatise, p. 2.Google Scholar

36 Symes's letter is dated 23 October 1773, and is in the ‘Letters’ volume cited in note 14. In an important passage in the ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 6 08 1748Google Scholar, Catcott noted that the Bible gave the broad outlines of natural history but man's duty was to fill in the details. Thus the Bible told man that the Deluge covered the land to a depth of fifteen cubits. Catcott argued that die statement was designedly imprecise (meaning ‘at least fifteen cubits’), the exact depth being left for man to discover by his own fieldwork. God ‘left us to make judgement by the visible and remaining works how high it might be as He did to demonstrate the truth of His Revelation by the shells and other extraneous bodies incorporated at all depths in our earth’.

37 For theory as a map, cf. Toulmin, Stephen, The philosophy of science (7th edn., London, 1967). pp. 109–10.Google Scholar

38 John Wesley praised Catcott after his death (see Wesley's journal, March 1781), and in his lifetime Catcott knew men such as William Romaine, who spanned both Hutchinsonianism and popular evangelical religion.

39 Pennant wrote to Catcott, in January 1755, that ‘I have great encouragement to cultivate a correspondence with the Western virtuosi’; see ‘Letters’ volume (note 14), which also contains Banks's letter of March 1774. Catcott also corresponded with Edward King (ibid., May 1773), who used the ‘sparry incrustations’ sent him by Catcott (whom he calls ‘a man very indefatigable in his researches’) in an article in Philosophical transactions, lxiii (1773–1774), 241.Google Scholar

40 Catcott's bibliography of geological and natural history runs to several hundred items; see note 14. It is remarkably catholic and comprehensive. Both his ‘Papers’ and the Treatise contain many quotations and extracts from books on this list, though it is not clear whether the bibliography is of books read or to be read.

41 His philosophical temper is evident from his frequent warnings against popular-religious interpretations of natural phenomena which he sees as vulgarly ignorant and superstitious. God was a philosophical God, who generally operated by fixed natural laws. One must not invent miracles or take scientific short cuts. Cf. Treatise, p. 71Google Scholar, where he accused Clayton of doing this. And cf. the comment in the Monthly review's review of Catcott's Remarks, where it is said: ‘there is more candour and good manners in it than we usually find in the writings of Mr Hutchinson or his followers’; Monthly review, xiv (1756), 498–502 (498).Google Scholar

42 Catcott himself disliked many aspects of Newtonianism and its supposed tendencies towards naturalism. Cf. ‘The Newtonians have mistaken the case with regard to the origin of springs’, in ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 15 08 1749.Google Scholar

43 Significantly, Hutchinson discussed his grievances at having been Woodward's fossil-collecting lackey by accusing him of stealing his specimens; see Moses's principia, in Works (3rd edn., London, 1748–1749), i. 97f.Google Scholar He did not accuse Woodward of having constructed a theory which his own observations might have refuted. Hutcbinson did not set himself up to refute Woodward empirically.

44 Cf. the twelve volumes of his collected writings, cited in note 43, passim (for example, vol. i, 58f.). As he did with Newton, Hutchinson gave his works theologically orthodox titles which parodied Woodward's; for example, his Essay towards a natural history of the Bible, in Works, vol. i. For Hutchinson's correspondence with Woodward, see Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Gough, Wales, 8 (May-July 1706). Holloway, Benjamin's ‘A sketch of the pits of fuller's earth in Bedfordshire’, Philosophical transactions, xxxii (1723), 419–21Google Scholar, confirms Woodward's theory that the strata lie in order of their specific gravity. Holloway translated from the Latin Woodward's The natural history of the earth illustrated (London, 1726)Google Scholar. For Holloway's correspondence with Woodward, see Bodleian Library, MS. Gough, Wales, 8. Holloway also wrote Hutchinsonian tracts.

45 There are many expressions of praise for Woodward in Catcott's works—for example in Treatise, p. 116 (on the alembic theory of springs) and p. 148. Catcott relied heavily, particularly in his youth, upon Woodward's Fossils of all kinds digested into a method for fieldwork identifications. Catcott, nevertheless, criticized those aspects of Woodward's work that were unacceptable to Hutchinsonians; one example is his theory that the strata were distributed according to specific gravities.

