Retrospective Criticiwi,\y 465 



Phillips's, not mine. Mya intermediaj ** in-itfee ;X.o»dQ'il clay^ Bognor 

 rocks." Sowerhy^ Min, Conch.^ vol.i. p. 173. If this be incorrect, the 

 mistake is Mr. Sowerby's* T. E. next ventures upon the most extraordi- 

 nary assertion, that pi. iv., designated, by Dr. Ure, " shejls of the cornbrash 

 and upper oolite," is intended to include the fossils from the chalk marl to 

 the cornbrash ! Alas ! Sir, this excuse will avail nothing, unless every readear 

 had the ingenuity of T. E., and could discover the author's intentions in 

 spite of his blunders. It happens^ too, most unfortunately, that the weli*. 

 known tertiary shells Rostellaria macroptera (not Protellaria, as yoar 

 printer had it by mistake) and Turritella conoidea are in the group; so; 

 that a still further stretch of the imagination is requisite to reconcile the 

 discrepancy, and the reader must take pi. iv., not as the author has named! 

 it, but as exhibiting figures of the " shells of the cornbrash and uppjan 

 oolites," and tertiary formations inclusive ! T. E. asks for my authority d 

 I again quote Sowerby, Min. Conch.y vol. i. p. 109., for Turritella conoidea^ 

 and the same work, vol. iii. p. 177., for Rostellaria macroptera.. Youil 

 excellent correspondent, the author of the admirable work alkided> to, eatt 

 correct me if my inferences are erroneous. But I feel,^ Sir>, Lmay bajvje 

 ventured too far; a Cambridge man, who has an opportunit}': of attending 

 the lectures of Professor Sedgewick, must be right, and the authorities upoa 

 which ray remarks are founded may be wrong, or, what is more probable^ 

 have been misunderstood by me. It may, after all, be not an important 

 error to invert the order of superposition of the strata ; it may be right to 

 declare that a formation is marine, and contains marine shells, &c,> and 

 group it with a series of marine deposits, and afterwards describe the fresh- 

 water and terrestrial remains with which it abounds. It may be laniraport? 

 ant to figure, as the characteristic shells of one group of strata, shells tha^ 

 occur only in another. But if it be so, it must be allowed that geology is 

 still, what it was formerly asserted to be, a science of paradoxes v—*^ 

 Jamiartf2S. \mO. - > .. .,,-1 >^ . ,; ,■ (^oinla 



( iZM lire's Geohgy, (s^i 90i)-H^ Having admitted onoore t^an one'apQh^g}^^]^ 

 ifcislworik^ we think ifcBecessary to give the following statement respecting']^ 

 frbm^P?efescJt" Sedgewick's Address delivered to the Geological Society; at 

 (theif* Annual Oen^aV Meeting on Feb. 19. 1830. :' — - - u^oiniii 



" I should have been well content to have ended with tb<6s$ ^nei^ 

 censares } but dul-ing the past yeaf there has been sent forth, by> 01^ of 

 our own ibody, * A New System of Geology, in which the great revoluticMr© 

 of the earth and of animated nature are reconciled at once to modecn 

 science and to sacred history;' and to this title I will venture to add,. iri 

 which the worst violations of philosophic rule, by the daring union of things 

 incongruous, have been adopted by the author from others, and at the 

 same time decorated by new fantasies of his own. I shall not stop to 

 combat the bold and unauthorised hypothesis, that all the successive fornlf 

 ations of the old schistose rocks wer6 called into being simultaneously^ 

 by a fiat of Creative: Power, anterior to the existence of creatures possessing 

 life; nor shall I urge that, among these primitive creations of the authoa", 

 are mountain masses of rock formed by mechanical degradation from rocks 

 which preceded, and beds of organic remains, placed there, if we may 

 believe his system, in mere mockery of our senses ; neither shall I detain 

 you by dwelling upon the errors and contradictions which are scattered 

 through the early pages of his volume. On this part of the * New System ' 

 all criticism is uncalled for here; fcr it soars far above us and our lowly 

 contemplations. Its character is written, and its very physiognomy ap- 

 pears, in that dignified and oracular censure which he himself has quoted 

 from the works of Bacon : * Tanto magis haec vanitas inhibenda venit et 

 eoercenda, quia ex divinorum et humanorum male-sana admixtione, non 

 solum educitur philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio haeretica,' — * Thi^ 

 vanity merits castigation and reprpof ; the mote aSj firom the mischievous 



