]89S] NEW SCHEME OF GEOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT iTl 



the beds at Uddevalla, which Mr James Smith had affirmed to 

 be identical with those in the older shell}' drift beds round 

 Scotland. 



In 1846 Edward Forbes published his well-known memoir 

 on the ereoloffical relations of the fauna and tiora of the British 

 Isles, and he also used the term pleistocene. " But," says Lyell, 

 " he applied the term almost precisely in the sense in which I have 

 hitherto used Post-Pliocene, and not as short for Newer Pliocene." 

 " In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I thought it best entirely 

 to abstain from the use of Pleistocene in future ; but in a note to 

 my ' Elements of Geology ' I advised such geologists as wished to 

 retain Pleistocene to use it as strictly synonymous with Post- 

 Pliocene " {Antiquity of Man, pp. 3 and 4). Thus we see Lyell 

 destroying the connotation of his own name, and advising his 

 friends to apply it to an entirely different geological period. 



The next important step taken in discussing the later English 

 Tertiaries was that consequent upon the labours of Searles Wood 

 and Harmer, combined with those of S. P. Woodward. This led to 

 another extraordinary somersault in nomenclature. Lyell liimself 

 and Sowerby had, after an examination of the earlier crag shells, 

 decided that 26 per cent, of them only were recent. Now it was 

 found that even in the oldest and earliest of the English crags the 

 proportion of living exceeded that of extinct forms. Therefore, 

 according to the absurd criterion of Deshayes and Lyell, which had 

 been responsible for the various chameleon changes 1 have de- 

 scribed, the older crag beds were again transferred from the 

 ]\Iiocenc horizon to the Pliocene, and made to represent the older 

 Pliocene. This change was dependent on an examination of the 

 Testacea. 



Meanwhile Owen and Lankester pronounced the Mammalian 

 remains in the Suffolk or Red Crag to be very distinctly Miocene 

 in character, adding another element of confusion to the already 

 interminable tangle. 



Lyell, who in his original scheme had treated his Newer 

 Pliocene as non-existent in England, having thus appropriated his 

 older Pliocene to the Coralline and Eed Crags, now proceeded to 

 evict the Norwich Crag and associated beds, including in his 

 scheme the Forest Bed from the Older Pliocene, and transferred it 

 to the Newer Pliocene. To the same series he also transferred the 

 whole of the Glacial beds, and reserved the term pleistocene 

 apparently entirely for the beds containing palaeolithic imple- 

 ments, and those in which the Mammoth and its companions 

 were found associated with human remains, which beds he sup- 

 posed lay over the so-called drift, a view against which some of us 

 have protested for years, not a word l)eing said or suggested about 



