XXV1 PREFACE. 
published my vindication in the Introduction to M’Coy’s Synopsis. But very few men 
indeed ever have an opportunity of reading that Introduction; for it is a portion of 
a large and expensive volume, which has very seldom been purchased since the wide diffusion 
of the volumes of the Paleontographical Society. On the contrary the statements of my 
opponents are to be seen in the Proceedings and Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 
which form part of the Library stock of every country town in which Geology is held in 
practical honour. 
Moreover, the controversy has recently been revived with great spirit and with great 
talent by Prof. Sterry Hunt, F.R.S. &c., of the Canadian Survey; and I think that, under 
such circumstances, it would be a shameful act of moral cowardice not to speak out in my 
own vindication, when I can do so in the simplest words of truth and reason. 
I will then do my best to state the historic truth in all simplicity and without favour or 
affection. Not to speak plain truth of those who are dead, while engaged in a personal 
vindication of truth involving questions of fact, would be destructive of the very essence 
and marrow of all history. 
First then regarding Sir R. I. Murchison. He attended several, and I think all, of the 
Meetings during 1842—43, when the papers by Mr Salter and myself were read before the 
Geological Society: but, so far as I remember, he never made a single remark or comment 
during these long readings, though the subjects discussed in them affected his own works as 
much as mine. But very soon after the final reading of the Papers (towards the end of the year 
1843) a geological map was published in his name, in which he had brushed out of sight, 
under a deep Silurian colour, every trace of my previous work in North Wales. This was 
done so quietly and silently that I never heard one whisper of it till the fact was made 
known to me by Mr Knipe (I think in 1851), when he called on me with a newly coloured 
Geological Map of England, which he had on sale. The exact date is not however material 
to my present purpose. Was this right or was it wrong? and was it for the interests of 
truth in Science? On this subject I make no further remark, but refer the reader to the 
Introduction to M°Coy’s Synopsis, and to a Paper published by myself in the Quarterly 
Journal of the Geological Society in 1852. 
About the same time that Murchison had thus completed his new colouring of the map 
of Wales*, Mr Warburton, then President of the Geological Society, most kindly, as I thought, 
offered to reduce the successive communications of Mr Salter and myself, embracing the 
labours of the two preceding summers, into a state fit for publication. Certainly my Papers 
* This map was not, I believe, published in any work connected with the Geological Society; but in the Atlas of the 
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, where it lurked I believe out of my sight for more than seven years. 
