OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 233 



The name " Cambrian " can be justly applied only to th series of 

 rocks enclosing the second fauna. To wish to extend it to the strata 

 of the primordial and second fauna, as the school of Cambridge in 

 England has tried to do for several years, is to fall into the same 

 fault that Murchison is reproached with, who, in his " Silurian Sys- 

 tem," extended the name " Silurian " to the second and third fauiut;. 

 Sedgwick and McCoy were completely ignorant of the existence of 

 the primordial fauna, and in their "• Synopsis," etc., of 1855, there is 

 not a single primordial fossil. With such a hiatus and au absolute 

 ignorance of the order of appearance of the organic types, and of the 

 first term of the pala3ontologic evolution, how can one try to apply the 

 name " Cambrian " to the base of the stratigraphic scale ? It would 

 be conti-ary to all the rules that have hitherto directed the classiticatioa 

 and denomination of the great formations. 



As Barrande has said, — for we must always return to him and 

 quote hira when we touch anything relating to the first three great 

 faun:e jireserved in the strata of the earth, — the " moral aspect which 

 accelerates or delays the solution of scientific questions should be con- 

 sidered in a spirit of equity and justice." The time for controversy 

 and animosity has passed away. There are very few survivors ; and 

 by the close of the century, not one will remain of all those who 

 have taken part in the discussion. 



It is for the young generation of geologists now to render to each of 

 the masters who created the classifications, and who were the first in 

 the dilllcult work of deciphering and explaining the manuscript of the 

 earth, that which is their due ; taking into consideration the equilibrium 

 of the general classification, the logic of registered facts, and, above all, 

 the priority ! On all these accounts I do not hesitate to propose to 

 them, as a solution, the three groups or systems which follow : — 



III. Silurian System, containing the third fauna. 

 II. Cambrian System, containing the second fauna. 

 I. Taconic System, containing the primordial faunte. 



Systems corresponding in time and space, and in the evolution of 

 life, to three other great consecutive systems, such as, for example, the 

 trias^ic, Jurassic, and cretaceous formations. 



The question of the relations and passage of one great fauna to 

 another is a fact admitted to-day as incontestable, and which all the 

 explanations by means of invisible faults and foldings of the uni- 

 formist school of absolute and mathematical rules can neither arrest 

 nor suppress. 



