Isles of Scilly back in the frame

The new field guide to the Isles of Scilly has just been published by the QRA, and I have purchased my copy.  As Queen Victorian famously said, we are not amused.

The book is edited by James Scourse and Chris Caseldine, and it is seriously devalued as a result of editorial bias.  This is fundamentally a matter of sliding academic standards.

Anyway, I am fed up with the petty attacks from James Scourse, and I will not tolerate them any longer.  Watch this space.

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From my post in 2019 on the Curse of Lithostratigraphy:

Then we come to another problem of lithostratigraphy. Once somebody has studied a region in detail and published what might be deemed to be "definitive" studies of the sedimentary sequence, with "formation" or "member" labels attached, and type localities identified, there is a tendency for those labels to be over-used or applied in a non-critical fashion. I became very much aware of this during my short visit to the Isles of Scilly a couple of years ago, as I looked at innumerable coastal sections on all of the main islands. In a QN article I described and interpreted the deposits as best I could, given the limitations of time and resources:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328413421_Evidence_for_extensive_ice_cover_on_the_Isles_of_Scilly/figures?lo=1

Right from the start, I had problems in fitting the sequence and the characteristics of the deposits into the stratigraphic sequence devised by James Scourse in 1991 and subscribed to (with minor modifications) by others since then. There were two problems, one relating to the choice of type localities, and the other to the choice of stratigraphic labels. 

 I had problems with the "Watermill Sand and Gravel" on the basis that Watermill Cove is not a very good type locality and that the raised beach sediments are neither sandy nor gravelly. I had problems with the "Scilly Till" type locality at Bread and Cheese Cove since the till there is associated with glacigenic structures which are not all that widespread and since other till exposures elsewhere are perhaps more typical of the northern fringes of the islands. The "Porthloo Breccia" I can live with, in that it is always in the same stratigraphic position and since Porthloo is a good type locality. I had problems with the "Tregarthen Gravel" and the "Hell Bay Gravel" labels since they did not seem to have consistent characteristics and since some exposures were not at all gravelly. The labels seemed to me to be surplus to requirements. I was not too sure about the "Bread and Cheese Breccia" either, since in places it had exactly the same characteristics as the Porthloo Breccia. And neither was I sure about the "Old Man Sandloess" since it too had rather variable characteristics from one exposure to another.

Clay-rich till exposed at Chad Girt, in a rocky gully on White Island, Isles of Scilly.  Should this be called "Scilly Till", or something else.....?  

And is it a better type locality than Bread and Cheese Cove?

In my QN paper I used these Scourse terms sparingly, just where I thought they might help in understanding the stratigraphic sequence -- but I have been heavily criticised by Scourse for occasionally placing the deposits I observed into the "wrong" category in the "accepted lithostratigraphic sequence" !! Hmmm. As far as I am concerned, I have not accepted anybody's sequence, and will not accept any sequence unless it seems to me to be either accurate or useful. In ice wastage environments depositional circumstances -- at exactly the same moment in time -- from place to place can vary enormously, and that needs to be recognized. It is a singularly fruitless exercise to become worked up about the application -- or non-application -- of predetermined labels when the only questions worth asking are these: What happened? And when?

Hence my scepticism about lithostratigraphic labelling. There are bad labels, and bad type localities. If we become obsessed by labels and type localities, we can easily be dragged into a scenario in which we "force" the sediments we find into predetermined boxes -- and in the process lose scientific objectivity. If labels are worth using, they will survive. If some of them are causing more trouble than they are worth, they should be dumped.

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PS.  This is not the only lithostratigraphic sequence I am worried about.  As readers of this blog will know, I am equally concerned about the "Penfro Till Formation" in Wales, designated and promoted by BGS on the basis of very unsatisfactory fieldwork by DQ Bowen at the "type localities" of West Angle and Llandre.  The dubious type localities were referred to several times in articles by DQB, in which he cited himself in circular fashion -- but nowhere in the literature do we see a satisfactory description and analysis of the Quaternary stratigraphy.  Repeat something often enough, and it is deemed to be true!

https://brian-mountainman.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-penfro-till-formation-geological.html

I have contacted the BGS about this, but they appear completely disinterested in making any correction.  Once something is in the lexicon, so it seems, it is there for ever, whether it is reliable or not......