The cultural origins of Iberian geological cooperation

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the collaboration between the Geological Surveys of Spain and Portugal derived not only from the need to describe geologically their common territory, but also from the interactions between cultural and political movements which sprang up on both sides of the Iberian border and whose ideological orientations were shared by distinguished Spanish and Portuguese geologists.

In the mid-1860s, the Spanish Moderantismo (or Moderate Party), in power since 1844, was in deep crisis for having been unable to solve the problems affecting the country – the discredit of the Crown and of government institutions, a serious economic depression, an erratic foreign-affairs policy and ensuing military rebellions.Footnote ¹ The Revolution of 1868, known as La Gloriosa, overthrew Isabel II, and produced the Generation of 1868 (Generación del 68), a movement characterized by a bourgeois political outlook and optimism towards Spain's future as a modern and democratic nation.Footnote ² This period, known as the Six Year Democracy (Sexenio Democrático), ended with the conservative Bourbonic Restoration (Restauración) in 1874.Footnote ³

After the Restoration, Spain endured a major blow, in 1898, with its defeat in the war against the United States, which resulted in the loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Following these events, a group of intellectuals known as the Generation of 1898 (Generación del 98) reflected on the Spanish situation and adopted a hypercritical and leftist tone in their writings. They were strongly influenced by Regenerationism (Regeneracionismo), a movement which had set out to reflect on the causes of Spain's decline and whose analyses aimed at being objective, documented and scientific.Footnote ⁴

One of the key materializations of these movements was the foundation, in 1876, of the Free Institution for Teaching (Institucion Libre de Enseñanza), a private, laic institution which covered primary, secondary and higher education. Its leaders advocated freedom of teaching and refused to conform to official dogma in matters of religion, politics and morals.Footnote ⁵ The Free Institution had exceptional repercussions on Spanish intellectual life and was decisive in its renovation. Its main source of inspiration was Karl Krause (1781–1832) and his federalism. Although Krausism was not widespread in Spain, it influenced leading Spanish intellectuals associated with Regenerationism and the Free Institution,Footnote ⁶ such as Eduardo Benot Rodríguez (1822–1907), Francisco M. Tubino (1833–1888), José Macpherson y Hemas (1839–1902) and Lucas Mallada (1841–1921), among others,Footnote ⁷ who corresponded and collaborated with two leading geologists working in the Portuguese Geological Survey, Carlos Ribeiro (1813–1882) and Nery Delgado (1835–1908).

In Portugal, the victory of the Liberals in the revolution of 1820 entailed the transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy.Footnote ⁸ Following the civil war (1831–1834), a period of political stability known as the Regeneration (Regeneração) (1851–1868) ensued, whose impact lasted until the late nineteenth century.Footnote ⁹ The Regeneration implemented various reforms aimed at encouraging economic growth and bridging the gap which had separated Portugal from developed European countries.

In 1852 was created the Ministry of Public Works, Trade and Industry (Ministério das Obras Públicas, Comércio e Indústria), an emblematic governmental structure of this period,Footnote ¹⁰ in the context of which the Portuguese Geological Survey (Comissão Geológica do Reino) was established in 1857, headed by Carlos Ribeiro and Pereira da Costa (1809–1889), as a section of the Geodesic Directorate, led by Ribeiro's friend, General Filipe Folque (1800–1874).Footnote ¹¹

Like Spain, in those days Portugal also experienced influential intellectual movements, notably the Generation of 1870 (Geração de 70), whose members shared an internationalist outlook and advocated the aesthetics of realism and social progress based on science.Footnote ¹² They were a local expression of the growing interest in sociological positivism and historicism, utopian socialism, Darwinian evolution, and to some extent Marxism. From 1873 to 1875, the 1870 Generation gave way to Defeated by Life (Vencidos da Vida), who reflected on the causes of Iberian decline, and aimed at associating Spain with their project of cultural and social renovation.

Following the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the winds of unification swept Europe, culminating with the unifications of Germany and Italy, which nurtured longings for a unified Iberia. Among the group of Spaniards invited to associate with the Defeated by Life was Tubino, a Freemason and political activist, and leading actor of Spanish intellectual history between La Gloriosa and the Spanish First Republic.Footnote ¹³ An archaeologist and palaeontologist, disseminator of positivism and evolution in Spain, Tubino admired the archaeological work of Ribeiro and corresponded with Delgado.

In the scientific realm, the relationships between Portugal and Spain are hardly known, although they do not seem to have followed the same pattern of the humanities, for which France was the reference. To eminent Portuguese scientists, Spanish science became not merely a matter of interest, but a reference and a model to follow.

Ribeiro and Delgado corresponded with thirty-seven colleagues in Spain, which reflects the difference in the size of the countries and of their respective geological communities. They consolidated through mutual visits, correspondence and cooperation in international enterprises, among which were committees dealing with geological nomenclature and the production of maps, notably participating in the European geological map under the umbrella of the International Geological Congress. The epistolary exchange of these Portuguese geologists went beyond their colleagues of the Spanish Survey, as it encompassed naturalists working on their own or in schools and other Spanish institutions. The exchanged reports and correspondence not only reveal the motivations of the geologists, but also show that geological surveys and cartography, as part of state apparatus, often played an informal role in diplomacy between European states, and in this case between the scientific elites of both Iberian countries.Footnote ¹⁴

The subject of the geological map of Europe, coordinated by the Prussian geologists Ernst Beyrich (1815–1896) and Wilhelm Hauchecorne (1828–1900), published in Berlin in 1896, has not been addressed by the secondary literature, which makes analysis of Iberian participation difficult. Fifteen years elapsed between the decision to begin the geological map of Europe and its publication, which reflects the effort and difficulties encountered in the process: first, the coordination of geological information generated in the various countries, in distinct stages of geological reconnaissance and working at different paces, had to be articulated and harmonized; second, the codes used in the representation of geological information needed standardizing; and finally, the complex negotiations between participants, in both the political and scientific domains, had to be completed satisfactorily.Footnote ¹⁵

