X¢li SUPPLEMENT TO THE INTRODUCTION. 
opinions which the Couneil wished to regard as settled. It was referred, and (after a single 
correction, adopted without any delay whatever) it received the sanction of the Referee. 
But this was not enough. It was again referred; and was at length published among the 
postponed matter of the volume: but not till other persons, working in the same field, 
had made a correction identical with that of our Paper. But for the previous insult, I 
should have considered this delay as accidental, and counted it as nothing. There was, how- 
ever, no accident in the case. 
For a refusal of the Council (during 1855) to publish my next Paper, continuing the 
same subject, I make no complaint. Part of it was in a controversial form; part of it 
was only a statement of plain facts; and they had a perfect right to refuse its publication. 
It is now printed in the Philosophical Magazine; and, be it good or bad, it is a part of the 
common stock of Geology. After these statements let the reader judge for himself whether 
I am called upon to bow before the opinion of the Council of the Geological Society on 
any point of Palzozoic Geology, which they may have dogmatically pronounced as settled. 
During many years I was a frequent, I might almost say a constant. attendant on the joyous 
meetings of the Geological Society, and a member of the Council. Among the members were 
some of my most honoured and cherished friends; and while boasting of these meetings 
and of the generous, unselfish, and truth-loving spirit that glowed throughout the whole body, 
I little dreamt that I should ever have to complain of an “ignorant and bitter insult” 
from the Council. But, strange though it be to tell, the words are literally true. 
Time has produced its inevitable and melancholy changes; and for the two last years 
I have not been present at a single meeting of the Geological Society. Not because I 
wished to be away, or ever feared to do battle for what I thought the truth, against 
whatever seeming odds; but simply because I was unable to attend the meetings. In a 
preceding page I have alluded to the painful news of the death of Professor Forbes: and 
during the passage of the latter sheets of this Introduction through the press, I learnt, with 
deep sorrow, that my old and much valued friends, Mr Greenough and Sir Henry De la 
Beche, were no longer to be counted among the living members of the Geological Society. 
The former was its founder and munificent patron: and that he was a very hard and very 
early labourer in the field, his Geological Map of England bears ample testimony. His know- 
ledge was wide and accurate, and the scientific materials he had collected, in illustration of 
Physical Geography and Geology, were absolutely unrivalled. Although his severe field-work 
had for some years been interrupted by decaying strength, his friends had good hopes that he 
might go on with a task congenial to the labours of his previous life, and become the scientific 
historian of Geological discovery. So far as regards the future, all such hopes, alas! are gone. 
Sir Henry De la Beche was a friend of thirty-five years’ standing. That he was an 
unflinching and successful workman so long as his strength lasted—that he wrote many 
original memoirs of great value—that he published several works of great practical use— 
that he had an honoured name among those who belong to the early and rising history 
of English Geology :—these are facts so notorious that it would be impertinent to dwell 
