A Sketch of the Physical Structure of Australia

The geologist Joseph Beete Jukes (1811-1869) studied at Cambridge under Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873). In 1841, having already gained field experience in England and Newfoundland, he joined the H.M.S. Fly as a naturalist for an upcoming four-year expedition to chart the coasts of Australia and New Guinea. In 1847, he published a two-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly (also reissued in this series). That was followed in 1850 by this pioneering study of the geology of Australia, which drew on Jukes' own observations as well as on some earlier work. It describes features including the mountains along the East coast, raised beaches, alluvial plains and the Great Barrier Reef, and rock types from limestone and sandstone to granite and lava. The book made an important contribution to the scientific literature on Australia at a time when that continent was still largely unknown to European scholars.