探花直播 of Cambridge - Scotland

Scottish rocks to play a key role in Mars space mission

sc604 — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 15:48:18 +0000

A group of scientists, including from the 探花直播 of Cambridge, have this week been collecting samples of rock from the NatureScot National Nature Reserve (NNR) as part of the NASA and European Space Agency (ESA)鈥檚 Mars Sample Return Program.

探花直播programme is gathering samples of rocks from around the world that bear a similarity to those on Mars, ahead of rock samples from the Red Planet being brought back to Earth in 2033.

Rum has been selected as the only UK site for sampling, and is a high priority in the programme, as some of its igneous rocks have a very similar mineral and chemical content to those that have been collected by NASA鈥檚 Perseverance Rover during its exploration of an ancient lakebed on Mars.

Intensive study of the rocks from Rum and around the globe will crucially help scientists understand what methods of testing and analysis will work best in readiness for when the Martian rocks return to Earth.

As the first samples from another world, the Mars rocks are thought to present the best opportunity to reveal clues about the early evolution of the planet, including the potential for past life.

探花直播Rum sampling is being led by Dr Lydia Hallis, a geologist and planetary scientist from the 探花直播 of Glasgow, and member of the programme鈥檚 Science Group. 探花直播team also includes scientists from the 探花直播 of Cambridge, the 探花直播 of Leicester and Brock 探花直播 in Canada.

鈥淭hese Rum rocks are an excellent comparison to one particular Martian rock sample, which the NASA Perseverance Rover collected from the igneous S茅铆tah Formation within Jezero crater,鈥� said Hallis. 鈥淣ot only is the mineralogy and chemistry similar, but the two rocks appear to have a similar amount of weathering.

鈥淭his seems strange when we think how wet and warm Rum is compared to present-day Mars, but billions of years ago when the S茅铆tah formation crystallised on Mars the difference in environment would not have been so pronounced. At this time Mars was much wetter and warmer, with a thicker atmosphere that may even have produced rain (though not as much as we get in Scotland!). Over time the Martian atmosphere thinned, leaving the surface much dryer and colder, essentially halting any further weathering within S茅铆tah and preserving the rocks at Jezero Crater for us to investigate today.

鈥� 探花直播rocks on Rum are much younger, but their exposure to the Scottish elements has produced roughly the same amount of weathering as was produced in the S茅铆tah Formation during Mars鈥� early wet and warm climate. Because of all these similarities, analysis of the Rum rocks should give us a good head start and help the samples from the Red Planet achieve their full potential when they are returned to Earth.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing to think that somewhere right here in the UK might be able to tell us something about the geology of a different planet,鈥� said team member Professor Helen Williams from Cambridge鈥檚 Department of Earth Sciences. 鈥淲e鈥檝e still got several years left to wait before we can study the real Mars rocks, but in the meantime, our Scottish samples will provide scientists with the perfect material to test and refine the analytical techniques they will be using to investigate material returned from the Red Planet.鈥�

Lesley Watt, NatureScot鈥檚 Rum NNR reserve manager, said: 鈥淲ith its extinct volcanoes and dramatic mountains, Rum has always been one of the best places to discover Scotland's world-class geology, but we didn鈥檛 quite realise that the rocks here were of interplanetary significance as well.

鈥淚t has been fascinating to learn more about the NASA/ESA mission, and really exciting for the island to play a small part in this truly historic endeavour to find out more about Mars. We hope it will add yet another element of interest for visitors to this special place.鈥�

Adapted from a NatureScot press release.

Ancient rocks from the Isle of Rum in northwest Scotland are playing an important role in an international space mission to discover more about Mars.

It鈥檚 amazing to think that somewhere right here in the UK might be able to tell us something about the geology of a different planet

Helen Williams

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars.

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright 漏探花直播 of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified.聽 All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways 鈥� as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Fighting for the rights of football fans

zs332 — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 12:16:53 +0000

How a Cambridge researcher fought for the rights of football fans and won.

Oldest Scottish manuscript to go on display in Aberdeen

zs332 — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 11:26:30 +0000

探花直播Book of Deer, possibly Scotland鈥檚 oldest surviving manuscript, is set to return to the north-east of Scotland for the first time in 1,000 years when it goes on loan from Cambridge 探花直播 Library next year.

