xe SUPPLEMENT TO THE INTRODUCTION. 
been compelled to make an unfavourable comment, he cleared away all future difficulties by 
incorporating Cambria in Siluria! Nor is this all. The original (unintentional) misstate- 
ment of Mr D. Sharpe 7s reaffirmed, or, to say the least, is insinuated in the new work 
called “ Siluria.” 
This is the one point I wish to reopen in this Supplement; and before I leave the 
controversy, I trust for ever, I again call on Sir R. I. Murchison formally to repudiate 
the misstatement; and at length to acknowledge, however tardily, that I never led him 
wrong, as to his Lower Silurian groups, or had the means of doing so. The real mistake 
I made (along with many other English geologists) was, in believing, for several years, 
that the “Lower Silurian” sections were true, on the authority of their author. To make 
me, on that account, a sharer in his original mistakes, would be to the last degree un- 
generous. To affirm that any one of them originated in suggestions of mine would be 
positively untrue. 
The controversial and egotistical style of the Introduction may, perhaps, offend the 
taste of some of my readers; but its defensive character is, I trust, at once an explana- 
tion and apology for its apparent egotism. I certainly never sat down to boast of my 
long-continued labours among the Paleozoic rocks of England. But I have a right to 
state what I believe the truth, and to affirm that I have pursued it honestly; that I have 
shunned premature generalizations, as the very clogs of science, and sometimes the mere 
masks of positive error; that I believe the tabular analysis of the whole Cambrian Series 
to be true, and on that account the groundwork of a good and consistent nomenclature. 
Some readers may perhaps think that I must needs be in the wrong because I have 
been opposed by the Council of the Geological Society. But in the controversies of an 
advancing science, is it not true that the majority is very often in the wrong? It would 
be a sorry thing if physical judgments, like political, were to be settled by counting heads. 
There is not one member of the Council who, so far as English evidence is concerned, 
has sifted the question to the bottom, and examined it in all its bearings. Some of them 
have dogmatized very broadly on very narrow and erroneous knowledge. Some of them 
have now an admirable, but at the same time a one-sided knowledge, respecting our older 
Paleozoic rocks: but they began their nomenclature before they knew the fundamental 
facts on which it ought to rest. Others have adopted their nomenclature as a means of 
classifying their fossils; without knowing, or perhaps much caring about, its evidence; and 
to such persons names are everything. There are some again who profess to be no judges 
in the matter, and therefore have followed the lead of their associates. 
Far be it from me to speak disrespectfully of the Geological Society; but plain truth 
ought never to be offensive to the ears of truth-loving men. It was, in its early days, com- 
posed of robust, joyous, and independent spirits, who toiled well in the field, and who did 
battle and cuffed opinions with much spirit and great good will. For they had one great 
object before them—the promotion of true knowledge—and not one of them was deeply com- 
mitted to any system of opinions. But the progress of geological knowledge, along with 
