On the Geological Structure of the Alps, Apennines and Carpathians More Especially to Prove a Transition from Secondary to Tertiary Rocks, and the Development of Eocene Deposits in Southern Europe

Few men were better placed to produce an authoritative study of Continental geology than Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871), President of the Geological Society and the Royal Geographical Society of London. Having conducted extensive fieldwork alongside Adam Sedgwick, in 1847 Murchison set out on a study tour that would change the manner in which geology was understood and debated. Delivered before the Geological Society and published in their Quarterly Journal in 1849, this paper challenged received wisdom as to the age and formation of the most impressive of geological phenomena. Covering crystalline and palaeozoic rocks, the Trias, iron mines, nummulitic rocks and fish slates, this landmark study and its numerous diagrams that illustrate it not only explain a geological subject, but also reveal the nature of nineteenth-century scientific scholarship. The book also contains a short supplementary paper on the distribution of surface detritus in the Alps.

Introduction; Part I. General Structure of the Alps; Part II. On the Cretaceous and Nummulitic Rocks of the Carpathian Mountains; Part III. On the Chief Formations of the Apennines and Italy; Concluding remarks; Species of the Nummulitic Eocene group having a wide geographical range; On the distribution of the superficial detritus of the Alps, as compared with that of Northern Europe; Note on the geological structure of the Asturias, extracted from a letter of M. E. de Verneuil addressed to Sir Roderick I. Murchison.

Published in 1849, On the Geological Structure of the Alps, Apennines and Carpathians challenged prevailing theories surrounding these impressive geological phenomena. This landmark study and the diagrams that illustrate it not only explain a geological subject, but also reveal the nature of nineteenth-century scientific scholarship.