Approaching this question from the vantage point of the Iberian Peninsula seems, however, rewarding, despite the absence of reference studies on the history of the geological map of Europe and its partial character, insofar as both Portugal and Spain were not key players on the European chessboard; rather they were simultaneously participants and spectators more or less uncompromised by the hegemonic pretensions then in play. Despite the territorial differences and distinct orientations of their respective geological surveys, especially regarding foreign affairs, analysis of their participation shows how Portugal and Spain overcame disagreements on the interpretation of geological data and articulated the graphic representation of the geological units they share on the European geological map.Footnote ¹⁶

The transnational and international characteristics of nineteenth-century geology are all the more interesting as they coexisted with the eruption of nationalism in Europe. During this period, geological maps, complex objects from the scientific point of view, were invested with multiple meanings.Footnote ¹⁷ In addition to being a sophisticated product of geological knowledge they gained a symbolic dimension as they became not only part of the paraphernalia of national and regional symbols, but also emblems of internationalism.Footnote ¹⁸ On par with the ethnic origins of peoples, languages and national cultures, patriotism ‘sacralized’ territory, its cartographic representation being endowed with an iconic dimension: either in the case of vast empires or in the case of nations and regions under domination, geological maps provided a foundation and a means of affirming identity or pretensions to autonomy. Concomitantly, archaeological and palaeoanthropological research in which various Europeans engaged by investigating the antiquity and origins of national peoples on a scientific basis contributed to the legitimation of national and regional identities, and to a global effort of affirmation of supremacy measured by scientific capability.Footnote ¹⁹ An international forum to discuss these matters, the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistorical Archaeology (ICAPA), was established in 1865, in La Spezia, Italy.Footnote ²⁰

The very nature of geological knowledge, however, implied the need to articulate geological data from neighbouring territories, since geological units do not respect administrative divisions or national borders. Such an articulation entailed negotiation and consensus, which prompted the geological community to create another specific international forum. In 1878, the International Geological Congress (IGC) met for the first time in Paris.Footnote ²¹ From then onwards, the IGC was to reflect both the personal ambitions of individual participants and the rivalries and hegemonic pretensions of the European powers, particularly evident in 1881, when the agreement on publishing a geological map of Europe was reached, at the meeting in Bologna.Footnote ²²

Thus it comes as no surprise that from its inception the successive meetings of the IGC were not merely gatherings of geologists, but affairs of state, although not always explicitly. Despite the London meeting of 1888 being organized thanks to private contributions from expert and amateur geologists alike,Footnote ²³ to a greater or lesser extent governments of different countries were involved in the organization of these events. The diplomatic corps was mobilized and official funding provided; the presence and support of monarchs, official authorities, and scientific and intellectual elites of the hosting countries accentuated the social dimension and political repercussions of these meetings.

It was then common practice that Portuguese geologists attending such meetings paid a visit to the Portuguese ambassador in the hosting country.Footnote ²⁴ But at the IGC meeting of Bologna, Delgado participated not only as a geologist but also as a delegate of the Portuguese government, a fact that was not peculiar to the Portuguese. The absence of geologists acting as delegates of governments only occurred at the meeting in London, due to the private nature of its organization. In all, geologists’ status depended on the interests at stake: at the Bologna meeting, Beyrich and Hauchecorne were representatives of the Prussian government,Footnote ²⁵ and Edmond Hébert of the French, because at that point the location of the headquarters and the coordination of the geological map of Europe were being discussed, the final decision going to Prussia.Footnote ²⁶ This was not simply a political instrumentation of geology and geologists; rather, it was a reciprocal phenomenon. Often, geologists developed strategies of persuasion in order to obtain the required funds and the stamp of officialdom, which they wished to imprint on their scientific endeavours, both in their countries of origin and at the IGC and ICAPA meetings.

Despite the relatively weak influence and poor resources of each country, the fact that the European geological map must cover all European countries made the cooperation of Portugal and Spain indispensable. Indeed all countries had varying motives. To Portugal, participation was an act of civilization and a demonstration of its capacity to join in with other nations; to Spain the map was not a priority; but to Prussia, it was an opportunity for imperial affirmation and a demonstration of its capacity to dominate the whole continent, even if only symbolically on a geological map.

Geological mapping

The theoretical and practical foundations underlying the elaboration of geological maps emerged in the early nineteenth century, in particular with the contributions of William Smith, who produced geological maps of England, Wales and part of Scotland, on a private basis. But within a few years, geological mapping became institutionalized, and from the 1830s onwards special services devoted to their making proliferated throughout Europe. In the mid-nineteenth century, geological maps began to be envisaged differently – territory was viewed from an imperial perspective and maps were a means of ‘thinking about the earth as a kind of empire, geological mapping being analogous to colonial acquisition’.Footnote ²⁷

The reading of a geological map, in addition, had to be as universal as possible. It was precisely with the aim of normalizing the verbal and visual language of geology that the IGC had been launched in 1878. Periodically, the Congress met with the intent of standardizing the nomenclature of stratigraphic divisions, and the symbols and colours to be used in maps. During this period, the successive IGC meetings, especially between 1881 and 1888, greatly contributed to this end, by reaching both provisional and definitive agreements on the names of many stratigraphic divisions, as well as on the colours and shades for their representation.Footnote ²⁸ But this proved to be a difficult task and geological maps became even more problematic: their production was conditioned by distinct interests – political, economic and professional; it required funds, logistics, equipment and experts, not only for the fieldwork on which geological maps are based, but also for their graphic production;Footnote ²⁹ it involved organized structures directly linked to central or local powers in matters of funding, planning and elaboration.

The Geological Surveys of Spain and Portugal

The Iberian Peninsula also participated in this movement as both Portugal and Spain organized their respective geological surveys for the production and publication of maps. The first effective organization of a Spanish geological service occurred in 1849, when a commission (Comisión del Mapa Geológico) was appointed to carry out the geological map of the province of Madrid and proceed with general map of Spain.Footnote ³⁰ The first director was the engineer Fermín de Arteta y Sesma, but in that same year Francisco de Luján succeeded him, and managed to obtain from the government a modest budget, albeit enough to initiate the work.Footnote ³¹ During those years, various distinguished geologists became involved, such as Casiano de Prado and Guillermo Schultz, who subsequently headed the Spanish Geological Survey.