Where the river meets the sea: the making of ethical decisions

amb206 — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Mid-way through her book, Making a Good Life: An Ethnography of Nature, Ethics, and Reproduction, Dr Katharine Dow describes walking on a Scottish beach and seeing, for the first time, a minke whale in the wild. It鈥檚 a grey day and all she can see is its fin dark against the waves 鈥� yet the sighting marks a turning point.聽 Her exhilaration helps her to connect with the members of the wildlife project she is shortly to join as a volunteer.

She writes: 鈥淚 began to see for myself what the fuss was about, how some people can end up devoting their lives to saving cetaceans.鈥� But, as highly articulate as she is, she finds it hard to express in words the potency of her feelings about the whale out there in the ocean. 鈥淪omething about seeing one in the wild, so close to where people were going about their ordinary business, was so strange as to seem magical.鈥�

Dow is a social anthropologist and a research associate in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group. She has a particular interest in assisted reproductive technologies (ART), a field of medicine that is subject to fierce debate on the grounds of the ethics of 鈥渢ampering with nature鈥�. Academic research into the ramifications of ART has concentrated on those who are directly involved as active participants (for example, would-be parents undergoing treatment or children conceived via sperm donation).

Much less research has taken place into the views of the millions of people not directly involved in ART but, nevertheless, have opinions about scientific advances that, for example, enable a post-menopausal woman to conceive and carry a child. Making a Good Life helps to fill this gap by documenting in detail the views and opinions of a small community in Spey Bay, a coastal village in north-east Scotland.

探花直播community that Dow joined for 20 months in order to carry out her research is a very particular one: it comprises a small number of professionals and volunteers working for a charity dedicated to safeguarding the local environment for wildlife. Spey Bay is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an important habitat for cetaceans, most notably a 100-strong population of bottlenose dolphins. 聽

探花直播鈥榞ood life鈥� in Dow鈥檚 title is a key to understanding this small community: members of the centre have chosen to make a contribution to the environment, feel passionately about the safeguarding of vulnerable species, and try to live 鈥榚thically鈥� by making careful lifestyle choices. How these people think about ART 鈥� and surrounding questions about bringing children into the world 鈥� is shaped by their wider feelings, and interactions with, the environment.

Making a Good Life blends Dow鈥檚 account of life in a tight-knit community with details of in-depth conversations with her co-workers and others about matters of reproduction, a topic that touches on their personal experiences of being, or thinking about, parenthood. She also brings into the mix an analysis of the ethical issues under discussion, the legislation controlling ART, and work by academic colleagues on questions of kinship and belonging.

As she weaves these strands together, Dow reminds us that we don鈥檛 think about, and form opinions about, some of life鈥檚 most important questions in watertight thought compartments: how we think about ART is coloured by聽our wider thoughts聽about nature 鈥� and how our lives fit into, or stand apart from, the environment. 聽How we feel about issues of reproduction is all about the many contexts 鈥� including the families we are part of or separated from 鈥� within which we imagine our lives.

探花直播idea of family bonds, particularly the fierce tie between a mother and her young, is something that runs deep in our picture of nature, especially so in the case of iconic species. When a minke whale calf swam into a nearby fishing harbour and was unable to find its way out, it drew crowds of concerned tourists. An adult minke spotted outside the harbour was immediately assumed to be its anxious mother.

Dow writes: 鈥� 探花直播distant figure of the calf鈥檚 putative mother waiting in the firth, apparently unable to help it back from its reckless path into the harbour, added a particular poignancy to this stranding story. People assumed that the calf would be all the more distressed because of its separation from its 鈥榤other鈥� and that reuniting them would be the best, and perhaps only, way to ensure its survival.鈥�

While Dow鈥檚 interviewees welcome many of the techniques that help people to fulfil their desire to have a child, they are worried by the 鈥榰nnaturalness鈥� of surrogacy, an arrangement by which a woman carries a child on behalf of someone else. In unpacking the process of surrogacy, she identifies the 鈥減ostpartum handover of the child鈥�, from surrogate mother to intended parent or parents, as the defining act of this agreement. 鈥淪urrogacy is troubling because the surrogate is expected to resist a natural feeling that is supposed to be so strong that refuting it would be emotionally damaging,鈥� she writes with reference to the views expressed by her interviewees.

