‘AN EVENING OF MUCH ÉCLAT’: THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY AND THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF PLESIOSAURUS AND MEGALOSAURUS

ABSTRACT The Geological Society meeting on Friday, 20 February 1824 was a momentous event, both at the time and subsequently. Two communications presented at the meeting by William Conybeare and William Buckland respectively, were to have a lasting impact on the course of geological imagination; introducing, into both scientific circles and the wider culture, possibilities of reconstructing the size, structure and modes of life of inhabitants of former worlds. The Geological Society conducted its meetings in a particular style and order, which is described and compared with other contemporary learned societies. The meeting was held on the first floor of a leased 4-storey town house in Covent Garden, London. The building still stands today allowing the physical spaces where the meeting occurred to be examined and illustrated in addition to an account of how the Society acquired and adapted the premises for its own purposes. The forty-nine members and visitors recorded as present at the event are identified and briefly described, providing a wider understanding of the contemporary interest in the meeting. The proceedings of the evening are outlined using the minutes of the meeting, now archived at the Geological Society, and the accounts given in the correspondence of the main protagonists.