C. Lapworth — Classification of the Lower Palceozoic Rocks. 13 



enough to embrace the whole of the Lower Palaeozoics. It not only- 

 calls up before the imagination the majestic mountains where they 

 may be studied under their most typical aspect, but it reminds us 

 that they formed the fortress-homes of the early Britons — those 

 proud old savages, who, like the Greywaches upon which they trod, 

 were the last to succumb to the irresistible march of conquest. 



Murchison, on the other hand, with his military proclivities, and a 

 keener instinct for locality, had already made choice of the term 

 Silurian ; associating the rocks of his system with that classic 

 Cambrian tribe, the Silures, whose indomitable struggles for liberty 

 had hallowed the very hills upon which he sought his types ; and 

 thus, in a measure, he may be said to have erected an everlasting 

 monument to British valour and love of freedom. 



But, as has been more than once pointed out elsewhere, the Silures 

 were a nation inhabiting the southern parts of Wales, and Murchison 

 distinctly availed himself of the privileges of genius in thus extend- 

 ing their rule into Shropshire and the regions to the north. 



North Wales itself — at all events the whole of the great Bala 

 district where Sedgwick first worked out the physical succession 

 among the rocks of the intermediate or so-called TJp-per Cambrian 

 or Lower Silurian system; and in all probability much of the 

 Shelve and the Caradoc area, whence Murchison first published its 

 distinctive fossils — lay within the territory of the Ordovices ; a tribe 

 as undaunted in its resistance to the Bomans as the Silures. It was 

 indeed the last of the old British tribes to yield to their invincible 

 legions; and it is consequently quite as well worthy of scientific 

 commemoration as the Silures themselves. 



Camden thus refers to the Ordovices : 1 " Those countries of the 

 Silures and Dimetce, which we have last surveyed, were in after- 

 times, when Wales came to be divided into three Principalities, called 

 by the natives Deheubarth (or the Bight-hand part), and in English, 

 as we have already observed, South Wales. The other two Princi- 

 palities (which they call G-wynedh and Powys, and we North Wales 

 and Powisland) were inhabited by the Ordovices, called also 

 Or devices, and Ordovicce, and in some authors, though corruptly, 

 Ordiduccs. A courageous and puissant Nation these were, as being 

 inhabitants of a mountainous country ; and receiving vigour from 

 native soil ; and who continued, the longest of any, unconquered 

 either by Bomans or English. For they were not subdued by the 

 Bomans till the time of the Emperor Domitian ; when Julius 

 Agricola subdued almost the whole nation. Nor were they sub- 

 jected by the English, before the reign of Edward the First. For a 

 long time they enjoyed their liberty, confiding as well in their own 

 strength and courage, as in the roughness and difficult situation of 

 their country, which seems to be laid out by Nature for ambuscades 

 and the prolongation of war. To determine the limits of these 

 Ordevices is no hard task, but to give a true reason of the name 

 seems very difficult. However, I have entertained a notion, that, 

 seeing they were seated upon the two rivers of Devi, which springing 

 1 Camden's Britannia, Dr. Gibson's Translation, second edition, p. 778. 



