436 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PAL/EONTOLOGY. 



older greywacke in Germany and Belgium a complex of strata 

 sometimes highly fossiliferous, and the indubitable equivalent 

 in age of the Devonian system 'in Great Britain. 



The fossil remains from the Palaeozoic rocks of Cornwall, 

 Devon, and West Somerset were described by Sowerby (1837), 

 and were again worked out by John Phillips in 1841. Phillips 1 

 revised very carefully and established more securely the 

 palaeontological sequence of Devonian sub-divisions which 

 had been proposed by De la Beche, Murchison and Sedg- 

 wick, and Lonsdale. In their earlier papers, Murchison and 

 Sedgwick had sometimes designated the Silurian deposits as 

 Palaeozoic, and the Cambrian as Protozoic. Phillips suggested 

 (1841) that the name Palceozoic should be applied to all the 

 strata of the " Transitional " series (the Cambrian, Silurian, 

 and Devonian of British geologists), together with the Car- 

 boniferous system and the Zechstein ; that the name Mesozoic 

 should be applied to the Secondary deposits, and Cainozoic 

 to the Tertiary. This nomenclature rapidly found favour, and 

 is now universally accepted. 



Until about the year 1840, geologists had derived their 

 information regarding the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian 

 deposits only from regions in which the strata show great 

 tectonic disturbances and complicated relations. The news 

 that these rocks occurred in Russia over wide tracts of terri- 

 tory, and in an almost horizontal position, aroused the interest 

 of Murchison to such a degree that in 1840 he undertook a 

 journey in company with Verneuil to the Baltic Sea Provinces. 

 In the following year Murchison made that important expedi- 

 tion to the Ural mountains, whose outstanding result was not 

 only the proof of the wide extension of Silurian and Devonian 

 deposits in Prussia, but also the erection of the " Permian 

 System." 



His continued researches on the Palaeozoic formations had 

 led Murchison to conclude that the Cambrian deposits ex- 

 amined by Sedgwick in North Wales contained no fossils 



1 John Phillips, born 1800 at Marden in Wiltshire, was the nephew of 

 William Smith, and was guided by this great master into geological studies. 

 In the year 1824 he was commissioned to arrange the museum of York, 

 and he was for ten years occupied in carrying out similar commissions in 

 other towns, finally in London, Dublin, and Oxford. In 1834 he was 

 appointed Professor of Geology at King's College in London, in 1844 

 Professor of Geology in Dublin, and in 1856 he succeeded Buckland as 

 Professor of Geology in Oxford. He died in April 1874. 



