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2023
Journal article
Somerset ichthyosaurs and Quaker philanthropy: Alfred Gillett, William Stephens Clark and the geological museum in the Crispin Hall, Street.
In 1885, William Stephens Clark (1839-1925) built and opened the Crispin Hall in the village of Street, Somerset, to house its Working Men's Club & Institute. The new complex provided a room for a geological museum set up by Clark's cousin Alfred Gillett (1814-1904), and formally opened in 1887 with...Taylor, Michael A
Crispin Hall, Street, William Stephens Clark , Geological Museum, Quaker philanthropy, museology, ichthyosaurs , social improvement, C. & J. Clark Ltd, and Alfred Gillett
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Magazine article
Bringing Hugh Miller's The Old Red Sandstone to a new generation of readers
The 2023 edition of The Old Red Sandstone is the first truly new one for a century. It is in two main parts: a facsimile reprint of Miller’s original first edition of 1841, with explanatory notes added, and a book-length ‘Critical Study’ of Miller’s work by the authors Ralph O’Connor...Taylor, Michael A
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2023
Magazine article
Captain Waring and the Great House on Broad Street
Taylor, Michael A
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2023
Journal article
The geological and historical milieu of an ornamental cephalopod limestone (‘orthoceratite limestone’, Ordovician, Sweden) used in the Clerk Mausoleum (1684), St Mungo's Kirkyard, Penicuik, Scotland
A slab of cephalopod limestone bears a dedicatory Latin inscription on the mausoleum built around 1684 by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1649–1722) for his wife Elizabeth Henderson (1658–83) at St Mungo's Church, Penicuik, near Edinburgh, Scotland. The stone is identified on sedimentological and palaeontological evidence and historical context as... -
2022
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2023
Journal article
The Life of Mary Anning, Fossil Collector of Lyme Regis: a Contemporary Biographical Memoir by George Roberts
Despite the modern celebrity of the fossil collector Mary Anning (1799–1847) of Lyme Regis and her frequent use as an icon in scientific education and popularization, there are few accounts of her life by her contemporaries. We report here a previously unpublished anonymous manuscript memoir of Anning's life, in the...Taylor, Michael A ; Benton, Michael J
George Roberts, Lyme Regis, Athenæum, and Mary Anning obituary
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2022
Journal article
Science in a Somerset Quaker community: Alfred Gillett (1814-1904) fossil collecting and kinship networks in and around Street
Alfred Gillett (1814-1904) was a son of John Gillett, a Langport shopkeeper, and his wife Martha, part of a complex network of families which formed the core of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in eastern and south-eastern Somerset. He went into trade as an ironmonger. In 1841 he became...Taylor, Michael A ; Berry , Charlotte
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2021
Journal article
Hugh’s printing protégé becomes his publisher. The story of Alexander Strachan or Strahan, publisher of The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller
I am researching Hugh Miller’s unusual publishing arrangements, including the frequency with which his firm, Miller & Fairly, printed his books for their Edinburgh publishers before and after his death. The obvious exception is Peter Bayne’s family-approved The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller (1871), printed in London for Strahan...Taylor, Michael A
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2021
Journal article
Hugh’s printing protégé becomes his publisher. The story of Alexander Strachan or Strahan, publisher of The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller.
I am researching Hugh Miller’s unusual publishing arrangements, including the frequency with which his firm, Miller & Fairly, printed his books for their Edinburgh publishers before and after his death. The obvious exception is Peter Bayne’s family-approved The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller (1871), printed in London for Strahan...Taylor, Michael A
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2021
Journal article
Dating the publication of Hugh Miller’s The testimony of the rocks (1857)
Assessing the precise publication dates of nineteenth-century books is difficult. Common problems include inadequate, inaccurate and confusing title-page information, and misleading advertisements. It is better to use multiple lines of evidence rather than a single source. The first Scottish and English edition of The testimony of the rocks, by Hugh...Taylor, Michael A ; O’Connor, R ; Overstreet, L K
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2021
Journal article
The unusual printing and publishing arrangements of Hugh Miller (1802–1856)
John Johnstone was an Edinburgh printer and publisher, from 1849 in partnership with Robert Hunter. In 1839, Johnstone and the printer Robert Fairly established a separate firm, Johnstone & Fairly, to publish the Witness, a newspaper edited by the geologist Hugh Miller. The firm became Miller & Fairly in 1844...Taylor, Michael A
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2020
Journal article
Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, and the Great Storm of 1824
During the Great Storm of 1824, the house and fossil shop of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, in Cockmoil Square, was supposedly flooded. The popular but physically unlikely story is probably based on misreading Anning's report of flooding in her brother Joseph's premises, and copying a tale...Taylor, Michael A
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2020
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Journal article
Three memoirs of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) by his son Hugh Miller FGS
Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896) wrote a set of three memoirs on his father Hugh Miller (1802–1856), geologist, writer and newspaper editor. The first two are successive versions of a text written about 1883 to accompanya portrait of the elder Miller by the pioneering photographers David Octavius Hill (1802–1870)and RobertAdamson(1821–1848).The second...Taylor, Michael A
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1999
Journal article
A very local hero
Profiles 19th century amateur palenteologist Hugh Miller. His discoveries of fossils in the Firth of Cromarty in Scotland; Notice of his fossils by the paleontologist Louis Agassiz, and recognition Miller received by Agassiz; His life in Scotland; His decision to drop out of high school to become a stonemason and...Taylor, Michael A
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2000
Journal article
Functional significance of bone ballastin in the evolution of buoyancy control strategies by aquatic tetrapods
The primary function of pachyostosis, pachyosteo‐sclerosis, and osteosclerosis may be to act as ballast, not so much (as previously suggested) to neutralise the buoyancy of existing lungs, but to allow enlargement of the lungs. Enlarged lungs cause an animal to lose buoyancy more rapidly with depth. They also provide a...Taylor, Michael A
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2003
Journal article
Hugh Miller's collection - a memorial to a great geological Scot
Some would argue that Hugh Miller's greatest memorial lies in his writings and his enduring reputation. Nevertheless, as well as the Nelson's Column style monument overlooking his birthplace cottage preserved by the National Trust for Scotland at Cromarty, he also enjoys four other statues or portrait busts. Appropriately for an...Taylor, Michael A ; Gostwick, M
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2011
Journal article
Dr Arthur Cruickshank [obituary]
Taylor, Michael A ; Benton, M J
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2007
Journal article
The Hugh Miller Museum in 1902
Taylor, Michael A
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2004
Journal article
Further information on the life of Charles Moore (1815-1881), Somerset geologist.
