189S] NEW i^C HEME OF GEOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT 17 1 



the beds at Uddcvalla, which Mr Jaines Sniitli had aflirmed to 

 be identical with those in the ohler shelly drift beds round 

 Scotland. 



Tn 1846 Edwar<l Forbes published his well-known memoir 

 on the geological relations of the fauna and Hora of the ]]ritish 

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

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

 hitherto used Post-1'liocene, and not as short for Newer riiocene." 

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

 to abstain from tlie 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 himself 

 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 I have de- 

 scribed, the older crag beds were again transferred from the 

 Miocene 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 lied 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 l)eds he sup- 

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

 have protested for years, not a word being said or suggested about 



