reflecting on the University of Cambridge. 291 



of the highest requirements of natural history, and with a 

 patience in the endurance of continued labour which has seldom 

 had its match, he has produced a work which entitles him to 

 the gratitude of the University, and (I dare to add) of the scien- 

 tific world. 



Praises thus unqualified (called forth by the circumstances 

 which have led me to take up the pen) might seem partial or 

 exaggerated. But I know them to be well deserved; and to 

 confirm my own words, and to prevent any misconstruction of 

 them, I will quote the remarks upon M'Coy^s work by Professor 

 Bronn of Heidelberg — a great palaeontologist (as I surely need 

 not tell the reader), and, at the same time, a very just but severe 

 critic, who is not inconsiderate or prodigal in his words of praise : 



" Dieses Werk ist ausserordentlieh reieh an scharfen Beobachtung- 

 en, fleissigen Beschreibuugen und von jM'Coy aufgestellten Sippen 



und Arten Mit der auslandischen und insbesondere 



deutscben Literatur ist der Verfasser wobl bekannt, und er hat sie 

 reichlich beniitzt ; das Ganze ist eine der wichtigsten Erscheinungen 

 in der palaontologischen Literatur und fortan unentbehrlich bei alien 



palaozoischen Studien." " This work is extraordinarily rich 



in acute observations, careful descriptions, and iu genera and species 



established by M'Coy The author is vrell acquainted with 



the foreign, and especially with the German literature, and has made 

 an abundant use of it ; the whole is one of the most important appear- 

 ances in the literature of Palaeontology, and henceforward in- 

 dispensable in all Palaeozoic studies." (' Neues Jahrbuch' by Pro- 

 fessors Leonhard and Bronn of Heidelberg, 1853, pp. 97, 98.) 



During the early progress of M'Coy^s work (though repeatedly 

 urged to do so) I studiously abstained from giving him any 

 scheme of tabular arrangement derived from the physical groups 

 of the Cambrian and Silurian series. I simply gave him the 

 general facts of superposition. He, thei-efore, began by arranging 

 all the groups of fossils, below the old red sandstone, as parts 

 of one system; and for two successive years, without a single 

 word of interruption from myself, he described them, in the 

 printed labels and catalogues, as Upper and Lower Silm-ian. 



In the further progress of his work he found a great palaeon- 

 tological break in the series, which led him to separate it into 

 two Systems ; and then, for the first time, he adopted my name 

 Cambrian for the lower of the two. Still there was an unex- 

 plained difficulty : for in one remarkable group (called Middle 

 Silurian in the Government Survey, and containing the greater 

 number of the Lower Silurian rocks of Sir R. I. Murchisou) 

 were subordinate groups of strata, some of which conformed to 

 the Silurian, and others to the Cambrian type. My own col- 

 lection did not seem to sanction the establishment of the so-called 



19* 