Copp et al. (1999) published an account of the life and work of Charles Moore, the Victorian amateur geologist whose fine collection is now held mainly by the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the Somerset County Museum, Taunton. This note aims to amend and extend some information in...Torrens, H. S. ; Taylor, Michael A
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2011
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2010
Journal article
Sea dragons of Avalon
Tourists driving through the village2 of Street on their way to Glastonbury might well wonder at the representation of a skeleton on the road sign. Could this perhaps be a warning that this stretch of the A39 is a roadkill hotspot? I (Stig Walsh, once a local inhabitant) suspect that...Walsh, Stig A ; Taylor, Michael A
Street, ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, Somerset, Triassic, and Jurassic
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2010
Journal article
200 years of West Country sea dragons: Thomas Hawkins and his fossil legacy
Public lectures and seminar, Street, 22-24 July 2010Taylor, Michael A ; Noè, L. F. ; Hill, David B
ichthyosaur, Jurassic, Triassic, and plesiosaur
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2018
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2018
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2018
Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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2008
Journal article
Charles W. Peach, palaeobotany and Scotland
The move south from Wick to the city of Edinburgh in 1865, some four years after retirement from the Customs service, provided Charles W. Peach with new opportunities for fossil-collecting and scientific networking. Here he renewed and maintained his interest in natural history and made significant palaeobotanical collections from the...Anderson, Lyall I ; Taylor, Michael A
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2017
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2017
Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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2017
Journal article
The Victorian Sunday, daylight and naturalists
Taylor, Michael A
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2017
Journal article
J.G. Goodchild's Guide to the Geological Collections in the Hugh Miller cottage, Cromarty of 1902
This reproduces, in facsimile, the Guide to the Geological Collections in the Hugh Miller cottage, Cromarty of 1902 by J.G. Goodchild.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I ; Goodchild, J G
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2017
Journal article
Guide to the Hugh Miller collection in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, c. 1920
Around 1920, the retired Geological Survey worker Benjamin Neeve Peach (1842-1926) wrote a guide to the permanent exhibition, which he had just completed, of fossils from the collection of Hugh Miller (1802-1856) in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh (now part of National Museums Scotland). This guide also incorporated an older...Peach, Benjamin N ; Traquair, Ramsay H ; Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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2017
Journal article
The first known stereophotographs of Hugh Miller's cottage and the building of the Hugh Miller Monument, Cromarty, 1859
Two early stereophotographs of Hugh Miller's cottage at Cromarty have separate provenances and their original photographer is unknown, but they were apparently taken at the same session and from almost the same location. One shows the Hugh Miller Monument under construction. The monument's planning, funding and building are outlined. It...Taylor, Michael A ; Morrison-Low, A D
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2017
Journal article
The museums of a local, national and supranational hero: Hugh Miller's collections over the decades
Hugh Miller (1802-1856), Scottish geologist, newspaper editor and writer, is a perhaps unique example of a geologist with a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace cottage, in Cromarty, northern Scotland. He finally housed his geological collection, principally of Scottish fossils, in a purpose-built museum at his house in Portobello,...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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2017
Journal article
The appeal circular for the purchase of Hugh Miller's collection, 1858
This reproduces, in facsimile, the only known copy of the Proposal to Purchase the Museum of the Late Hugh Miller for deposition in the Natural History Museum (later part of the National Museums Scotland). It is datable on internal evidence to 1858. This particular copy belonged to Charles W. Peach...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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2017
Journal article
A memoir of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) attributed to his son Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896)
A manuscript memoir of Hugh Miller (1802–1856), geologist, writer and newspaper editor, is attributed to his son Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896). It is published here, apparently for the first time. It was written sometime in 1881–1896, more probably 1882–1895. Its intended place of publication is discussed. It is an interesting...Taylor, Michael A
nineteenth century, Scotland, Cromarty, biography, and Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage and Museum
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2017
Journal article
An integrated approach to understanding the role of the long neck in plesiosaurs
The evolution and function of the long neck in plesiosaurs, and how the problems associated with stiffness or flexibility were overcome during feeding, or rapid swimming during predator avoidance, are explored, and a new interpretation for the function of the plesiosaur neck is presented. Based on the anatomy of the...Noè, Leslie F ; Taylor, Michael A ; Gómez-Pérez, Marcela
palaeoecology, Plesiosauria, evolution, filter feeding, long neck, functional anatomy, and Sauropterygia
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2016
Journal article
Tennyson and the geologists part 2: saurians and the Isle of Wight
It is often observed that Tennyson’s poetry was profoundly influenced by his reading in astronomy, geology and science in general, and evolutionary thought before and after Darwin. This reflected the period’s intense crossover between science and what would today be called literature. The scientific paper was approaching its modern format,...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I