46 We do not intend to discuss aspects of Catcott's Hutchinsonian ideas (for example, his theory of the formation of jewels) in any detail unless they impinge upon issues which are central to the argument. However, for some of his peculiarly Hutchinsonian concerns, see ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 6 08 1748Google Scholar, for a discussion of the role of light in the formation of rocks (such as Bristol ‘diamonds’), and ibid., June 1749, for light as a solvent.

46 Supplement, p. 58f.Google Scholar

48 Treatise, p. 4.Google Scholar

49 Thus ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 30 05 1748Google Scholar, where, in observing the Chilterns, he says he expected to find ‘order’ but found ‘disorder’ instead.

50 He noted that in some places the strata continued identical for some fifty or a hundred miles. See Treatise, p. 161f.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 159.

52 Ibid., p. 161f.

53 Ibid., p. 164f.; ‘The Strata in some of the highest ridges of Mountains in England and Wales are horizontally posited’.

54 ‘Welsh journal’, op. cit. (14), 12 08 1760.Google Scholar

56 For order was right and proper. This was, of course, a typical eighteenth-century expectation shared by Deists and liberal Anglicans as well as by Hutchinsonians; it is evidence that Catcott was more of a ‘rationalist’ than seventeenth-century Puritan Calvinists had been. Cf. Davies, , op. cit. (1)Google Scholar; Tuveson, , op. cit., (1)Google Scholar; Willey, Basil, The eighteenth century background (London, 1940)Google Scholar; Nicolson, M. H., Mountain gloom and mountain glory (Ithaca, N. Y., 1959).Google Scholar

57 ‘Are not space and substance the same to the Hutchinsonians?’; from a letter from Julius Bate to Stopford Catcott, ‘Letters’ volume (note 14), dated March 1737.

58 Rocks torn away were described as ‘fragments’ by Catcott and were seen as marks of ‘disorder’. Cf. ‘Welsh journal’, op. cit. (14), 12 08 1760.Google Scholar Compare Hutchinson, J., A treatise on mining, in Works, op. cit. (43), xii. 169.Google Scholar

59 Treatise, p. 163.Google Scholar

60 Supplement, p. 58.Google Scholar

61 For the power of such typologies of experience, cf. Douglas, Mary, Purity and danger (London, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Natural symbols (London, 1970).Google Scholar

62 Cf. Treatise, p. 170f.Google Scholar; ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 30 05 1748.Google Scholar For similar ideas in Hutchinson's writings, cf. Observations, in Works, op. cit. (43), xii. 293f.Google Scholar

63 Treatise, p. 179f., 183f.Google Scholar

64 Treatise, p. 164f.Google Scholar: the Deluge is ‘in direct opposition to the laws of nature, or powers established in nature’ (Treatise, p. 4). It is ‘undeniably supernatural’ (p. 7) in which God is ‘working miracles’ (p. 7).

65 For the Avon Gorge, cf. ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 14 07 1748.Google Scholar Catcott insisted that the whole gorge must have been formed simultaneously.

66 Catcott attributed all river valleys to the Deluge, formed by the retreating waters. As the waters flowed back towards the sea, they accelerated. Hence, claimed Catcott, valleys nearer the sea were deeper, straighter, steeper, and the bore more obvious marks of violence.

67 Treatise, p. 20f.Google Scholar

68 Rounded by the Deluge. See Treatise, pp. 189f., 195f.Google Scholar

69 For such ‘fragments’, see Treatise, p. 194.Google Scholar Catcott's journals are full of references to rocki found miles from their original sites. Catcott believed that only the Deluge could have transported them. He is usually discussing evidence we would not attribute to the work of ice. Catcott thought that Avebury Stones might be evidence of the retreating waters of the Deluge; see ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 13 10 1749.Google Scholar

70 Treatise, p. 238Google Scholar: ‘swallows, those incontestable remains of Noah's Deluge’.

71 Catcott explicitly used Woodward's arguments on fossils, and the incompetence of actual causes to explain them; see Treatise, pp. 253–4.Google Scholar The fact that so many fossils were of exotic creatures added weight to the argument; see Supplement, p. 44.Google Scholar