In the context of the Spanish Survey, memoirs on the geology of various provinces were published, together with the corresponding maps, but organizational and funding problems prevented the Survey from fully accomplishing its tasks. Although by the end of the 1850s it had produced little,Footnote ³² in the 1870s it was reorganized and endowed with an administrative structure and a budget which ensured its continuity.Footnote ³³ This new stage meant the close association of the Spanish Survey with the Corps of Mining Engineers and the end of the involvement of geologists from academia.Footnote ³⁴

In Portugal, prior to the creation of the Geological Survey in 1857, the mineralogical and geological knowledge of the country relied primarily on the occasional work of foreign visitors and was characterized by the lack of topographic maps on which to base geological mapping.Footnote ³⁵ Although between 1848 and 1858 a first geological survey had been created in the context of Lisbon's Royal Academy of Sciences (Comissão Geológica e Mineralógica) the outcome was poor.Footnote ³⁶ Its structure and organization, in additon, did not fit in the reorganization of the state apparatus of 1850, and its purposes and working methods were not in tune with European geological and cartographic practices.

The Portuguese Geological Survey (Commissão Geologica do Reino) was created on 18 August 1857, but its operation was marked by persistent difficulties regarding funds and scarcity of capable human resources, despite the commitment and scientific competence of its leading geologists – Ribeiro, Delgado and later Léon Paul Choffat, a Swiss geologist who served the institution for more than three decades.

One of the most salient features of the Portuguese Survey was its willingness to establish relationships with the international geological community: memoirs and articles on Portuguese geology were published in French and its members corresponded with colleagues from all over the world. Occasionally, they inivited foreign experts to collaborate in exchange for the publication of the commissioned research and a Portuguese decoration, then a common pratice.Footnote ³⁷ Portuguese geologists, in addition, participated regularly in various international meetings, with particular emphasis on the meetings of the IGC and ICAPA.Footnote ³⁸

By comparing the Portuguese and the Spanish Geological Surveys various differences emerge. While in Portugal cartography was the driving force behind geological research until 1886, in Spain, it was the mining sector and the close link established between geological practice and the Corps of Mining Engineers. The staff of the Spanish Survey did not specialize, the division of labour being based on the provinces whose geological reconnaissance was ascribed to one or two engineers; in the Portuguese Survey, geologists specialized in geological systems. Financial difficulties were a chronic affliction of the Portuguese Survey, while the Spanish faced economic hardship only until 1870. Moreover, the existence of a Mining School in Madrid provided the Spanish Geological Survey with well-trained experts; in Portugal, the absence of such a school and of other forms of adequate training of geologists and mining engineers led to a chronic scarcity of experts, which compromised the standards and continuity of the institution, following the deaths of Delgado and Choffat.

Modes of dialogue

The first contacts between the staff of the Iberian Geological Surveys began when, in 1858, Carlos Ribeiro (Figure 1) travelled through Europe for six months with the aim of establishing relationships with foreign experts and purchasing books, maps and instruments required for fieldwork.Footnote ³⁹

Figure 1. Portrait of Carlos Ribeiro. Courtesy of LNEG Historical Archive, Lisbon, Portugal.

Ribeiro spent the last days of December in Madrid, where he met Casiano de Prado (1797–1866), then the most active geologist of the Spanish Survey. Ribeiro handed him a letter from Phillippe de Verneuil (1805–1873), whom he had met in Paris.Footnote ⁴⁰ In his report, he expressed the greatest esteem in which he held Prado:

In Madrid, Ribeiro also met Guillermo Schultz and Juan Vilanova y Piera – the most renowned Spanish geologists of the dayFootnote ⁴² – and visited the School of Mines, the Museum of Natural Sciences and the headquarters of the Spanish Geological Survey.Footnote ⁴³

Despite these initial contacts, due to the institutional frailties of both the Spanish and the Portuguese Geological Surveys, the collaboration between their respective members could only truly develop in subsequent years. Only in the 1870s, when they consolidated, did the cooperative effort initiated by the Portuguese have greater chances of succeeding. To the Portuguese geologists the relationships with Spain represented an intermediate level between Portugal and other European countries, more advanced regarding the working conditions of their geological services.

The relationships of Ribeiro and his disciple Delgado with their Spanish colleagues were framed in a spirit of mission to which the fact that the majority of them were engineers surely contributed, since a kind of chivalric ideal was meant to unite this international brotherhood,Footnote ⁴⁴ while generational, cultural and ideological affinities and common aspirations also linked these men.

In the consolidation of the Spanish–Portuguese relationships, correspondence, visits, exchange of publications, maps and collections played a major role. The epistolary exchange reflected necessarily different levels of acquaintance, ranging from the simple institutional formality, to a communion of ideas and even familiarity as expressed in a letter from Prado to Ribeiro, informing him about the recent wedding of their French counterpart, Elie de Beaumont – ‘M. Elie de Beaumont got married to a Marchioness with the annual income of 100.000 [French francs]. He told me so.’Footnote ⁴⁵

In the early years of the Portuguese and Spanish Geological Surveys there were similarities in the work carried out by their respective directors, as in both countries the regions where their capital cities were located were being geologically surveyed: Prado was making the geological description of the region of Madrid, whereas Ribeiro was surveying the region of Lisbon, which explains his interest in Tertiary geological units, while Prado was studying the Quaternary and granitic formations.Footnote ⁴⁶ Following the completion of his book on the geology of Madrid,Footnote ⁴⁷ which also focused on the antiquity of Man, a fashionable topic in his view,Footnote ⁴⁸ Prado sent to Portugal several copies, as well as to Paris, Berlin and London, regardless of the fact that his Reseña was written in Castilian.

Initially, Ribeiro had mediated contacts between Prado and French colleagues, but later Prado played a similar role. He sent to Portugal memoirs on the geology of the Basque country, authored by Verneuil and Edouard Collomb, who in 1864 were to publish a 1:1,500,000-scale geological map of Spain and Portugal without setting foot on Portuguese land.Footnote ⁴⁹ They based the portion of the map corresponding to Portugal on Daniel Sharpe (1806–1856) and on data sent by Ribeiro. Despite friendly relationships between Spanish and French geologists, Prado criticized Verneuil and Collomb, whose presence in Spanish territory was seen as intrusive.

The archaeology of ideological affinities

The correspondence which perhaps reflects deeper affinities, often with almost confessional overtones, was that exchanged, in the late 1860s, between Delgado and Tubino. He was the only foreign correspondent to whom Delgado confided the events which led to the suspension of the Portuguese Geological Survey, in 1868, a deplorable episode marked by local politics at their worst.Footnote ⁵⁰ It is often apparent from this correspondence that Delgado (Figure 2) wrote to Tubino also on behalf of Ribeiro, then too busy responding to multiple government requests to be able to keep up with all the correspondence.

