276 Notices of Memoirs — /. C. 3[oherg — 



viz. by Wiman (1893) in TJher die Silur formation in Jemtland and 

 by Hogbom (1906) in Norrland. The appellation Canibro-Silurian or 

 Cambrian- Silurian formations seems, however, to be at least as 

 common (as a collective appellation) as the name Silurian. In this 

 case, then, the terminology has not even yet become properly 

 established. 



As far back as 1879 it was proposed by Lapworth ("On the 

 Tripartite Classification of the Lower Palaeozoic Rocks " : Geol. 

 Mag., Dec. II, Vol. VI) to change the name Lower and Upper 

 Silurian into Ordovician (Ordovian) and Silurian, a proposal that 

 gradually gained ground, and has of late years obtained some footing 

 in Sweden, In 1901 Tornqvist {Researches hito the Graptolites of the 

 Loiver Zones of the Scanian and Vestrogothian Phyllo-Tetragraptus Beds, i) 

 used the divisions Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian. In 1906 he 

 lays stress on the fact that he has definitely abandoned the older 

 nomenclature Cambrian, Lower and Upper Silurian {Some Remarks on 

 the Ordovician System in Shane). As these works of Tornqvist's were 

 written in English, and thus were specially addressed to the English 

 public, he possibly attracted less attention to his new terminology 

 from Swedish readers ; that, at least, holds good as far as we are 

 concerned. It was also with much hesitation that the writer of these 

 lines, in a paper on the Bicellograptus schists of Scania (1907), and 

 so to speak tentatively, exchanged the term Lower Silurian for 

 Ordovician : in our opinion the suitability of the exchange from more 

 than one point of view was not decisive. The new appellation was 

 especially inconvenient in that it did not lend itself to the formation 

 of compound words. Our first impression was that this difficulty 

 might be removed by using the term Ordovian, sometimes used by 

 Lapworth instead of Ordovician. This would have permitted such 

 Swedish compounds as " ordovsystem, ordovfossil", etc. But, as this 

 could evidently only be adopted if the termination -ician did not 

 include any part of the stem of the word, we asked the advice of 

 Nils Elensburg, the Professor of Comparative Philology at the 

 University of Lund, from whom we received the following elucidation: 

 The name Ordovices, which is met with in Tacitus {Agricola, ch. xviii, 

 and Annales, book xii, ch. xxxiii), is made up of the stem ordo (or, 

 in Old Cymric, ord), meaning ' hammer ', and the verbal root 

 vik, meaning 'to fight'. Ordovices consequently means 'hammer- 

 fighters', and as the vik in it represents an independent link the form 

 ordov is of course unallowable. Therefore we must write Ordo- 

 vician, in which case we could also make use of such compounds as 

 " ordoviklager, ordovikfossil ", etc. So much for the purely linguistic 

 point of view. 



It is all very well that we should, by introducing the aforesaid 

 denomination, attain to a greater uniformity with the terminology 

 that seems to be naturalizing itself more and more abroad, especially 

 in England and North America. But it would be better, instead of 

 submitting our terminology to this kind of patchwork, once for all to 

 subject this terminology in its entirety to a revision, especially as the 

 moment for this can be said to be at hand. It is not our intention to 

 introduce any innovations ; it is merely a question of making a choice 