72 Thus, pebbles could not have been rounded by actual causes, valleys not formed by the rivers which ran in them. Such observations are common throughout the journals; cf. ‘Welsh journal’, op. cit. (14), 11 08 1756.Google Scholar

73 Treatise, p. 259.Google Scholar

74 See below, note 86.

75 For eliminating actual causes as the possible explanation of river valleys, see, for instance, ‘Derbyshire journal’, op. cit. (14), 23 08 1760.Google Scholar For stalactites and stalagmites only being formed at the Deluge, see ‘Welsh journal’, ibid., 14 August 1756. For pebbles and beds of streams as the product of the Deluge, see ‘Oxford journal’, ibid., 11 August 1750. Another revealing instance is in a letter from Price, John to Catcott, , 18 10 1756Google Scholar, in ‘Letters’ (note 14). Price records that he had visited Woodward's collection in Cambridge, now in the hands of the Woodwardian professor, Charles Mason:

‘Dr Mason has taken it into his head to discard all the peat fossils, not allowing them to be ante-deluvian. His argument for this is that peat-earth is continually forming and growing at this day. Consequently that it by degrees in time increases and covers whatever nuts, twigs, etc are accidentally on its surface. What an absurdity’.

This shows Mason dismissing the Woodwardian-Hutchinsonian theory that all fossils date from the Deluge, and that no changes had subsequently occurred. For Catcott's orthodox ideas on peat, see Treatise, p. 220f.Google Scholar

76 Catcott's conceptual framework allowed him to pinpoint problems that were of lasting importance in the development of geology: for example, travelled debris, vertebrate bones found in caves. Catcott's typology was perceptive in accentuating the distinctions between relatively fixed and relatively transient elements.

77 Cf., for example, ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 30 05 1748Google Scholar, where at the Chilterns Catcott says he was ‘greatly surprised’ to find disorder and non-horizontal strata where he had expected to find order and horizontally.

78 In this respect Lyell's account of Woodward, in Principles, op. cit. (2), i. 80Google Scholar, applies neatly to Catcott. On this point, cf. Supplement, p. 47Google Scholar, where, against le Cat, Catcott argues: ‘It is surely the greatest proof of wisdom (if we may judge from the works of the all wise) to act by the most simple means or to produce the greatest variety of effects from one and the same cause’. In the Supplement Catcott tries to answer some of the problems of his Deluge theory: for instance, why fossils themselves had remained intact.

79 Cf. ‘Welsh journal’, op. cit. (14), 27 08 1756Google Scholar: ‘It is difficult to solve the phenomenon of these pebbles’ … ‘I can think of no other’ explanation.

80 Ibid., 27 August 1748.

81 ‘Oxford journal’, op. cit. (14), 22 05 1749 (i.e. at the Deluge).Google Scholar

82 ‘Papers’ volume (note 14), Fossil journal, p. 62, 1769.

83 Similarly his friend John Price approached him in a letter with a related problem; see ‘Letters’ volume (note 14), 18 October 1756. Price had noted the extreme meanderings of the steeply sided Wye valley. These meanders seemed at odds with the velocity of the waters of the Deluge which supposedly carved it out. Price wrote: ‘I cannot tell how to reconcile this’. Once again the difficulty is caused by the overloading of the Deluge as an explanation.

84 Supplement, p. 46.Google Scholar

85 As T. S. Kuhn might argue. See Kuhn, , The strutture of scientific revolutions (Chicago, 1963).Google Scholar

86 Treatise, p. 1.Google Scholar ‘At the time of the Deluge the Earth was destroyed, broke to pieces, reduced to its chaotic state, or un-formed and afterwards formed again, and this its second Formation, answerable, both in the manner and means, to first, and original’. The Deluge unhinged ‘the whole frame of the earth’, and dissolved ‘all the solid strata thereof’ (Treatise, p. 18); ‘the mountains that were before the flood and those that were after were not one and the same, but formed at two different times, and with respect to the point in question, vastly different’ (p. 258).

