18441858] BARRANDE 8l 



him ; and as I intend (you not objecting and converting me) Letter 39 

 to propose VV. for the Royal, it would, of course, appear 

 intolerably presumptuous to propose for the Copley also. 



To T. H. Huxley. Letter 40 



Down, June loth, 1855. 



Shall you attend the Council of the Royal Society on 

 Thursday next ? I have not been very well of late, and 

 I doubt whether I can attend ; and if I could do anything 

 (pray conceal the scandalous fact), I want to go to the Crystal 

 Palace to meet the Homers, Lyells, and a party. So I want 

 to know whether you will speak for me most strongly for 

 Barrande. 1 You know better than I do his admirable labours 

 on the development of trilobites, and his most important 

 work on his Lower or Primordial Zone. I enclose an old note 

 of Lyell's to show what he thinks. With respect to Dana, 2 

 whom I also proposed, you know well his merits. I can 

 speak most highly of his classificatory work on Crustacea 

 and his Geographical Distribution. His Volcanic Geology is 

 admirable, and he has done much good work on coral reefs. 



If you attend, do not answer this ; but if you cannot be 

 at the Council, please inform me, and I suppose I must, if 

 I can, attend. 



1 Joachim Barrande (died 1883) devoted himself to the investigation 

 of the Palaeozoic fossils of Bohemia, his adopted country. His greatest 

 work was the Systcnie Silurien de la Boheine, of which twenty-two volumes 

 were published before his death. He was awarded the Wollaston Medal 

 of the Geological Society in 1855. Barrande propounded the doctrine of 

 "colonies." He found that in the Silurian strata of Bohemia, containing 

 a normal succession of fossils, exceptional bands occurred which 

 yielded fossils characteristic of a higher zone. He named these bands 

 " colonies," and explained their occurrence by supposing that the later 

 fauna represented in these " precursory bands " had already appeared in 

 a neighbouring region, and that by some means communication was 

 opened at intervals between this region and that in which the normal 

 Silurian series was being deposited. This apparent intercalation of 

 younger among older zones has now been accounted for by infoldings 

 and faulting of the strata. See J. E. Marr, "On the Pre-Devonian 

 Rocks of Bohemia," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., Vol. XXXVI., p. 591 

 (1880) ; also Defense des Colonies, by J. Barrande (Prag, 1861), and 

 Geikie's Text-book of Geology (1893), p. 773. 



3 For a biographical note on Mr. Dana, see Letter 162. 



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