| Date Note | Date of John Malcolmson's paper on the geology of Moray. |
| Administrative History | Collected/drawn as part of the research for Louis Agassiz's 'Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles' (1833-1843/1844).
This drawing may be among the batch which was created for John Grant Malcolmson's paper "On the Relations of the different parts of the Old Red Sandstone in which Organic Remains have recently been discovered, in the Counties of Moray, Nairn, Banff, and Inverness", which was read before the Geological Society on 5 May 1839. The response to the paper was positive, but as the accompanying fossils were mainly fish the intention was to delay the paper's publication until Louis Agassiz could cast his expert eye over them. Agassiz did not return to Britain in 1839 as expected and with Malcolmson’s return to India in the spring of 1840 (where he died in 1844) the memoir was all but forgotten. It would eventually be published, minus all of the illustrations, in 1859.
Agassiz visited the Society at the end of 1840 and took Gordon Cumming's drawings without her permission planning on using them for his planned book ‘Monographie des poissons fossiles du vieux grès rouge ou système Dévonien des Îles Britanniques et de Russie’, (1844-1845). Only two illustrations in the published work were attributed to her, at least another one is referenced as being copied by Joseph Dinkel. This drawing appears to be the sole survivor. |