鈥� 探花直播ethical dilemmas provoked by surrogacy demonstrate that motherhood is heavily laden with moral values that inscribe expectations for proper behaviour and relationships and that are articulated in the language of nature, biology and embodied feeling. Any challenge to maternal bonding, like the relinquishing of a child by a surrogate mother, seems to represent a threat to our most basic relationship and source of identity.鈥�

In discussing questions of belonging, Dow shares aspects of her own story. Her father discovered in his mid-40s that he鈥檇 been adopted. A half-sister appears in his life and then two more. All had been adopted by different couples, who may not have been informed that their adoptive children had siblings. Dow鈥檚 father learns that his mother died giving birth to twins, unattended in a Dundee flat. Mother and twins were found dead, a tragedy that left many unanswered questions.

Events local to Spey Bay, and responses to them as they unfold, punctuate Dow鈥檚 narrative. Her book opens with the death of a sperm whale. Its carcass is washed up on the beach a 40-minute drive from the wildlife centre and people congregate to see it. Talking later, the leader of the centre describes the atmosphere as 鈥渞everential鈥�. Onlookers are shocked to see that its lower jaw has been hacked off; there is a global black market trade in whale teeth. Whales are protected by law and a criminal investigation is launched.

Reverence and outrage are complex emotions unique to humans 鈥� as is a sense of what is 鈥榬ight鈥� and what is 鈥榳rong鈥�. 鈥淓thics is profoundly emotional 鈥β� 探花直播public ethics of ART has commonly centred on visceral reactions and often it is difficult for people to explain why something is unethical except to say that it simply seems wrong 鈥� Listening to feelings and recognising when we have transgressed 'feeling rules' can be a way of mapping the ethical terrain,鈥� writes Dow.

鈥淥ne of the best ways of getting at ethics, of following its fluid flow as it is made and reproduced is talking. Data, in ethnographic fieldwork, are not latent in our interlocutors, waiting to be unearthed by the researcher; they come from the space between the ethnographer and the participant. To use an environmentalist metaphor, gathering data is not about extracting a commodity, but responsibly harnessing a renewable resource by redirecting its flow.鈥�

Spey Bay is a place 鈥渨here the river meets the sea鈥�, the title of a poem by the poet John Mackie, whom Dow meets in the course of researching her book. This merging of the waters neatly echoes Dow鈥檚 own breaking of boundaries between gender studies,聽anthropology and travelogue. She shows us how free-flowing and ultimately elusive our ideas of the world really are.

Making a Good Life: An Ethnography of Nature, Ethics, and Reproduction is published by Princeton 探花直播 Press. Dr Katharine Dow is a research associate with the Reproductive Sociology Research Group. 探花直播group聽supports research and teaching on the social and cultural implications of new reproductive technologies. It is led by Professor Sarah Franklin.

聽

What is our place in the natural world 鈥� and how do we feel about the scientific advances that are changing the way we live?聽In her book Making a Good Life, Dr Katharine Dow explores the ethics of assisted reproductive technology in conversations with members of a small Scottish community dedicated to protecting the environment.

探花直播ethical dilemmas provoked by surrogacy demonstrate that motherhood is heavily laden with moral values that inscribe expectations for proper behaviour and relationships and that are articulated in the language of nature, biology and embodied feeling.

Katharine Dow

Wikimedia Commons

Bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth. Scotland

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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What limpets can tell us about life on Mesolithic Oronsay

amb206 — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 08:00:00 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

For well over 100 years, archaeologists have been working in the windswept environment of the Isle of Oronsay on the west coast of Scotland to discover more about the people who lived on this tiny patch of land as long as 6,000 years ago 鈥� and how they exploited the natural environment around them.

Oronsay is remarkable for its stark beauty and its role as a habitat for wildlife. 探花直播island is also known for its five shell middens. Heaps of 鈥榢itchen waste鈥�, they were left by people living at a period known as the Mesolithic. 聽Also found are evidence of structures and hearths used for boiling and cooking food gathered from sea and shore. These too date from the Mesolithic.

Archaeologists have identified bones and shells from at least 30 species of marine life in the debris of these ancient rubbish heaps which, by virtue of their remoteness, lay undisturbed for so long under a thick covering of sand. Easily the most abundant of the molluscs to be found in the debris of the middens is the humble limpet.

Limpets can be found clinging to rocks all around the coast of Britain. Resembling the stereotype of a Chinese hat, the shell of the mollusc is conical but with ridges running from its outside edge to the peak. Inside, the soft body of the limpet is as vulnerable as a Dalek without its armour.

In the tough history of the Scottish islands, limpets were eaten mainly at periods when other foods were scarce. Today they are used by fishermen as bait and feature on the menus of only the most adventurous free food enthusiasts.