Figure 2. Portrait of Nery Delgado, 1888. Courtesy of LNEG Historical Archive, Lisbon, Portugal.

The interests shared by Tubino, Ribeiro and Delgado in the realm of archaeology and palaeoanthropology are revealed by the translation into Portuguese of an article released in the newspaper La Andalucía, in which Tubino reported on the ICAPA meeting held in Norwich, in 1868.Footnote ⁵¹ The translation was released in 1869, in the Portuguese newspaper Jornal do Commercio. Amongst various topics, Tubino singled out the considerations of Edward Burnett Tylor about prehistoric races and today's ‘savages’, and Thomas Henry Huxley's classification of human races, their features, distribution, and migrations, which had been the object of discussion by participants.Footnote ⁵²

Tubino's article also focused on the state of Spanish and Portuguese archaeology. He deplored the situation of this discipline in Spain, where only Prado and Vilanova had written on ‘fossil man’,Footnote ⁵³ albeit in geology books. In his view, Ribeiro and Delgado were pointing their Spanish colleagues in the right direction in archaeological research, by providing it with a geological foundation, an orientation which Tubino fully endorsed and publicized in scientific societies and journals in Madrid.

But in the late 1860s, Tubino expressed interests which went beyond archaeology. He informed Delgado, ‘his dear and distinguished friend’, of his whereabouts during La Gloriosa, when he was forced to move to Andalusia, because ‘the political events demanded my presence in the fight for individual freedom.’Footnote ⁵⁴ Tubino was then interested in promoting the ‘good relationship between Portugal and Spain’, and asked Delgado about the opinion of the Portuguese on the unification of the Iberian Peninsula.Footnote ⁵⁵ Following the downfall of Isabel II of Spain, the ‘danger’ of an Iberian union began to be discussed in Portugal, and a motion against republican federalism was approved in the Peers’ Chamber.

Delgado cautiously confided his embarrassment in answering Tubino's questions: ‘I have kept myself outside politics and I am not affiliated to any party or group among those which in my poor country dispute power only to justify by their acts the disrespect of their predecessors.’Footnote ⁵⁶ But well aware of the events reported in Spanish newspapers, he denied the existence of a massive political movement favouring Iberian unification. The rumour was, in his view, explained by the dissatisfaction of the Portuguese with the government: ‘some speculators have taken advantage of it in order to fulfil their private interests’. But the fears of unification were in Delgado's view attenuated by the fact that ‘Parliament had resumed its functions’ and Sá da Bandeira's cabinet would soon fall, because ‘everybody is waiting for the storm that he had himself unleashed’.Footnote ⁵⁷

The rumours then circulating in the neighbouring country of a revolution and of an alliance of Portugal with Spain were ill-founded, because, in Delgado's view, Spanish politicians were misled, due to a lack of trustworthy information. ‘If in Lisbon one cannot find a resolute Iberianist, what about in the provinces?’ he questioned.Footnote ⁵⁸ Despite being unsympathetic to unification under a monarchic regime, because in his words it meant ‘absorption’, Delgado contended that the only way the Portuguese might find it appealing would be through a republican federal union. Delgado was in this way expressing ideas common in the republican circles in which his brother-in-law, Gilberto Rola, was active.

Delgado contended that only when Spain had thoroughly demonstrated its political tolerance would the frictions between both countries vanish and unification materialize ‘as if by magic’, since freedom would be warranted in such a way as to ‘render into oblivion the historical legacy of hatred’ and war between the countries.Footnote ⁵⁹ Despite Delgado's considerations, Tubino continued to demonstrate enthusiastically his inflamed Iberianism, and pledged his intention to pursue his fight for ‘the moral and intellectual union of Portugal and Spain’.Footnote ⁶⁰

In order to contribute to this plan, he requested data which could enable him to write a history of archaeology in Portugal,Footnote ⁶¹ but Delgado replied that despite Tubino's optimism, there was not much to add to what he already knew – his and Ribeiro's publications. But Delgado did not consider himself an archaeologist, and his archaeological and palaeoanthropological research was marginal to his duties at the Portuguese Survey. His and Ribeiros's motivations derived from the repercussions of the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes, author of De l'homme antédiluvien et de ses oeuvres, published in 1860,Footnote ⁶² following the foundation of the Anthropological Society of Paris, and the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species.

At this point, in 1869, Delgado mentioned his brother-in-law, Rola, whom he greatly admired, and seized the opportunity to request of Tubino a favour.Footnote ⁶³ Delgado had learnt from the Spanish newspapers that Emilio Castelar, a ‘prestigious Republican caudillo’ and later, in 1873, president of the Spanish First Republic, intended to visit Lisbon and Oporto. As Rola was then directing public works in north-eastern Portugal, he was anxious to know the date of Castelar's visit to Oporto. He wished to meet him and discuss political issues ‘with the kind of freedom found among brothers in beliefs and aspirations’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Rola then presided over the Democratic Association of Salema Patio (Associação Democrática do Pátio do Salema) and had subscribed to the idea of a peninsular federation since ‘the time when those who advocated it were not only seen as traitors, but also as utopian visionaries’.Footnote ⁶⁵

In 1880, Tubino was to come to Lisbon, accompanied by the brothers Vilanova and Macpherson,Footnote ⁶⁶ to attend the 9th Session of the ICAPA, organized by Ribeiro and Delgado upon the suggestion of two leading actors of French palaeoanthropology, Gabriel de Mortillet (1821–1898) and Paul Broca (1824–1880).Footnote ⁶⁷ This meeting followed Ribeiro's alleged discovery of the ‘Tertiary Man’, attracted the presence of renowned foreign scientists, and had the participation of the local political and intellectual elite and the patronage of the Portuguese royal family.Footnote ⁶⁸

If at the personal level one finds this kind of complicity linking Tubino to Delgado and Ribeiro, at the institutional level the relationships often followed a similar pattern.

