reflecting on the University of Cambridge, 291 



of the highest requirements of natural history, and with a 

 patience in the endurance of continued labour which has seldom 

 had its match, he has produced a work which entitles him to 

 the gratitude of the University, and (I dare to add) of the scien- 

 tific world. 



Praises thus unqualified (called forth by the circumstances 

 which have led me to take up the pen) might seem partial or 

 exaggerated. But I know them to be well deserved; and to 

 confirm my own words, and to prevent any misconstruction of 

 them, I will quote the remarks upon M^Coy^s work by Professor 

 Bronn of Heidelberg — a great palaeontologist (as I surely need 

 not tell the reader), and, at the same time, a very just but severe 

 critic, who is not inconsiderate or prodigal in his words of praise : 



" Dieses Werk ist ausserordentlich reich an scharfen Beobachtung- 

 en, fleissigen Beschreibungen und von M*Coy aufgestellten Sippen 



und Arten Mit der auslandischen und insbesondere 



deutschen Literatur ist der Verfasser wohl bekannt, und er hat sie 

 reichlich beniitzt ; das Ganze ist eine der wichtigsten Erscheinungen 

 in der palaontologischen Literatur und fortan unentbehrlich bei alien 



palaozoischen Studien." " This work is extraordinarily rich 



in acute obserrations, careful descriptions, and in genera and species 



established by M*Coy The author is well acquainted with 



the foreign, and especially with the German literature, and has made 

 an abundant use of it ; the whole is one of the most important appear- 

 ances in the literature of Palaeontology, and henceforward in- 

 dispensable in all Palaeozoic studies." (* Neues Jahrbuch' by Pro- 

 fessors Leonhard and Bronn of Heidelberg, 1853, pp. 97, 98.) 



During the early progress of M^Coy^s work (though repeatedly 

 urged to do so) I studiously abstained from giving him any 

 scheme of tabular arrangement derived from the physical groups 

 of the Cambrian and Silurian series. I simply gave him the 

 general facts of superposition. He, therefore, began by arranging 

 all the groups of fossils, below the old red sandstone, as parts 

 of one system ; and for two successive years, without a single 

 word of interruption from myself, he described them, in the 

 printed labels and catalogues, as Upper and Lower Silurian. 



In the further progress of his work he found a great palaeon- 

 tological break in the series, which led him to separate it into 

 two Systems ; and then, for the first time, he adopted my name 

 Cambrian for the lower of the two. Still there was an unex- 

 plained difficulty : for in one remarkable group (called Middle 

 Silurian in the Government Survey, and containing the greater 

 number of the- Lower Silurian rocks of Sir R. I. Murchison) 

 were subordinate groups of strata, some of which conformed to 

 the Silurian, and others to the Cambrian type. My own col- 

 lection did not seem to sanction the establishment of the so-called 



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