Archaeologist Sir Paul Mellars, emeritus professor of Prehistory and Human Evolution at Cambridge, first visited Oronsay in the mid-1970s. Over the course of five field seasons, often working in driving rain and at the mercy of Scottish midges, Mellars and colleagues excavated samples of shell material from all five middens on the island.

Using Radiocarbon dating, a technique that transformed the chronologies of human prehistory, archaeologists were able to show that the middens belong to the final stage of the Mesolithic period. This finding pointed to an intensive and relatively short-lived exploitation of the island by Mesolithic communities around the fourth millennium BC.

Modern visitors to Oronsay might well ask themselves why people would have chosen to live in such a far-flung environment, at least eight miles from the mainland. 鈥淎s fishermen will tell you even today, the waters around Oronsay and the bigger island of Colonsay are rich in seafood. And the calcite-rich shell sand that covers much of the islands makes the land fertile enough to grow crops,鈥� says Mellars.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 so fascinating about the Oronsay middens is that they date from a time when people were on the point of moving from being hunter-gatherers, or hunter-fisher-gatherers, to farmers. These heaps of debris give us a glimpse of lives at a time of transition.鈥�

Mellars鈥� early work focused on the range and relative importance of the different food resources as revealed by the contents of the middens.聽 Debris from both fish and shellfish was evident. Analysis of these deposits showed that one species 鈥� saithe or coalfish 鈥� accounted for more than 90% of fish bones. Among molluscs, limpets greatly predominate over other molluscs such as whelks and periwinkles.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not hard to come up with plausible explanations for the preference for limpets, which are plentiful. They taste like bits of car tyre 鈥� but they are meatier, and more nutritious, than whelks and winkles. Furthermore, limpets are a lot easier to extract from their shells. These factors combine to make limpets a more energy efficient resource,鈥� says Mellars.

探花直播shapes of limpet shells vary according to where they are found. Limpets inhabiting the lower parts of the tidal range are generally much flatter than those occupying the higher parts of the shore. Measurements of the height of limpet shells found in the middens revealed that they had been collected almost exclusively from the lower part of the tidal range 鈥� and chiefly from the very low tide situations exposed only during spring tides.

Mellars proposed two possible explanations. Firstly, limpets from low-tide zones are tenderer than others. Secondly, continuous harvesting of limpets may have led to an over-exploitation of more easily-accessible areas of the shore. 聽With the disappearance of limpets from the upper levels, the human population sought foodstuffs close to the low tide line.

Advances in technology are now enabling Mellars to come up with answers to other key questions 鈥� especially the question of seasonal patterns of saithe fishing and harvesting.聽 Although abundant around Oronsay and other islands in the summer, the fish migrate into deeper water late in the autumn.聽 This means that communities relying on marine life would need to look elsewhere for sustenance during winter and spring.

In a collaboration between the Departments of Archaeology and Earth Sciences, limpet shells from the middens were embedded in resin and then cut in half to expose the calcite interiors. 探花直播oldest material deposited by the shell is at the pointed top while the shell deposited just before the limpets were harvested lies on the outermost edge.

Rebecca Vignols, an Earth Sciences student, used a computer-controlled microdrill to obtain tiny samples of calcite from points less than half a millimetre across in a closely-packed series at the edge of the shells. To get the full picture of seasonal change at the location the limpets lived, some limpets were drilled in a detailed series right to the top of the calcite in the shell.聽探花直播ratio of light and heavy isotopes in water is affected by water temperatures, and the limpets build these changes into their shells as they grow.

探花直播oxygen isotope ratios in the shell samples were measured in the Department鈥檚 mass spectrometers.聽In this way, the water temperatures at the time the shells were harvested could be compared with the full seasonal temperature range at the site where they lived. This data reveals that limpets were harvested throughout the winter months. Limpets may have been consumed in combination with other seasonal foodstuffs such as hazel nuts.

探花直播five middens on Oronsay are located around I km apart from each other.聽All are close to the beach and face east, away from the worst of the Atlantic gales. 鈥� 探花直播spacing of the middens seems to suggest that they were made by communities who moved along the shoreline. As they exhausted the supply of limpets in one half kilometre stretch of beach, they moved on to the next, perhaps making two runs per year in order to let the molluscs regenerate. You could almost describe it as a kind of farming,鈥� says Mellars.

No pottery has been found in the middens but hundreds of 鈥榣impet scoops鈥� were retrieved. Some are simply finger-shaped pebbles from nearby beaches; others are made from deer horn.聽鈥淗orn from at least two types of red deer was used.聽There have never been deer on Oronsay or Colonsay, which means that the horn may have come from Islay, Rum or Skye, and would have come by boat, suggesting a flourishing trade in this raw material for tool making,鈥� says Mellars.

