Tinkler Keith J. - A Short History of Geomorphology

Volume 26

KEITH J. TINKLER

First published in 1985 by Croom Helm Ltd

This edition first published in 2020

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1985 K.J. Tinkler

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-367-18559-6 (Set)

ISBN: 978-0-429-19681-2 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-31291-6 (Volume 26) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-31613-5 (Volume 26) (ebk)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer

The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Keith J. Tinkler

CROOM HELM

London & Sydney

1985 K.J. Tinkler

Croom Helm Ltd, Provident House, Burrell Row,

Beckenham, Kent BR3 1AT

Croom Helm Australia Pty Ltd, First Floor,

139 King Street, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Tinkler, Keith

A short history of geomorphology.

1. GeomorphologyHistory

I. Title

551.401 GB400.7

ISBN 0-7099-2441-0

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Biddies Ltd, Guildford and Kings Lynn

FIGURES

Stenos interpretation of Tuscan landscapes

Chronology of authors of the Ancient World

Bakewells figure of the denudation of coal strata

Bakewells birds eye view of the Niagara Gorge

The lower falls on the Genesee River (Hall 1843)

Halls diagram to explain changes seen in Fig. 5

The table of data on landforms west of Edinburgh

Field evidence from the Auvergne (Lyell 1833)

The Pierre--Bot, Mt. Blanc erratic in the Jura Mts

The Parallel Roads of Glen Roy (Geikie 1865)

The plateau and canon of the Colorado River

Landscape sketches by W.M.Davis in the Rockies

Peltiers diagram of morphogenetic regions

Davis1 erroneous figure of Penckian slope retreat

Magnitude and frequency in geomorphic processes

Models of landscape evolution from Schumm (1977)

Numerical simulation of cliff retreat by M.J.Kirkby

Diagram illustrative of earth pillars (Lyell 1868)

Section of Mississippi River (Lyell 1849)

Landscape drawing by MrsTraherne (Murchison 1839)

Imaginary view of Llanberis Pass (Ramsay 1878)

Ideal divide profile (Russell 1898)

Quotation from title page of Playfair (1802)

Temple of Serapis (Huxley 1878)

Drawing of a landslip caused by earthquake (Lyell 1830)

Field equipment (A. Geikie 1879)

Landscape drawing from Bonney (1893)

Old plane of marine denudation (Hull 1878)

Alluvial hills (drumlins) (Hall 1843)

Profile of an ideal ice sheet (Hobbs 1911)

Alluvial river terraces (Shaler 1890)

Diagram of the ideal Geographical Cycle (Davis 1899)

The Gem of Paha, Rockville Co., Delaware (McGee 1891)

Slope profiles on a cliff in South Wales (Savigear 1952)

Inset of Pillar Rock, Ennerdale (Mackintosh 1869)

Cover Design

Specimens, see Figure 7

Silhouette of an erratic, based on Figure 25 in Hull (1878)

Type is Old Face Baskerville, an eighteenth-century fount

View near Llanwrtyd Wells, from a drawing by Mrs. Traherne.

I have written this book to fulfill a need which exists for a short yet reasonably comprehensive history of geomorphology. I do not neglect the monumental volumes being produced by Chorley, Beckinsale and Dunn (1964, 1973), but the first of these volumes is now out of print and the second is devoted, very necessarily, to a biography of W.M.Davis. The complementary third volume on Daviss contemporaries, and the fourth volume on the period since 1945 have not yet appeared (at the time of writing). The two existing books are excellent reference volumes, and all geomorphologists, including this one, are greatly in debt to them, but they are daunting and expensive to the hard-pressed student who needs a brief guide to the main ideas.

The other primary source for the history of geomorphology; G.L.Davies The Earth in Decay, is also out of print. Although this book confines itself to British geomorphology in the period 1578 to 1878, its scope is much broader than the title might imply since British geology held a central position in western thought until late in the nineteenth century.

There is one other monograph of which readers should be aware; Cunninghams The Revolution in Landscape Science (1977a) which studies the critical transition years for geomorphology, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, with especial reference to the intellectual ferment of that period.

I do not intend to be pedantic in my use of the word geomorphology which only came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century. (In Chapter 1 I cite a possible early use of the word by Naumann (1858) on the basis of a passing remark by Roglic (1972). However, I cannot find the word in the only edition of that date available to me through inter-library loan in North America.) It describes a field of interest that has always been clearly distinguished from other interests in geology and so I have used the word freely to avoid circumlocutions. Because geomorphology is indisputably a part of geology I have used geologist as a generic covering terra, even though I realize that because of institutional affiliations, geomorphologists are often geographers. Earth science has been used as an alternative to geology and is a useful term for the period when the subject of geology was not clearly separate from other surficial investigations. The meaning intended should be obvious from the context and there is no hidden significance in the use of particular terms, other than avoiding misrepresentation.

During the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the history of the geomorphology which parallels a similar interest in geology. The respect owing to the founders of our subject has grown to such an extent that Hutton and Playfair have been awarded posthumous knighthoods by the editors of one recent symposium volume (Coates and Vitek 1980)! The inauguration in North America during 1982 of a society and journal for the study of the history of the earth sciences will provide a welcome forum for discussion. Access to early literature has improved materially in the last twenty years. A great many early classics have been issued in facsimile reprints, and a number of translations have been made of key continental texts. Within particular branches of the subject the appearance of volumes of collected papers, linked by critical editorial commentaries, has made the task of analysis very much simpler.