Personal and institutional affinities

All aspects of the Spanish Geological Survey, from its structure and organization to the cabinets where the collections were kept, were a matter of interest for the Portuguese geologists. Delgado asked Tubino for news about the changes of government in 1869 in Spain, and of their repercussions for geological practice. He thought they might influence the course of events in Portugal and ‘my future life’, which seems to indicate that the leaders of the Portuguese Survey, Ribeiro and Folque, were following, through Delgado, political events in Spain. Among Ribeiro's Spanish interlocutors were Jacobo Rubio, professor of the Spanish Mining School, whose children lived in Portugal – for this reason he often visited Lisbon and the Portuguese Survey. It was Rubio who informed Ribeiro of the 1870 restructuring of the Spanish Geological Survey.

In 1872, Delgado carried out his first mission of scientific diplomacy in Spain, which left his Spanish colleagues with ‘pleasant memories’.Footnote ⁶⁹ During this visit, he became acquainted not only with colleagues, but also with the particularities of the organization of the Spanish Survey. He arrived in Madrid on 3 June and his first visit was to the Portuguese ambassador. In the afternoon of the next day, Delgado met Rubio, who, together with Tubino, guided his tour in the Spanish capital, and introduced him to their fellow experts.Footnote ⁷⁰

Delgado's mission began effectively on 5 June, when he visited the School of Mines, located in an old building at Plazuela del Conde de Barajas. The school left a bad impression on the visitor, who considered one of the rooms ‘too small and hardly decent’ and deplored the state and scarcity of the equipment.Footnote ⁷¹ He then met the engineer Justo Egozcue y Cía (Figure 3), professor of geology and palaeontology since 1866, and author of various textbooks.Footnote ⁷²

Figure 3. Portrait of Justo Egozcue. Courtesy of Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid, Spain.

In the morning of the following day, again accompanied by Rubio, Delgado visited Ramón Rua Figueroa, a leading figure in the General Board of Statistics (Junta General de Estadística), and author of a monumental Spanish bibliography on mining and related sciences.Footnote ⁷³ Rua had translated into Castilian Delgado's paper on the Palaeozoic, first published in the Portuguese journal Revista de Obras Públicas e Minas.Footnote ⁷⁴ The translation appeared in that same year in the Spanish journal Revista Minera,Footnote ⁷⁵ which probably contributed to making Delgado known in Spain, given this journal's wide audience.

Back at the Mining School, Delgado met Mallada, then participating in the workings of the Spanish Survey, who later became a leading figure of Spanish Regenerationism, notably with his influential book Los males de la patria y la futura revolución española (The Ills of the Motherland and the Future Spanish Revolution), published in 1890.Footnote ⁷⁶ He also visited the premises of the Spanish Survey, in Isabel la Católica Street, which he found small and inadequate to house the collections in the future, but appropriate to the work then being carried out.Footnote ⁷⁷ He liked the walnut cabinets in which the collections were kept, describing them in detail, and considered their classification excellent.Footnote ⁷⁸ But the richness of the furniture could not hide the lack of funds allocated to geological research. The financial hardship was such that in the year before, the geological surveying of the province of Huesca carried out by Felipe Martín DonayreFootnote ⁷⁹ and Mallada had to be suspended.Footnote ⁸⁰

Felipe Bauzá, then heading the Spanish Geological Survey, provided Delgado access to the Survey regulations, which had not yet been approved by the government, on condition that he kept the contents confidential, which is an indication not only of institutional and personal trust, but also of the interest the Portuguese had in the structure of the Spanish geological service. Written information on salaries, the organization of the Survey sections,Footnote ⁸¹ and the current situation of research in the different Spanish provinces (basically memoirs and maps),Footnote ⁸² were also supplied to Delgado. Back in Portugal, he forwarded them to Folque, with the exception of the regulations and salaries, as agreed with Bauzá.

As if Portugal were another Spanish province, in 1873 Felipe Naranjo y Garza, president of the Inspectorate of the Spanish Geological Survey, was to send to Ribeiro by-laws, instructions and other official documents which governed the institution, notably the document appointing the new director, Manuel Fernández de Castro (Figure 4), who inaugurated a period of intense geological research. These same documents had been sent to the chief engineers of the Spanish mining districts.Footnote ⁸³

Figure 4. Portrait of Manuel Fernández de Castro. Courtesy of Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid, Spain.

Delgado's visit to Spain, in 1872, fulfilled, if partially, both institutional and personal purposes. He examined the disposition and organization of Spanish collections, which were relevant to the collections of the Portuguese Survey. Spain was disrupted by the Third Carlist War (1872–1876),Footnote ⁸⁴ which explains the delay in sending the copies of the drawings of cabinets and shelves by post, which Delgado had requested from his colleagues. But one of the main advantages of Delgado's visit was surely the direct and personal relationships forged with the Spanish geological community. United by the same ground, Iberian geologists needed a platform for cooperation, and Delgado himself greatly benefited from this trip.

His brief stay in Madrid marked the beginning of his scientific career on the international scene, and helped him to reinforce his ideal of a scientific community bound by chivalry and intellectual generosity, an idealized vision which nevertheless oriented the shaping of his scientific persona.Footnote ⁸⁵ Although lacking the time and the strangeness to become what Martin Rudwick has termed a ‘liminal’ experience, the contacts established and the work carried out by Delgado in Spain over fifteen days – away from the familiar routines of the minuscule Portuguese Geological Survey – contributed to the improvement and consolidation of his own research.Footnote ⁸⁶ In the nineteenth-century scientific context, the growing importance of scientific meetings, together with the demarcation of specialties and the link between teaching and the construction of scientific knowledge, had an impact on the purpose and meaning of scientific travelling.Footnote ⁸⁷

In 1878, Delgado returned to Spain, where he carried out geological research in various regions.Footnote ⁸⁸ He visited Macpherson, a wealthy independent geologist, who introduced micrographic petrography to Spain and collaborated with the professors of the Free Institution for Teaching, to which Ribeiro and Delgado regularly sent their publications, including geological maps.Footnote ⁸⁹ Delgado also visited Castro and was happy to realize that Spain possessed a geological culture, by congregating individuals devoted to geological research both on an institutional level and on a private basis, like Macpherson, or simply as ‘apostles of science’, a situation which found no parallel in Portugal.Footnote ⁹⁰

Accompanied by Benot – a polymath teaching at the Free Institution for Teaching, minister of encouragement of the First Republic and an influential figure of the Generation of 1898 – Delgado also visited the Spanish Geographic Institute (Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico, founded in 1870).Footnote ⁹¹ Benot had legislated on the autonomy of this institution, which by then was outside governmental control.