87 Cf. Hutchinson, , Observations, in Works, op. cit. (43), xii. 279f.Google Scholar

88 Supplement, p. 59Google Scholar: ‘the natural world never suffered unless the spiritual or moral had first offended’.

89 Thus Platt, in this letter to Catcott, noted that Catcott's theory of the Deluge was unacceptable because it demanded a physically impossible total dissolution at the Deluge. Platt argued that Catcott himself had put forward many facts which should have scotched his theory. See ‘Letters’ volume (note 14), 6 December 1763.

90 Unlike Burnet, who in his Sacred theory of the earth had seen the whole earth lying in ruins after the Deluge; but equally unlike some eighteenth-century geologists who thought the whole earth was orderly and beautiful. A good instance is his discussion of Caldy Island; see ‘Welsh journal’, op. cit. (14), 20 08 1756.Google Scholar Here he was confronted with generally horizontal strata adjacent to nearly vertical ones. Catcott comments in his journal that if the Woodwardian theory be true, one would expect all the strata to be disrupted rather than merely a small portion of them.

Most interesting is the comment in the ‘Fossil journal’ (‘Papers’ volume [note 14]), where, examining some strata found around Bristol Hotwells, he wrote:

‘These seams of irregular beds of clay, marl and stone, intervening between regular strata of stone, and being of a softer nature than stone, yielded to the waters of the Deluge, then tore out the valley adjoining, washed away this softer matter and re-inclined the superincumbent strata. Which accounts for the phenomena without supposing a disruption of the shell of the whole earth as Woodward supposes’.

To our knowledge, this was the one point where Catcott made explicit his doubts about Woodward's theory of total dissolution.

91 Though it is important to note that there are similar tensions between fieldwork and theory within Hutchinson's writings. In his Observations of 1706 (probably written before he developed his own theories), Hutchinson implied that the Deluge merely changed superficial parts of the earth, rather than dissolving and reforming it totally; cf. Works, op. cit. (43), xii. 266f.Google Scholar Hence, both Hutchinson and Catcott in their fieldwork found it sensible to use the Deluge to explain modifications in landforms. But when they constructed religiously and humanly significant theories, they swung towards a total dissolution. Catcott himself noted in his ‘Welsh journal’, op. cit. (14), 20 August 1756, how Hutchinson changed his theory of the effects of the Deluge between writing the Observations and his Moses's principia. For another contemporary case of acute tensions (in this case between largely Buffonian theory and detailed stratigraphical research in Derbyshire), see Whitehurst, John, Inquiry into the original state and formation of the earth (London, 1778)Google Scholar, for which see Porter, , op. cit. (1), chapter v.Google Scholar

92 I.e. Catcott was pressed into reasserting the universality of the Deluge, its simultaneity, and the total dissolution it occasioned because he saw the theological threat in Clayton's liberal Anglicanism and le Cat's Deism, which asserted local and partial deluges; see Treatise, p. 14. Clayton himself was, of course, arguing against Woodward's theory of the total dissolution, on the grounds (amongst others) that it was too implausible to be a useful prop to Christianity. Catcott attacked Clayton on two main grounds: a) Clayton's assertion that nearly all strata were horizontal, b) Clayton's belief that the Deluge was partial in its effects, merely changing the superficial features of landforms. The irony is that these beliefs of Clayton's were ones with which Catcott himself operated throughout his fieldwork, but which he never admitted in a published, religious work.

93 Treatise, p. 258Google Scholar, for refutation of le Cat. The Deluge was the ‘execution of divine wrath upon a wicked world’ (p. 279).

94 That is, the Deluge as a symbolic second Creation as a parallel repeat of the first: ‘The Deluge is a parallel act (only in an inverted order) to that of the first formation’; see Treatise, p. 8.Google Scholar

95 Treatise, p. 43.Google Scholar

96 I.e., the modification, not the destruction of the earth at the Deluge. These tensions destroy Catcott's own claim, made in the Treatise, 2nd edn., p. vii, that he found nature and Scripture in ‘such a surprisingly exact agreement’ … ‘that they tallied like two indentures’.