Oronsay鈥檚 middens all date to a similar period late in the Mesolithic and are composed of layers of material assembled over some 300 years.聽探花直播apparent ceasing of limpet harvesting, which had been a way of life for generations, marks a significant change in lifestyle. Narratives about the spread of farming have shifted radically over the years.

鈥淭here鈥檚 been huge debate about the arrival of farming in the British Isles. 鈥淲hen I was a young archaeologist, it was thought that farming spread up the Danube and came north as a result of colonisation. In the 1980s, it was trendy to argue that local people made the transition to farming independently or with the influence of occasional incomers,鈥� says Mellars.

鈥� 探花直播consensus today, and the theory I support, is that the communities who lived on Oronsay and other islands interbred with incomers who didn鈥檛 wipe them out but introduced them to other ways of ensuring a supply of food during the lean winter months. Something a lot more palatable than limpets 鈥� such as mutton and beef!鈥�

This research was funded jointly by the Leverhulme聽Trust and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (Cambridge).

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet, M is for a small creature that can cause a big nuisance but also tell us a lot about pollution in water.

Inset images: Oronsay (Guy Beauchamp); Limpets (Kim Freeman); Drawings of shell sampling (Rebecca Vignols);聽Oronsay landscape with cows (Carron聽Brown).

The聽Cambridge Animal Alphabet series聽celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, L is for Limpet and what they can tell us about Mesolithic middens, seasonal changes in the Atlantic Ocean, and the lives of people living on the remote Isle of Oronsay 6,000 years ago.

These heaps of debris give us a glimpse of lives at a time of transition

Paul Mellars

Clinging on

Guy Beauchamp

Oronsay

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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New study reveals that the ban on alcohol multi-buy promotions in Scotland did not reduce the amount of alcohol purchased

sj387 — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 13:49:38 +0000

Banning multi-buy promotions for alcohol, implemented in Scotland in October 2011 as part of the Alcohol Act 2010, failed to reduce the amount of alcohol purchased, according to a new study. 探花直播research, conducted by the Behaviour and Health Research Unit, a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia, is published in the leading academic journal Addiction.

Excessive alcohol consumption is a major cause of ill-health and mortality and is also associated with economic and social harm. 探花直播Scottish government was among the first in the world to introduce a ban of multi-buy promotion (for example, 鈥�2 for 拢8鈥� and 鈥�buy-one-get-one-free鈥�), a popular price promotion tactic used by retail outlets stores. Multi-buy promotions were seen to stimulate bulk purchase and hence greater consumption of alcohol.聽

Using detailed household purchasing data from the Kantar WorldPanel, the researchers evaluated the impact of the policy on the volume of alcohol purchased as well as on consumers鈥� alcohol shopping patterns. 探花直播researchers found that the data as of June 2012 showed no evidence that the ban of multi-buy reduced the purchasing of beer, cider, wine, spirits, and flavoured alcohol drinks. In addition, it did not reduce the total amount of units of alcohol purchased.

They also found that the policy influenced shopping patterns of beer and cider, for which multi-buys had been used intensively: Scottish consumers started buying fewer products per shopping trip than they would have without the ban, but went out to buy beer and cider more frequently, leaving the overall amount purchased unchanged.

Theresa Marteau, from the 探花直播 of Cambridge, said: 鈥淭his study provides timely evidence on the seeming ineffectiveness of an intervention designed to reduce alcohol consumption.鈥�

Ryota Nakamura, lead author of the study and a researcher with the 探花直播 of East Anglia, said: 鈥� 探花直播industry appears to have responded to the ban by replacing multi-buy with simple price reduction, which made it possible for Scottish consumers to buy alcohol at a discounted price but with a smaller financial outlay. This might have mitigated the intended effects of the policy.鈥�

Marc Suhrcke, also from the 探花直播 of East Anglia, added: 鈥淢ore encompassing policy will be needed to achieve the goal of reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related harms. Partially banning price promotions leaves the door open for industry to just switch to other forms of price promotions, or indeed to reduce the overall price of alcohol. Imposing greater excise duties on alcohol and introducing minimum unit pricing have been shown to reduce alcohol consumption and associated harms. 探花直播government has recently put on hold plans to introduce minimum unit pricing.鈥�

Read the full article here.

