A
complimentary dinner Leftovers
I am grateful to several readers for their comments on
the dinner menu that appeared in the last issue of
The Edinburgh Geologist.
The first to
make comment was Bob (R.V.) Wilson who rang and left a message on my answer machine:
You say you didn't know who D. Haldane was.
I think you'll find that it is D.İH. Haldane, who was a Survey member. He retired
just after the War. The way to find out about these people is to look up Slates
History of the Geological Survey. It is held in the BGS Library and in
it you'll find a staff list.
The
second was in an e-mail sent by Richard Smith of BGS: Just
to let you know in the article on A complimentary dinner the D. Haldane
you didn't have any info on is most likely to be D. Haldane of the Geological
Survey working in Scotland from 1920 in both the Central Belt and the Highlands.
He probably still has relatives in the Edinburgh area as I have met (I think it
was his daughter or grand daughter) at one of the BGS open days.
Lastly
Howel Francis sent a letter to Norman with fullest details: David
Haldane started off as a fossil collector on the Survey before the First World
War. I was given to understand that after joining up, he was commissioned, was
gassed and ended the war as a major on the staff. On rejoining the Survey, they
couldn't very well put him back to the relatively menial job of fossil collector
and so he was rushed through a degree at Edinburgh and re-employed as a field
geologist. He spent the interwar years mainly in the Central, Fife and Clackmannan
coalfields... During the Second World War, he produced Sands and Gravels of
Scotland, Part IV and, with J. B. Simpson, Limestones of Scotland, Area
111. He retired just after the end of the war and was an occasional visitor
to the Survey thereafter, though he died, I think, in the early 1950s.
As was the custom in those days, Haldane also took
part in Highland surveys, but his work on Skye (I think) and Shetland never saw
the light of day thanks to the war. In the star-studded company that the Edinburgh
Survey sported in the 1920s and 1930s, Haldane was never going to shine and, to
tell the truth, his maps show him as being a trifle ham-fisted. But he did an
honest job of work and deserves that much recognition at least.
Indeed
he does. BGS owes a credit to people like him, though if he was 'a trifle ham-fisted'
as Howel says, that still leaves open the question of who was the DH that drafted
the menu for Pringle's complimentary dinner!
