INTRODUCTION. xVil 
With all my friend’s other good qualities he might have been a comparatively unpro- 
ductive labourer, had he not been gifted with a constitutional power of enduring long- 
continued application which has seldom had its match. Whatever may be the merits of 
the following work, it is one of enormous labour. Every part of it has been well 
considered, and none of its pages have been struck off without patient thought and study. 
Hence the specific descriptions (apart from questions of classification about which our 
best naturalists may differ, and upon which I do not presume to offer an opinion), are at 
once condensed and full, and have a clearness which is almost unrivalled. They are put 
before the Palzontologist with a precision like that of a geometrical demonstration; and 
while he reads them (whatever may be his own views), he cannot doubt about the author's 
meaning, the real character of his species, or the grounds on which his scheme of arrange- 
ment rests. 
Willingly then, for such reasons as have now been very plainly stated, I repeat some 
of the words of the Cambridge University Commission in their Report on the Wood- 
wardian Museum; and conclude—“that the self-devotion and untired zeal with which 
Professor M‘Coy gave himself to his great task in the Museum, and the skill with which 
he has carried out its details, are far above all common praise, and entitle him to the 
enduring gratitude of the University.” 
Grounds of Geological Nomenclature—Tabular View of the Primary or Paleozoic System 
of England and Wales—Three principal Divisions,—Lower, Middle, and Upper— 
General conclusions. 
Tue following remarks, chiefly copied from a paper published in the Philosophicai 
Magazine for October and November 1854+, may serve as an Introduction to the subjoined 
Tabular View of the British Paleozoic rocks. No metamorphic groups are enumerated; as 
they are essentially azoic, and often of very doubtful age. The triple division of our whole 
series of fossil-bearing rocks into Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary, may still be conve- 
niently retained; and, when these three divisions are described with reference to their organic 
types, they have been respectively defined by the terms Palwozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic. 
To each of the three great divisions I would, on paleontological grounds, give the name of 
System. Thus, in the following corrected Tabular View, all the Palzeozoic rocks, from the 
oldest Cambrian to the Permian inclusive, are described as forming parts of one system— 
the Paleozoic. This extended application of the word system is an innovation on a nomen- 
clature now in common use; but it was suggested by myself fourteen years since, for the 
express purpose of avoiding what I thought an unphilosophical use of the word system, 
* Report of the Cambridge Commission, page 122: and Evidence subjoined to it, p. 118. 
+ Messrs Taylor and Francis, London. 
