18981 NEW SCHEME (fF (lEOLOaiCAL AURANaEMENT 169 



plcidocenc, with the particular intention of treatin^^ it as equivalent 

 in weight and value to tlie other main divisions of the Tertiary 

 series was intolerable, and would not, in fact, have been tolerated 

 but for the glamour attaching to Lyell's name and the tyrannical 

 influence which his reputation has exercised upon subsequent writers. 

 Here again it seems to me we ought to eject the term pleistocene 

 from our nomenclature altogether, unless we are to perform the 

 indecent part of making it mean and include quite a dilf'erent thing 

 altogether from that which its original godfather meant it to include. 



J spoke of this latter part of Lyell's classification and nomen- 

 clature as being ridiculous with our present lights. What 1 mean 

 is this. When Lyell published his work in 1882 the term Crag 

 was used as a common name for all the shelly, sandy, and gravelly 

 surface beds of eastern England, from the base of the Coralline 

 Crag upwards, inclusive of the so-called middle sands containing 

 fossil molluscs. When the contents of all these beds were mixed 

 together and treated as in fact one common fauna, chiefly note- 

 worthy for the great number of tropical, sub- tropical, and of 

 extinct forms which characterise the Coralline Crag, it was not un- 

 natural that Lyell using his criterion sliould have put the Crag 

 into his older Pliocene, and that he should have completely excluded 

 Britain from the areas where his Newer Pliocene or Pleistocene were 

 known to occur. Into that upper division, however, he put the well- 

 known beds at Uddevalla. This exclusion of Britain from l^yell's 

 original Pleistocene localities must have a strange look to those who 

 know how frequently the term Pleistocene now occurs in more 

 recent English geological literature as denoting a large series of 

 English beds. 



As originally defined, the term Pleistocene included among marine 

 beds only the strata of Val de Noto in Sicily, those in the district 

 about Naples, and in Calabria, some doubtful beds at Morca, and 

 the well-known beds at Uddevalla, while the whole of the Crag was 

 put into the older division of the Pliocene, namely, the Pliocene 

 proper, together with the subapennine beds. 



Let us again go on, however. The first person to properly dis- 

 criminate the different elements in the English Crag was Charles- 

 worth, one of those not too lucky men upon whom the sunlight 

 did not always fall, and to whom those of us who care for these 

 things ought to be grateful indeed, for he did more to elucidate 

 the later English Tertiaries than anybody else. His teaching on 

 this matter was sound. May we hope that he now has peace. He 

 showed very plainly that the Crag consists of three distinct horizons, 

 marked by very different life conditions and contents — namely, the 

 White or Coralline Crag, the Red or Suffolk Crag, and the Mammal- 

 iferous or Norwich Crao-. 



