104 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



to have a special value, and possibly to possess peculiar virtues, from its being 

 discovered in such a place. 



May hill. 

 Vice President Bridges in the Chair. 



Communications were received from Col. J. J. Abert, dated Wash- 

 ington, April 28, 1857, referring to a species of mocking-bird, supposed 

 by him to be new ; and from F. B. Meek and F. V. Hayden, M. D., 

 entitled '' Explorations under the War Department : Descriptions of 

 new Cretaceous and Tertiary Fossils, collected by Dr. F. V. Haydea 

 in Nebraska, under the direction of Lieut. Gr. K. Warren, U. S. Top. 

 Engineers, with some remarks on the geology of the Upper Missouri 

 country;" which were referred to Committees, as usual. 



Mr. Lea stated that he proposed to change the name of Unio um- 

 brosus and Unio W^heatleyi, to U. umbrans and U. Catawbensis, having 

 inadvertently repeated these names in his papers of Feb. 17th and 

 March 10th, 1857. 



Mr. W. Parker Foulke requested permission to submit to the atten- 

 tion of the Academy some observations of the late Mr. Hugh Miller, 

 printed in his recently published work, entitled " The Testimony of 

 the Rocks." 



It may be remembered, said Mr. F., that about three years ago T noticed at 

 one of the stated meetings of the Academy, what appeared to me an interesting 

 example of the fallacious use of a generalization — the inference from a term 

 used in one sense, of what could follow from it only when used in another sense. 

 From the fact that the carboniferous rocks lie within the series which geologists, 

 for special reasons, group into one system which they call the " palaeozoic," Mr. 

 Miller had thought himself authorized so far to treat this system as a unity, as 

 to consider it properly characterized as a whole, for the object of his argument, 

 by the carboniferous member ; and thence to infer that the palaeozoic periods 

 together constituted the Mosaic day during which the creation of vegetables 

 took place. No influence had been allowed to the fact that distinctive types of 

 animal organization had been the chief motives for the discrimination between 

 the "palaeozoic "' and "secondary" rocks as two sj^stems ; but the distinction 

 being thus adopted by others, the author had assigned one of the systems entire 

 to the vegetable creation, and the other to that of reptiles. 



You will remember, Mr. President that, before the time to which I refer, it 

 was a subject of private remark amongst the members of the Academy, 

 that a large portion of the zeal and talent employed in drawing conclusions 

 from the generalizations of discoveries in natural science, was applied to prema- 

 ture inferences, or in disproportionate subordination to incomplete metaphysical 

 inquiries. This evil was not confined to men of one pursuit, or of one school : 

 but it affected eveiy department of " natural science," and of the abstract sciences 

 most nearly connected with it. In geology, as well as in ethnology, philojogy, 

 and general natural history, we had frequent occasion to notice the conflict of 

 unnecessary speculations, and of irrelevant or unseasonable inferences ; and the 

 temporary withdrawal of much mental activity from the legitimate paths of 

 scientific inquiry. The interval is short since the investigations of our day were 

 fairly opened ; and already the necessary subdivisions of labor are so numerous 

 as to demand the most sedulous devotion to each. Yet we saw laborer after 

 laborer diverging from his road to engage upon one or another side of meta- 

 physical controversies, which could not be finally determined except by methods 



[May, 



