Global warming ushers in the dinosaur era

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beerling
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Mineral Wealth ◽  
Salmon Fisheries ◽  
Lecture Theatre ◽  
Association Meeting ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University ◽  
To Receive

Reverend William Buckland (1784–1856), a British vicar and palaeontologist, was the first Professor of Geology at the University of Oxford (1813) (see Plate 8). Charming and eloquent, Buckland was also an accomplished lecturer. His biographer summed him up rather well, remarking in 1894 ‘it is impossible to convey to the mind of any one who had never heard Dr. Buckland speak, the inimitable effect of that union of the most playful fancy with the most profound reflections which so eminently characterized his scientific oratory’. Brilliant and famously eccentric, he once offended stuffier colleagues at a British Association meeting in Bristol by strutting around the lecture theatre imitating chickens to demonstrate how prehistoric birds could have left footprints in the mud. On another occasion he: . . . attracted an audience totalling several thousand for a lecture in the famous Dudley Caverns, specially illuminated for the purpose. Carried away by the general magnificence, he was tempted into rounding off with a shameless appeal to the audience’s patriotism. The great mineral wealth lying around on every hand, he proclaimed, was no mere accident of nature; it showed rather, the express intention of Providence that the inhabitants of Britain should become, by this gift, the richest and most powerful nation on Earth. And with these words, the great crowd, with Buckland at its head, returned towards the light of day thundering out, with one accord, ‘God save the Queen!’. . . Buckland also claimed to have eaten his way straight through the animal kingdom as he studied it and, allegedly, part of Louis XIV’s embalmed heart, pinched from the snuffbox of his friend the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was aided in the eccentric culinary consumption of animals by his son Francis Buckland (1826–80), the celebrated Victorian naturalist and one-time Inspector of Her Majesty’s Salmon Fisheries, who evidently inherited his father’s eccentricity. Francis Buckland lived amongst beer-swilling monkeys, rats, and hares and regarded firing benzene at cockroaches through syringes as a fine sport. Francis arranged with London Zoo to receive off-cuts from the carcasses of unfortunate animals.

‘Buried Landscapes’ in Southern Italy

Antiquity ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 23 (90) ◽  
pp. 58-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bradford
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Royal Air Force ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Association Meeting ◽  
The University ◽  
Capital Value ◽  
Dense Concentration

It is widely known that war-time air photography has led to the discovery of many new archaeological sites of importance in Mediterranean lands. Many hundreds of tumuli have been added to the list, at such famous Etruscan cemeteries as Cerveteri and Tarquinia and complete systems of Roman land-partition by Centuriation have been identified round the coloniae of Iader and Salonae, on the shores of Dalmatia. But by far the most notable discoveries of all are those on the Foggia Plain, in the Province of Apulia, in Southeast Italy. Great numbers of Prehistoric, Roman, and Medieval sites are being identified, and some preliminary results have already been published in ANTIQUITY(' Siticulosa Apulia ', December 1946). Select examples were exhibited at the Classical Conference at Oxford and at the British Association Meeting, in 1948, and again for several months this year, in the Ashmolean Museum. These were chosen from a number which it was fortunately possible to acquire for the University of Oxford, now housed at the Pitt Rivers Museum, where they are being studied in detail. This collection was based on vertical photographs taken by the Royal Air Force, and oblique photographs taken by Major Williams-Hunt and myself (which were the first to reveal this dense concentration of sites, spread more thickly on the ground than almost anywhere else in Europe). This heavy concentration is of much more than local importance. During the last few years I have examined many thousands of air photographs of Southern and Central Europe taken at various seasons, in the course of my research. While these provide much interesting data and give us, as it were, an illustrated ' Domesday ' survey of Europe in the middle of the 20th century (of capital value to Anthropology), in no other area has there as yet been anything approaching the quantity of crop-marks, grass-marks, soil-marks and earthworks which have come to light in Apulia. There are various reasons for this and a detailed account must await a later report. For our present purposes, it will be enough to single out one or two areas, for comparison.

