Carte Geologique de la Terre par Jules Marcou

An enormous geological map of the world compiled from the best available sources by Jules Marcou, perhaps the most famous geologist of his age.

This map provides a fascinating record of the progress of geological surveying in the 19th century. It is clear that Europe and North America were the best-surveyed areas, but South America, India, Australia, and South Africa - all important sources of precious metals or gems - had also been well surveyed by the 1870s. Africa and Asia remain largely unsurveyed, and only the tips of the Antarctic continent had been studied. An explanation of the colour-coding is provided in the map's legend in the bottom-left corner.

Jules Marcou was born in Salins, France in 1824. By the age of 21, he was already working on a geological survey of the Jura Mountains, his home region, in collaboration with Jules Thurmann, another important French geologist of the day. Two years later, in 1847, Marcou traveled to North America for the first time on behalf of the Jardin de Plantes. For the next 8 years he traveled extensively in the United States and Canada, collecting mineral samples, visiting unusual geological formations, and accompanying the Pacific Railroad Survey on its exploration of potential Trans-Continental Railroad routes. Two decades later, Marcou also accompanied the Wheeler Survey to Southern California, making him one of the most influential figures to the study of North America's geology. He published a foundational geological map of the United States in 1853 and

Marcou's first attempt at a geological wall map was in 1861 when he published the first edition of this map. By his own account, he found it lacking in detail and rife with factual errors as his work on the project had been interrupted by travel. It took Marcou 14 years to prepare the second edition, during which time major improvements had been made to understanding of the geology of the Arctic, India, New Zealand, and Australia, amongst many other parts of the world. All of the geologists whose work contributed to the map are credited in one of the lower insets.

Printed in English and French on 8 sheets which have since been professionally joined. Vibrant original colour.