Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17680

    Niagara falls

    Date
    1845
    Object type
    Library reference
    35382
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 199mm
    width (page): 346mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > landscape
    Description
    Bird's eye view of Niagara falls and the adjacent country, including Lewiston, represented as a cluster of buildings on the bottom left [as viewed], Quenstown, a cluster of buildings in the centre, and St Davids on the right. The strata of the surrounding cliff edge is coloured blue and yellow.

    Forward facing inscription: 'Lewiston Queenstown St Davids
    BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF THE FALLS OF NIAGARA & ADJACENT COUNTRY. COLOURED GEOLOGICALLY.
    London. John Murray. Albermarle Street, 1845. Day & Haghe lithrs to the Queen.'

    The fold-out frontispiece for Charles Lyell's Travels in North America', vol. 1. Travels was published in two volumes, and Lyell describes the making of this frontispiece in the closing of the second volume:

    'Mr Bakewell Jun., son of the distinguished geologist of that name, gave me his original coloured sketches of the Niagara district in 1841. He had previously published an outline of them in some wood-cuts in ''London's Magazine'' for 1830... When I visited the Falls of Niagara in 1841, I conceived the idea of combining Mr. Bakewell's pictorial view with a correct geological representation of the rocks as determined by Mr. Hall, who accompanied me to the Falls'.

    Charles Lyell (1797-1875) British geologist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1826.

    Robert Bakewell Senior (1767-1851) was a pioneer of geology in Britain; Robert Bakewell Junior (1792-1875) taught drawing at Yale College, and; James Hall (1811-1898), who accompanied Lyell in his journey to the falls, was a student of the Rensselaer Institute and known as the 'father of American paleontology'.
    Related fellows
    Charles Lyell (1797 - 1875, British) , Geologist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > North America
          > Canada
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