Matthew Cheung Salisbury, Worship in Medieval England. Past Imperfect Series. Croydon: ARC Humanities Press, 2018, 92 pages.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 315-318
Author(s):  
Jane Beal
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Liturgical Studies ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The University

Matthew Cheung Salisbury, a Lecturer in Music at University and Worcester College, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, wrote this book for ARC Humanities Press’s Past Imperfect series (a series comparable to Oxford’s Very Short Introductions). Two of his recent, significant contributions to the field of medieval liturgical studies include The Secular Office in Late-Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) and, as editor and translator, Medieval Latin Liturgy in English Translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017). In keeping with the work of editors Thomas Heffernan and E. Ann Matter in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005) and Richard W. Pfaff in The Liturgy of Medieval England: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2009), this most recent book provides a fascinating overview of the liturgy of the medieval church, specifically in England. Salisbury’s expertise is evident on every page.

The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Garner ◽  
Yewande Okuleye
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
Animal Rights Movement ◽  
Friendship Group ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Short Period ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Oxford Group ◽  
The University

This book is an account of the life and times of a loose friendship group (later christened the Oxford Group) of ten people, primarily postgraduate philosophy students, who attended the University of Oxford for a short period of time from the late 1960s. The Oxford Group, which included—most notably—Peter Singer and Richard Ryder, set about thinking about, talking about, and promoting the idea of animal rights and vegetarianism. The group therefore played a role, largely undocumented and unacknowledged, in the emergence of the animal rights movement and the discipline of animal ethics. Most notably, the group produced an edited collection of articles published as Animals, Men and Morals in 1971 that was instrumental in one of their number—Peter Singer—writing Animal Liberation in 1975, a book that has had an extraordinary influence in the intervening years. The book serves as a case study of how the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas can be explained, and, in particular, how far the intellectual development of individuals is influenced by their participation in a creative community.

Dan Inman, The Making of English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). ISBN: 9781451469264

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Zachhuber
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The University ◽  
The University

This chapter reviews the book The Making of English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford (2014). by Dan Inman. The book offers an account of a fascinating and little known episode in the history of the University of Oxford. It examines the history of Oxford’s Faculty of Theology from the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. In particular, it revisits the various attempts to tinker with theology at Oxford during this period and considers the fierce resistance of conservatives. Inman argues that Oxford’s idiosyncratic development deserves to be taken more seriously than it often has been, at least by historians of theology.

‘The Laughter of Satan’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosamund Oates
Keyword(s):  
Elizabeth I ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
The University ◽  
Established Church

This chapter explores the ideas at the heart of Puritanism, examining Tobie Matthew’s early radicalism. Using the controversies over vestments in 1564–6 and the visit of Elizabeth I to the University of Oxford in 1566, the chapter shows that the idea of ‘edification’ became a central principle of Puritanism. This chapter explores the spiritual demands of edifying reform and shows how it drove English Puritans into conflict with the monarch and the Established Church. It demonstrates that Matthew’s Puritanism was rooted in the experience of Marian exiles, and that he drew on their Calvinism and their resistance texts to justify his potentially seditious view of godly magistracy and rebellion.

Strenæ Natalitiæ

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Vice Chancellor ◽  
The University

This chapter looks at Strenæ Natalitiæ, a volume of poems produced by the University of Oxford to celebrate the events of the birth of the Prince of Wales in 1688. The University of Oxford's Strenæ Natalitiæ was a volume of over a hundred poems, with an obligatory introductory poem contributed by vice-chancellor Gilbert Ironside. The contibutors to Strenæ Natalitiæ were not simply a cross-section of the university's membership and poetic talent, but also of its politics. In some respects, youthful naivety might have been a cause of some of the authors' willingness to embrace the birth of James Edward, despite the anxiety felt by some of their fellow authors. Some of the verse was simple, and naïve in tone. Other verses were marked by a more mystical and prophetic tone. Ultimately, the verses in Strenæ Natalitiæ were predictable in their expressions of congratulation and celebration, though some also contained carefully muted expressions of equivocation.

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