The official report of Delgado's mission was published and sent to various Spanish institutions and geologists, as if Spain were an extension of Portugal. In it, Delgado made himself the interpreter of the difficulties and hopes of his Spanish fellow geologists, by rendering them a service as his considerations and criticisms had the impartiality and authority of an expert outsider. But Delgado also used positive examples of what he saw in Spain to reinforce internally the views he shared with Ribeiro on the organization and policies which institutions of this kind should implement.Footnote ⁹² Back in Portugal, he requested Benot to provide him with more details of the structure and administration of the Spanish Geographic Institute.

The information about these Spanish institutions influenced some restructurings and reorientations of the Portuguese Geological Survey throughout the nineteenth century. For example, Delgado praised the principle followed by the Spanish Survey of publishing annually the geological description of a province, which, depending on depth and length, was released either in its Memoirs or in its Bulletin. In 1883, during his directorship, the Portuguese Survey began publishing in addition to the Memoirs a journal similar to the Spanish Bulletin, titled Communicações da Commissão dos Trabalhos Geologicos.

Regarding institutional organization, the reform of 1886 of the Portuguese Survey resembles most its Spanish equivalent. The Portuguese Geological Survey was separated from the Geodesic Directorate to become part of the General Directorate for Public Works and Mining, becoming in this way more directly associated with the mining sector.Footnote ⁹³ However, these Portuguese services never reached the degree of administrative autonomy of the corresponding Spanish institutions, as they continued to be part of the Ministry of Public Works.

Portuguese–Spanish cartographic cooperation and the geological map of Europe

The decision to make a geological map of Europe, taken during the Bologna meeting of the IGC in 1881, brought to the surface tensions between advocates of the internationalization of geological science and those engaged in securing the dominant role of the most powerful and influential European nations. If the French, Italians, British and Spaniards were among the former, the latter were represented mainly by the Austro-Hungarians, Russians and Germans. The latter managed to be entrusted with the coordination and elaboration of the European map, under the supervision of an international committee,Footnote ⁹⁴ which included Austro-Hungarians, French, Italians and Russians, with the Swiss Eugène Renevier in the position of secretary.Footnote ⁹⁵

Ernst Beyrich and Wilhelm Hauchecorne, codirectors of the Preuβische Geologische Landesanstalt, were appointed coordinators, although direction was entrusted to the latter. Hauchecorne, who had been the director of the Berlin Mining Academy since 1866, was a leading figure among German geologists and an efficient servant of the Prussian government.Footnote ⁹⁶ Geological mapping had a long tradition in Germany, dating back to the 1830s.Footnote ⁹⁷ The Prussian Geological Survey – considered the predecessor of the German Geological Survey, which was to be unified during the Third Reich in 1939 – was created in 1873, relatively late compared with other countries and German states. The creation of a Prussian Geological Survey had been envisaged back in 1865, but the wars with Austria and France caused the postponement of this plan.Footnote ⁹⁸ With the establishment of the German Empire, Prussian hegemony over Germany consolidated and the Prussian Survey became an effective means of serving a militarist political agenda.

The choice of Prussia may seem surprising if one takes into consideration only the short life of its geological service. But the capacity of organization and experience accumulated by Hauchecorne, and the potential of a service well endowed with financial and human resources, together with shifts in the European balance of power, certainly played decisive roles in such a resolution. To some extent, both the meetings of the IGC and the project of the European geological map are fine examples of the paradox pointed out by Schroeder-Gudehus regarding the sciences of the late nineteenth century.Footnote ⁹⁹ Schroeder-Gudehus contrasts the expansion of international cooperative scientific endeavours – indeed, the Commission for the Geological Map of Europe evolved soon to become the Commission for the Geological Map of the WorldFootnote ¹⁰⁰ – with growing political tension and deep rivalries which fed on nationalism.

When summarizing the disillusionment which surrounded the IGC meeting in Berlin in 1885, Choffat emphasized a basic fault plaguing the organization of the IGC meetings: the decisions taken through voting depended heavily on the geologists of the hosting country, who outnumbered the representatives of the other countries to the extent that future strategies were undermined, especially when decisions changed from one meeting to the next.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Nationalism and scepticism corroded the effectiveness, usefulness and internationalism of the IGC. The words of Macpherson in a letter to Delgado could not be more telling:

These and other difficulties were to greatly affect the making of the geological map of Europe, together with specific problems which undermined consensual decisions. Choffat also pointed out another serious fault: that of beginning the publication of the European map without prior agreements on the general principles guiding the whole enterprise, which prevented a genuine consensus among those involved. Rather, the orientations were imposed by ‘two or three persons more directly involved in the making of the European geological map’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Choffat also mentioned that a considerable part of the topographic basis of the map (thirty-two sheets out of forty-nine) was already printed. Undoubtedly geological work was making little progress. The national committees had not carried out the task of colouring their respective parts simply because no criteria had been agreed upon as to the boundaries of various stratigraphic divisions. Despite the great effort put into the whole enterprise, all these questions show the difficulties of reaching consensus, both in the meetings held in Bologna and Berlin, and in those which took place in between.

At the next meeting, held in London in 1888, the question of colouring remained unsolved for the whole of the stratigraphic divisions. Delgado expressed his disappointment regarding the participants’ inability to negotiate the code of colours to be used in geological cartography:

The whole issue boiled down to a paper delivered by Hauchecorne, reporting on the state of the art and the difficulties encountered, which attempted to complete a fait accompli, a strategy especially clear when he presented the test sheet corresponding to a considerable part of the German territory, by using about forty colours and the principle that the darker the colour, the more ancient the geological unit.

