This book contains the papers presented at a symposium organized by the Dutch committee for the History of the Earth Sciences. The title examines a wide variety of subjects: the pioneering stratigraphic studies of the 18th-century naturalist Francq van Berkhey, Dutch contributions to the basalt controversy, geology in the Belgian provinces, the geology lectures (1863) of Staring and his geological map of the Netherlands, the mineral work of Hermann Vogelsang, the Maastricht Cretaceous finds in the emergence of Dutch vertebrate palaeontology, and the founding of groundwater hydrology in the Netherlands (1850-1950). It also features an unpublished mineralogical treatise of Wiechmann. As a bonus the book has an interesting study on the suitability of Haüy's crystal models to identify minerals, preceded by an historical analysis of the role these models played in the birth of crystallography and mineralogy.