OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 281 



and was moreover a continuation of the upper Cambrian of Sedgwick. 

 The long controversy which ai'ose from this mistake, and the painful 

 results to which it led, have been chronicled elsewhere ; and no one will 

 probably now deny that much injustice was done to the illustrious pro- 

 fessor of Cambridge. It is the more deeply to be regretted from the 

 fact that it caused the withdrawal of Sedgwick, for the last thirty years 

 of his life, from active co-operation with most of Ms fellow-workers in 

 geology. The results of recent studies both in England and America 

 have, however, served to confirm in all respects the accuracy of the 

 determinations of Sedgwick. His nomenclature, for a time almost set 

 aside, is once more adopted ; and it is now recognized that to him 

 belongs the honor of having laid in his Cambrian series the foundations 

 of palteozoic geology. 



His immense labor and achievements as a systematizer must not 

 however lead us to overlook his great merit as a philosophical 

 geologist. As opposed to that school which finds an explanation of 

 geological phenomena in convulsions and cataclysms, Sedgwick early 

 maintained the notion of uniform order and succession. He declared 

 that the conception embodied in the name of System, as applied to 

 groups of rocks, was based upon a fallacy, and that the succession 

 of life through geologic time shows that all belongs to one systema 

 natures. 



The immense collections of rocks and organic remains, which had been 

 brought together at Cambridge by Sedgwick and his pupils, had become 

 one of the most complete in the world ; and Sedgwick now gave his 

 attention to the preparation of that magnificent work, in two volumes, 

 quarto, entitled " British PaljBozoic Rocks and Fossils," which appeared 

 in 1851-54, the joint work of himself and McCoy. This subject con- 

 tinued to engage his attention ; and since his death there has appeared 

 a Catalogue of the Cambridge Collection, prepared with the aid of 

 Salter and Morris, with a Preface dictated by Sedgwick himself in 

 the summer of 1872, which shows that to the last he retained his 

 memory and his intellectual vigor. To this great collection the ener- 

 gies of his later years and all his private means were devoted ; and the 

 memorial which a grateful generation is about to erect to him is to 

 take the shape of a new building for the Geological Museum at Cam- 

 bridge. 



But it is not only as a geologist that Sedgwick claims our grateful 

 remembrance. His discourse on the Studies of the University of Cam- 

 bridge, delivered in 1832, and many times since reprinted, remains a 

 monument of the breadth and soundness of his views on education, and 

 VOL. I. 36 



