Murchison’s Siluria. AOL 
their works relating to North Wales, and have, in short, deter- 
mined the question physically, as well as zoologically. 
But although in 1839, when my first work was completed, I 
held, in common with Professor Sedgwick, the erroneous idea of 
the infra-Silurian position of the rocks of North Wales, I soon 
saw reason to abandon that view, and to adopt (in the year 1841) 
that in Scandinavia, Russia, Bohemia, and other countries, the 
oldest traces of former life were the same as the lower Silurian 
types of the British Isles ;—and next, because many of the fossils 
figured in my work as Lower Silurian had been detected in the 
slates of Snowdon, which were then considered to lie near the 
bottom of the so-called ‘Cambrian rocks.” 
developments. In a word, as chroniclers of lost races, my asso- 
ciates and myself were enabled to register in our “ Russia and 
the Ural Mountains,” the types of former creatures from their 
ap dawn. ‘To the first chapters of that work, the reader is 
referred as fully explanatory of views which are here reiterated.{ 
* See also Phillips, on the Malvern and Abberley Hills.—Memoirs, Geol. Surv., 
vol. ii, part 1, 1848, 
+ The Copley Medal. 
_ {The reader who desires to consult the documents which explain how my indue- 
tion was arrived at, is referred to a memoir entitled, “On the meaning attached to 
S seem Bt ich will indicate to him all my suc- 
lan 
alts polished by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in 1843. 
of 0c, 
(Journal of G Lond., vol. viii, p. 173. See also the memoir entitled, “On 
meaning attached to the term ‘Cambrian System,’ and on the evidence since ob- 
tained of its i with. iously esta! 
‘ Lower Silurian,” Jo ol. Lond., vol. iii, p. ) At the same time that 
I must protest against the recent proposal to absorb my Lower Silurian into his 
an rd my high estimation of 
fessor especi se on North Wales, Cumberland, and the adjacent 
counties, which stand upon their own intrinsic merits. T blication on the pa 
wh 
ozoic fossils of the Cambridge Museum, which he is bringing out in conjunction with 
Secon Serres, Vol. XVIII, No. 54.—Nov., 1854. 51 