In the evaluation of this test sheet, Delgado reiterated his views as to the root of the problem being the lack of a prior standardization of the code of colours and the overly hasty beginning of the making of the European map. He was not alone. Jules Marcou, who had published a geological map of the world in 1861, held a similar opinion – that more time and freedom were necessary to reaching consensus – but drew attention to the superimposition of personal ambition on collective endeavours of this kind by vehemently criticizing Beyrich:

The involvement of the Portuguese Geological Survey

In Bologna, each country had agreed to pay a sum in order to cover the costs associated with the making of the geological map of Europe. By the end of 1882, the Portuguese paid their first instalment, amounting to 318.75 French francs.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ References to specific work carried out to this end were first made by Delgado, in 1888. In July of that same year, Beyrich and Hauchecorne sent a corrected print of sheet CIV, to be presented soon at the 1888 London meeting of the IGC, which they considered satisfactory regarding the colours used. However, only a partial consensus was reached in the meeting regarding the underlying criteria. The geologists had adopted the principle of restricting as much as possible the names of localities, and other information considered irrelevant, but this print anticipated the difficulties of coordinating countries, geological surveys and experts. Specifically, the Prussians wished to distinguish alluvial from diluvial for the Quaternary, a criterion which had the agreement of the Danish, Dutch and Belgians, but they failed to impose it on the Swedes, and consequently the sheet showed discrepancies. The Swedes did not represent Quaternary units on the map, but the underlying rocks instead.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Delgado replied within a few weeks, agreeing with Beyrich's and Hauchecorne's Quaternary criterion.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

In London, various national geological surveys presented their respective cartographic productions, which, together with drafts of maps by various private geologists, were part of the exhibition of objects which complemented the sessions. The Portuguese Geological Survey had responded diligently, presenting the draft of the general geological map, at a scale of 1:500,000 authored by Delgado and Choffat, in addition to fossil samples, replicas and various publications by Delgado.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Based on that draft, those in charge of the geological map of Europe would begin to colour the part corresponding to Portugal. In November 1888, Delgado requested the proof sheets so that he could revise them.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Despite his willingness, the work was delayed. Delgado's commitment to comply with his professional duties as well as his perfectionism were characteristic traits of his personality, surely encouraged and accentuated by his military training. At this point of Portuguese history, however, there were certainly other motivations, deriving from what was perceived as a humiliation inflicted on Portugal by the outcome of the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885, and the ensuing British Ultimatum in 1890. By then, territorial questions had become crucial to the Portuguese: the British had questioned the historical legitimacy of Portuguese possession of its African colonies, because, in the absence of an effective territorial occupation by the Portuguese, they felt entitled to control and possess the region between Angola and Mozambique.

In June 1892, the existence of problems in the topographic basis was recognized. Beyrich sent a sketch of a new version for Delgado's inspection and if he found flaws Beyrich would discard the prior version.Footnote ¹¹¹ It is apparent that this dialogue was marked by tension. Already in 1883 Delgado had pointed out to the Germans a considerable number of mistakes on sheets AV and AVI, representing Portugal, but the Germans had not replied. He complained to the secretary Renevier, in 1894, that he had been forgotten by Hauchecorne since 1883, and that only in August 1892 had he received a letter from him.Footnote ¹¹² Meanwhile the only written note known to Delgado was a postcard from Renevier sent to Choffat in 1885, in which he mentioned that he had taken into consideration the objections of the Portuguese Survey regarding the topographic basis.Footnote ¹¹³ Delgado sent to Beyrich, in January 1893, various topographic maps of Portugal at different scales in order to facilitate the task of their Prussian colleagues, and sheets AV and AVI with his corrections.

The incorporation of Spanish geological information in the geological map of Europe and Portuguese–Spanish cartographic discrepancies

Despite the defective dialogue, in 1888 Delgado had accepted doing a special favour to Hauchecorne. He was asked to act as a mediator between the Prussians and Castro, then heading the Spanish Geological Survey. Contrary to the Portuguese Survey, the Spanish Survey was not involved fully in the workings and agreements of the first meetings of the IGC, and by the same token it had not participated much in the beginnings of the geological map of Europe.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Instead, its members had concentrated on state requests during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, in particular during the leadership of Castro when the geological map of Spain at the scale of 1:400,000 was being completed; the members of the Spanish Survey therefore remained insulated.

Apparently, Hauchecorne had difficulties in obtaining data from the Spaniards. He decided to resort to Delgado, who approached his Spanish opposite number, Castro:

A few months earlier, in the summer of 1888, Castro and Delgado, who had corresponded extensively in former years, had exchanged letters on the visit of a Spanish engineer to Lisbon with the purpose of discussing geological matters pertaining to the Spanish–Portuguese borders, associated with the making of the geological map of Spain at the 1:400,000 scale, then well on the way to completion.Footnote ¹¹⁶ As Delgado recognized, the work underlying a new version of the Portuguese geological map was much delayed, which was explained by the fact that in the context of the Portuguese Survey only he and Choffat carried out fieldwork. Delgado confided that he was plagued by doubt regarding the geology of the border, but he was nevertheless available to cooperate with Castro and supply all the data when his Spanish colleague visited Lisbon between 8 and 10 August 1888.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Castro arrived in the Portuguese capital accompanied by Daniel de Cortázar, one of the most active engineers working in the Spanish Survey. Later, in 1891, Gabriel Puig y Larraz, Delgado's old friend and visitor to the headquarters of the Portuguese Survey, published a geological memoir of the province of Zamora, near the Portuguese border.Footnote ¹¹⁸ These visits activated the collaboration between the surveys of both countries, resulting in accolades from the Portuguese government to the Spaniards in 1893,Footnote ¹¹⁹ which were repaid with Delgado's admission as corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Madrid, in 1894.Footnote ¹²⁰ But the different working paces in both countries were to cause discrepancies. Between 1888 and 1889, Delgado was able to engage in fieldwork in northern Portugal, in the provinces of Minho and Trás-os-Montes, which enabled him to reconsider some aspects of the Portuguese geological map of 1877, in the 1:500,000 scale, and correlate them with the maps of the Spanish provinces of Salamanca (1880) and Zamora (1883) in the 1:400,000 scale, carried out by the Spanish engineers Amalio Gil y Maestre and Puig.Footnote ¹²¹

In the summer of 1890, Delgado had sent to Castro a sketch of the far east of Trás-os-Montes, where he had found graptolites and re-evaluated some petrographic characteristics which led him to classify as Silurian the geological units which had been classified as Cambrian. In this way the presence of the Silurian was increased considerably. He also questioned the classification as Cambrian of the various fossils he had found.Footnote ¹²²

Castro surely needed more conclusive data, because the printing of the sheets of the Spanish geological map, in the 1:400,000 scale, was near completion. In October 1890, Delgado received the print of sheet 6, in the deluxe edition,Footnote ¹²³ together with sheets 8, 12 and 16,Footnote ¹²⁴ corresponding to the controversial region, in which the extent of the Silurian had been modified in order to make it consistent with the former Portuguese geological map. (Delgado's recent contributions, however, were not included.)

