649 
America have adopted, will not be obliterated to make way for 
other names which are not founded upon any mew distinctions, stra- 
tigraphical or zoological. So long, gentlemen, as British geologists 
are appealed to as the men whose works in the field have established 
a classification, founded on the sequence of the strata and the im- 
bedded contents, so long may we be sure that their insular names, 
humble though they may be, will, like those of our distinguished 
leader William Smith, be honoured with a preference by foreign 
geologists, who, looking from a neutral ground, are sure to be the 
most impartial judges. The perpetuity of a name affixed to any 
group of rocks through his original research, is the highest di- 
stinetion to which any working geologist can aspire. It is in truth 
his monument, and therefore, gentlemen, I trust you will pardon me 
if I have occupied you too long with the allusions to this point, 
and which have been elicited by the work of one for whom I enter- 
tain so high an esteem as Mr. Phillips. I will therefore only add 
my hope, that now when the term Silurian has been so widely 
spread, the Director of the British Geological Ordnance Survey, 
who encouraged the author of the ‘System’ to propose a separate 
name for the types he had worked out, will not permit the labours 
of his friend to be submerged, and thus seem to convey to foreign 
geologists the idea, which is indeed far removed from the truth, that 
there are any real differences between his views and my own on this 
important subject. In terminating these considerations, I beg geo- 
logists to recollect, that I never entertained the idea that the local 
types around Ludlow and Wenlock would be found applicable in 
detail to strata of the same age in distant places; on the contrary, 
having shown that even within a very limited radius such subdivi- 
sions varied with varying conditions, it was a leading and constant 
object of my work, to demonstrate that the broad divisions of Upper 
and Lower Silurian alone, could be maintained as terms of distant 
and foreign comparison. 
There are two short communications by Mr. Lyell on the older 
rocks to be noticed. ‘The first is on the strata between Aymestry 
and Wenlock, in which he dwells on the assistance to be derived 
respecting the amount of dislocation in strata, by attentively no- 
ticing the deviation from a vertical position of the inclosed corals ; 
but he adds that great caution should he used to distinguish between 
those specimens which may have been torn from their position with 
reference to the horizon while growing and inverted, and those which 
have lost their original mode of growth by subsequent dislocation of 
the strata. From the known habits of recent corals, Mr. Lyell also 
infers that the Silurian strata must have undergone successive de- 
pressions during their accumulation, as beds of Polyparia belonging 
to the Wenlock limestone are overlaid by many hundred feet of 
sedimentary matter. In the second communication Mr. Lyell offers 
some remarks on a series of fossils from the neighbourhood of Chris- 
tiania, and he infers from the evidence they afford, that the lime- 
stone to which they belong is of the age of the Lower Silurian rocks ; 
and on similar grounds he places the limestone of the island of Lan- 
