Phillips’ guidebook of Yorkshire aimed at ‘inciting Residents to study, and visitors to explore, this Magnificent County’.

The book covers not only the geology and topography of the county, but also its history, natural history, descriptions of the main towns, and some of the author’s favourite walks. Among the illustrations is a map showing the geology of Yorkshire, which is coloured to represent the various strata, as shown on the vertical section. Phillips follows Smith’s standard of colouring, and Greenough for leaving chalk areas blank.

John Phillips (1800-1974) was an English geologist, the first to publish a global geologic timescale based on the correlation of fossils in rock strata, and thus standardizing terms such as Mesozoic and Palaeozoic, which he coined. He was orphaned at an early age and entered the care of his maternal uncle William Smith, known as the ‘father of geology’. Phillips soon became Smith’s assistant and travelled with him and independently throughout the north of England on many geological field studies. He was the first Keeper of the Yorkshire Museum, and among the first to produce detailed studies of the Yorkshire coast and carboniferous limestones of the Yorkshire Dales. Despite his humble background and the lack of formal qualifications, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, became Professor of Geology at King’s College, London, as well as Oxford University; there he was also keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and the founder of the Natural History Museum.