From outcrops to maps : the birth of geological maps of the Maltese Islands in the 19th century – Part 3

Abstract

This article is the third instalment of a series being published in the Malta Map Society Journal©, and which comprises a detailed review of the geological maps of the Maltese Islands produced during the British period in the 19th century. These articles aim to present a more detailed cartographic examination of a number of geological maps of the Maltese archipelago published between 1843 and 1893. In the first article, Gauci and Schembri (2017)1 discussed how the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the early 18th century led to an increase in the economic importance of mining in Europe and which drove a scientific revolution in geological surveying and mapping to guide abstractions of mineral resources, construction of mine tunnels and dug-outs, and abstraction of groundwater amongst others. The first three geological maps of the Maltese Islands were produced by Admiral Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt (1811–1888) 2,3,4, the details of which were described in a first article by Gauci and Schembri (2017). The second article by Gauci and Schembri (2019)5 reviewed three more maps published a few years later by two other British geologists: Captain Frederick Wollaston Hutton (1836–1905) and Dr Adam Leith Adams (1827–1882). [excerpt from the Introduction]