Castro urged Delgado, or a representative of his, to meet Cortázar, in order to incorporate Portuguese data in the sheets still to be printed; sheet 6 was the only one to be reprinted. The plan was to print twelve sheets (out of sixieen) left over from the deluxe edition, within a year.Footnote ¹²⁵ Delgado felt incapable of delivering the Portuguese data on time, because he was overwhelmed by multiple duties. But he revised data relevant to sheets 5, 9 and 13, which covered portions of the Spanish–Portuguese border, and found various discrepancies on the first, which included the northern Portugal–Spain border, but especially on the second, between the Portuguese Alentejo and the Spanish Extremadura.Footnote ¹²⁶ In view of his objections, Castro then decided to send Puig to Lisbon so that he could incorporate the corrections prior to printing these sheets.Footnote ¹²⁷ Castro requested Puig to incorporate data supplied by the Portuguese and try to reconcile the data as much as he could with that of the Spaniards; namely he accepted the use of special symbols in the Portuguese part, which were not being used in Spain.

The Spanish Geological Survey had been most receptive to the objections of the Portuguese, and, although later than initially anticipated, the geological map of Spain in the 1:400,000 scale, which included some Portuguese border regions, was promptly completed (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Sheet 42, Geological Map of Spain, scale 1:400,000. Courtesy of Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid, Spain.

It provided the basis for the publication, in 1893, of a geological map of the Iberian Peninsula, in the 1:1,500,000 scale, on which is mentioned that it had been made by taking into account ‘data from Portugal extracted from the geological map made by the engineers Ribeiro and Delgado, modified by Delgado and Choffat, in 1891’.Footnote ¹²⁸ At least in geological terms the Iberian Peninsula was now unified, if only on a printed map, which certainly would please those who, on both sides of the Spanish–Portuguese borders but mostly in Spain, sympathized with the aim of unifying Iberia. Their hopes had in this way materialized in the cooperation underlying the visual representation of the ground beneath their feet.

Meanwhile, the geological map of Europe was progressing. In February 1895, Hauchecorne sent the topographic basis of sheets AV (Figure 6) and AVI (Figure 7), modified according to Delgado's suggestions; at the same time he expressed his hope that ‘you will negotiate with Mr. Castro the geological contours along the Spanish–Portuguese border’.Footnote ¹²⁹ Hauchecorne wrote in similar terms to Castro, who during the previous year had been sending data to him, but the Spanish geologists decided to leave to Delgado the final modifications to the version sent by Hauchecorne, in order to avoid delaying the matter further.Footnote ¹³⁰ In any case, Delgado wished to reach an agreement on five discrepancies between the geological map of the Peninsula of 1893, and the draft of the geological map of Portugal, presented in the IGC meeting held in Zurich, in 1894. He wrote to Castro in April 1895,Footnote ¹³¹ but his Spanish colleague replied, emphasizing the preliminary character of the geological map of Spain in the 1:400,000 scale, arguing that the

Castro considered the discrepancies insignificant, because the scale of the European geological map did not allow for detail; in addition, it was far from essential to geological research and only useful to general geological studies.Footnote ¹³³ The scepticism surrounding this last judgement may also hint at the apprehension caused by the Prussians’ conduct. In his reply, which Castro was unable to read, Delgado had solved three out of five bones of contention. The fourth seemed simple but testified to the difficulty of demarcating the Cambrian in the region of Miranda do Douro in southern Alentejo, in the surroundings of São Domingos, which Delgado classified as Devonian and the Spaniards as Silurian.Footnote ¹³⁴

Figure 6. Sheet AV of the Geological Map of Europe, scale 1:1,500,000, 1896. Courtesy of Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid, Spain.

Figure 7. Sheet AVI, Geological Map of Europe, scale 1:1,500,000, 1896. Courtesy of Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, Madrid, Spain.

Meanwhile, Castro had died and it was Delgado who informed Hauchecorne of his colleague's death and of the name of his successor, Egozcue. While examining Castro's correspondence on the geology of Portuguese–Spanish borders, Egozcue assumed that there were some questions left, which had to be agreed upon with the Portuguese: one was simple – the exclusion of the Cambrian in the surroundings of Miranda do Douro – which Delgado had suggested in his last letter to CastroFootnote ¹³⁵ and was consistent with Puig's observations.

Egozcue, however, was reluctant to accept Delgado's suggestion regarding the Devonian in Alentejo and pointed to an apparent contradiction: Delgado had considered the remains of graptolites (small marine colonial animals, comprising the macroplankton of oceans) and nereites (traces of annelids) found in Barrancos to be Silurian, whereas in São Domingos, also in Alentejo, he had classified the strata with nereites as Devonian.Footnote ¹³⁶

Delgado was well aware of scientific developments on the international geological scene. He argued again in favour of the general trend among many European experts of ascribing to the Lower Devonian the strata of Bohemia containing nereites, which traditionally had been classified as belonging to the Upper Silurian. The seeming contradiction between Barrancos and São Domingos would in this way disappear, in as much as in São Domingos only nereites were found and graptolites were absent.Footnote ¹³⁷

Egozcue replied laconically, expressing his agreement with the views of the Germans, without mentioning anything substantial about the object of disagreement.Footnote ¹³⁸ Their conflicting opinions remained unsolved, as shown in a letter from Delgado to Hauchecorne dated June 1896, informing him of this discrepancy and suggesting falsifying the contacts by moving part of the Lower Devonian to the Silurian and vice versa, a simple change of colour on each side of the border.Footnote ¹³⁹ Delgado's suggestion was accepted as shown on sheet AVI of the geological map of Europe (Figure 7).

The relationship between the leaders of the Spanish and Portuguese Geological Surveys, however, so intense and congenial in the years prior to Castro's death, never recovered their prior tone following the fulfilment of the international commitments concerning both institutions. At this particular moment, the final decision regarding the geological discrepancies between Portugal and Spain, personified in Delgado and Egozcue, was in the end left to a third person, the Prussian Hauchecorne.