312 Geological Society. 



green-sand*. In one page the cornbrash and forest marble have 

 shifted places ; in another the whole lower oolitic system is abso- 

 lutely inverted !• Again, at p. 247, we are told that the several beds 

 are given " as usual, in the ascending order j" yet in this very page 

 the inferior members of the lower oolites are copied, word for word, 

 from another book, and are in the descending order. On the next 

 leaf, the same error is repeated in a still worse form : and within 

 four pages of this last bouleversement we find the Oxford clay, the 

 cornbrash, and the forest marble, twice shuffled under the great 

 oolite X- The goodly pile. Gentlemen, which many of you have 

 helped to rear, after years of labour, has been pulled down and re- 

 constructed : but with such unskilful hands that its inscriptions are 

 turned upside down ; its sculptured figures have their heads to the 

 ground, and their heels to the heavens ; and the whole fabric, amid 

 the fantastic ornaments by which it is degraded, has lost all the beauty 

 and the harmony of its old proportions. 



So much has been written in illustration of the zoological history 

 of our several formations, that the labour of a compiler is now made 

 comparatively easy. Yet in the distribution of organic remains, 

 given in the " New System," there is such a complication of errors 

 as nearly baffles all attempts at description. In one place we are 

 told, that the lower secondary rocks are characterized by the sim- 

 plest forms of the animal kingdom. In another, we find fish enu- 

 merated among the fossils of the transition (or submedial) strata §. 

 In one place our magnesian limestone is properly identified with 

 the first flotz limestone of Werner. In another, our mountain lime- 

 stone is placed on the same parallel ; and, by a double blunder, is 

 described "as the lowest sepulchre of vertebral animals ||." 



In one page orthoceratites are brought near the order of corals. 

 In another, a coral is figured as an encrinite. In a third, the Steeple 

 Ashton caryophyllia (the characteristic fossil of the middle oolite), 

 is figured as a fossil of the inferior system. In a fourth, a caryo- 

 phyllia of the mountain limestone is figured among the organic 

 remains of the cornbrash. And lastly, the celebrated lily encrinite 

 (a characteristic fossil of the muschel-kalk, a formation unknown 

 in England) is introduced and figured among the fossils of the lower 

 oolitic system U. 



Errors like these are above every thing calculated to mislead men 

 who are unpractised in geology ; and they do not terminate here. 

 But I have no right to detain you with a longer enumeration **. 

 I have stated enough to prove, that in the conduct of this work, the 



author 



* " New System of Geology." Compare pp. 133, 153 with pp. 137, 197. 



t " New System," pp. 187, 195. 



X Ibid. p. 253. 



§ Compare Introduction, p. xlix. and p. 143. 



II ''New System," pp. 175, 177, 187- 



IT See pp. 149, 176, 251, 256, 257. 



•• For the purpose of illustrating the organic remains "of the succeisive 

 mineral strata," there are at the end of the " New System " five plates 

 representing groups of fossils, with their generic and specific names. Had 



the 



