12 C. Lapworth — Classification of the Lower Palaeozoic Rocks. 



No amount of enthusiastic regard for the memory of a martyr will 

 bolster up an unwieldy system for ever. The giant size upon which 

 its weaker advocates pride themselves must in the end be the main 

 cause of its inevitable dismemberment. We shall best promote the 

 interest of the man whose memory we venerate, by modestly claiming 

 for him as much, and no more, than truth and geological convenience 

 will allow. 



Thus, however reluctant we may be to interfere with the schemes 

 of classification propounded by our great masters in the science, it 

 appears to me that the time has now arrived when we can no longer 

 be accused of disrespect or disloyalty in endeavouring to emancipate 

 ourselves from the inconveniences due to our superstitious adherence 

 to an effete and unworkable nomenclature. The present needs of 

 our science demand, with a unanimous voice that partizanship can no 

 longer silence, a distinct title for the rocks of the Second Fauna. The 

 experiment of naming them in such a way as to recognize the claims 

 of both Murchison and Sedgwick has been tried again and again 

 with the same result. It has invariably ended in prolonging and 

 greatly intensifying the original controversy. But one course 

 remains to us. We must give it a new title, which, though it might 

 have been originally suggested by either party, shall contain no 

 element of future discussion. 



So long as present systems of nomenclature survive, nothing can 

 disturb the application of the title of Cambrian to the rocks of the 

 Primordial Series, and that of Silurian to the strata of the Third 

 Fauna. In these systems, as thus restricted, the most perversely 

 ingenious partisan could scarcely find room for controversy. Within 

 these limits the labours of their respective founders were compa- 

 ratively perfect and complete, and the propriety and harmony of 

 their original classifications, though slightly modified in detail by 

 subsequent research, has never been impugned, either by friend or 

 foe. It is vastly different, however, as we have seen, with the 

 intermediate system. From the day it was recognized until now, 

 it has been the object of incessant disputes. Its co-discoverers both 

 committed the gravest of errors regarding either its proper limits, its 

 relationships, or the sequence and fossils of its component formations. 

 It has been the subject of almost as much passionate argument as 

 the Wernerian theory itself; and the whole subject is a disgrace to 

 modern science, and an obstacle to its progress that must be got rid 

 of — whatever the sacrifice. 



Time has already done justice to the value of the discoveries of 

 both Murchison and Sedgwick, by assigning them each a system in 

 which their labours were accurate and complete. We shall do their 

 memories the greatest service by giving the system in which their 

 work appears to our eyes — in the light of later discovery — to have 

 been more or less inaccurate or deficient, a title which shall bear no 

 personal reference to either. 



Sedgwick, with his well-balanced and philosophic mind, named 

 his system after the entire Principality in which his rocks were 

 typically developed. His title of Cambrian is thus comprehensive 