Researchers advocate for stronger measures to reduce alcohol-related harm in the UK

This study provides timely evidence on the seeming ineffectiveness of an intervention designed to reduce alcohol consumption

Theresa Marteau

Mary Hutchison/Matt Baume (via. Flickr)

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Mapping the origins of a masterpiece

sjr81 — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:01:24 +0000

John Speed鈥檚 Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine is one of the world鈥檚 great cartographic treasures. Published in 1611/12, it marked the first time that comprehensive plans of English and Welsh counties and towns were made available in print.

To celebrate its 400^th anniversary, Cambridge 探花直播 Library has digitised each of the proof maps and put them online at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/maps/speed.html. 探花直播Library is also selling copies of the 60 plus images that make up Speed鈥檚 masterpiece.

Inset into the corner of each county map is a plan of its county town and each spare inch of space is used to illustrate famous battles, local coats of arms, as well as Roman and pre-historic sites.

探花直播atlas, bought by the 探花直播 Library in 1968, is now considered priceless. It contains a single sheet for each county of England and Wales, plus a map of Scotland and each of the four Irish provinces, and paints a rich picture of the countryside at the turn of the 17^th century.

A slice of Tudor and Jacobean life in miniature, its influence was so great that it was used by armies on both sides of the English Civil War.

Rivers wriggle through the landscape, towns are shown as huddles of miniature buildings, woods and parks marked by tiny trees and 鈥� with contour lines yet to be invented 鈥� small scatterings of molehills denote higher ground.

探花直播countryside bursts with human life: a ploughman and his two-horse team are at work in fields outside Worcester, a group of bathers enjoy the Roman spa at Bath, ducks paddle in the River Ouse at York, and the seas around Britain teem with fabulous sea monsters and ships in full sail.

Anne Taylor, Head of the Map Department at the 探花直播 Library, said: 鈥淎lthough the Library holds several copies of the published atlas 鈥� including a first edition 鈥� it is the hand-coloured set of proofs produced between 1603 and 1611 that is one of its greatest treasures.鈥�

鈥淚t was bought by the 探花直播 Library in 1968 after the government refused an export licence for the proofs to be sold abroad. We know it as the Gardner copy after its previous owner (Eric Gardner). It really is a rare and delightful item.鈥�

探花直播Cambridgeshire sheet includes portraits of robed academics, a pair of them holding the map鈥檚 scale bar as well as 24 coats of arms of the 探花直播, colleges and local nobility.

Accompanying each map in the published edition (but not the proofs) is a description of the county. Derived largely from William Camden鈥檚 Britannia, a topographical and historical survey of Great Britain and Ireland, the text offers an affectionate portrait of the city and its university, but a rather less appealing description of the Cambridgeshire countryside.

鈥淭his province is not large, nor the air greatly to be liked, having the Fenns so spread upon her North, that they infect the air far into the rest. 探花直播soil doth differ both in air and commodities; the Fenny surcharged with waters: the South is Champion, and yieldeth Corn in abundance, with Meadow-pastures upon both sides of the River Came,鈥� he notes.

Born in Farndon, Cheshire in 1551 or 1552, John Speed was a historian as well as a cartographer, who paid tribute to earlier map-makers whose work he drew on, especially the county maps of the great Elizabethan surveyor Christopher Saxton. 鈥淚 have put my sickle into other mens corne,鈥� Speed wrote.

探花直播county maps were the first consistent attempt to show territorial divisions, but it was Speed鈥檚 town plans that were a major innovation and probably his greatest contribution to British cartography. Together, they formed the first printed collection of town plans of the British Isles and, for at least 50 of the 73 included in the Theatre, it was the first time these towns had been mapped.

探花直播Theatre was an immediate success: the first print run of around 500 copies must have sold quickly because many editions followed and, by the time of the 1627 edition, the atlas cost 40 shillings. It was a supreme achievement in British cartography. It made John Speed into one of the most famous of all our map-makers and became the blueprint for folio atlases until the mid-18^th century.

Published 400 years ago, the first comprehensive atlas of Great Britain is being celebrated by Cambridge 探花直播 Library, home to one of only five surviving proof sets, all of which differ in their composition.

Although the Library holds several copies of the published atlas 鈥� including a first edition 鈥� it is the hand-coloured set of proofs produced between 1603 and 1611 that is one of its greatest treasures.

Anne Taylor, Cambridge 探花直播 Library

Cambridge 探花直播 Library

John Speed's proof map of Cambridgeshire

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