C. Lapivorth — Classification of the Lower Palteozoic Hocks. 7 



identified in Europe and America, is all-weighty. He calls special 

 attention to the fact that Sedgwick's Upper Cambrian was ultimately 

 found to possess the fossils of Murchison's Lower Silurian, but he 

 forgets to add that it was Sedgwick, and not Murchison, who first 

 gave the natural divisions of this group, placing them in their proper 

 relations to each other, and defining their true limits above and 

 below. He points out with emphasis the grand distinctions between 

 the Primordial and Second Faunas, and the consequent impossibility 

 of uniting the rocks they characterize in one and the same system ; 

 but the fact of the stratigraphical break at the base of the Mayhill 

 Sandstone is, however, contemptuously dismissed as of no special 

 classificatory value, and the two Llandoveries are joined in a single 

 formation. Thus, in one stroke, Sedgwick is deprived of his grand 

 argument of a physical break between his own and the overlying 

 rocks ; and the Second and Third Faunas are re-united to form what 

 is termed the Silurian System. In effect, Murchison receives the 

 lion's share, simply on the ground of possession ; while Sedgwick is 

 deprived of half his system because he had the misfortune, in the 

 earlier stages of the controversy, not to command so numerous and 

 influential a following as his more socially fortunate opponent. 



At irregular intervals, also, we catch a momentary glimpse of a 

 stray individual who refuses to identify himself with either of these 

 great parties ; preferring rather to temporize by definitively assigning 

 the rocks of the Middle Fauna to neither claimant in particular. He 

 refers to them under such makeshift titles as the Cambro- Silurian or 

 Siluro- Cambrian, according as his otherwise unexpressed personal 

 bias inclines him to one or other of the contending parties. Occasion- 

 ally, indeed, we do find him possessed of a true estimate of the grand 

 importance of the group, but he often leaves it to be understood that 

 he regards it as forming a transitional series of second-rate geologic 

 significance ; and, in effect, belonging properly to both Cambrian 

 and Silurian at once. He is at the same time so fully impressed 

 with the consciousness of his own forlorn and isolated condition, as 

 well as of the hopelessness of stemming the current of vulgar use 

 and wont, that he generally contents himself with simply recording 

 his protest in this manner, and timidly guards himself against possible 

 ambiguity and misconception by prefixing the qualifying term True 

 or Upper when he comes to speak of the undisputed Silurian. 



But, in addition to the foregoing, there are innumerable outsiders 

 like myself, who care nothing for schools, but everything for the 

 facts. There is that great and ever-increasing body of students who 

 are attracted to the study of geology because of the flood of light it 

 casts upon the mysterious problems of life and its distribution. 

 Above all, there are those foreign geologists, who naturally expect 

 from British investigators an authoritative and unmistakable geologic 

 scale to which to refer the results of their own researches. To all 

 these the crying scandal of this interminable dispute is an annoyance 

 and a positive encumbrance. 



But whose procedure shall we follow? Shall we adopt the 

 Murchisonian's convenient plan of carrying down the base-line for 



