Retrospective Criticism. 467 



tain limestone is placed on the same parallel, and, by a double blunder, is 

 described ' as the lowest sepulchre of vertebrated animals.' * 



" In one page, orthoceratites are brought near the order of corals ; in 

 another, a coral is figured as an encrinite; in a third, the Steeple- Ashton 

 caryophyllia (the characteristic fossil of the middle oolite) is figured as a 

 fossil of the inferior system ; in a fourth, a caryophyllia of the mountain 

 limestone is figured among the organic remains of the cornbrash ; and, 

 lastly, the celebrated lily encrinite (a characteristic fossil of the muschel- 

 kalk, a formation unknown in England,) is introduced and figured among 

 the fossils of the lower oolitic system, -j- 



" Errors like these are, above every thing, calculated to mislead men 

 who are unpractised in geology ; - and they do not terminate here. But 1 

 have no right to detain you with a longer enumeration. % I have stated 



"I 



New System, p. 175. 177. 187. 

 Ibid., p. 149. 176. 251. 256, 257. 



For the purpose of illustrating the organic remains of the successive 

 mineral strata, there are, at the end of the * New System,' five plates, 

 representing groups of fossils, with their generic and specific names. Had 

 the figures been well selected, they might have been of great use; as it is, 

 they can only be the means of disseminating error. 



" Plate I. professes to represent the * Shells of the Mountain Limestone.* 

 Of its thirteen figures, three or four are well chosen ; none of the rest 

 ought to have appeared. One of them is wrong named; and a recent 

 nerita, with all its fresh markings, has unaccountably found its place among 

 these old fossils. 



" Plate II. * Shells of the Lias.' In this plate, of twelve species, we 

 are astonished to find a transition orthoceratite, the Productus scoticus of 

 the mountain limestone, and a scaphite of the green sand, placed side by 

 side with the Gryphae'aincurva,Plagi6stoma gigas, and some other true lias 

 fossils ! 



" Plate III. * Shells of the Under Oolite.' Thirteen species; and a 

 more uncharacteristic assemblage was, perhaps, never before brought to- 

 gether. A tertiary mya and a nummulite have here found their way, for 

 the first time, among the shells of the under oolite. Two or three of the 

 other species ought to have appeared, if at all, in the next plate. 



" Plate IV. * Shells of the Cornbrash and Upper Oolites.' Here the 

 confusion is still greater; for, of twelve species, seven are positively mis- 

 placed, the others are ill selected, and one of them is wrong named. The 

 mineral conchologist is confounded at the sight of the well-known turrilites 

 and hamites of the green sand group, of the tui'ritellae and superb Rostellaria 

 macroptera of the London clay, jostled in among the fossils of the oolites. 

 Had the author drawn out by lot, from all the fossils in Mi*. Sowerby's 

 work, the species which were to decorate this plate, chance might have 

 given him a more illustrative series. 



" Plate V. ' Shells of the Chalk and superior Strata.' Among the 

 nineteen figures of this plate, no attempt is made to separate the shells of 

 the chalk from those of the over-lying tertiary deposits, although the two 

 groups have not, perhaps, one species in common. In Plate I. two fresh- 

 water shells were introduced, which were not characteristic : here fresh- 

 water shells are characteristic, but are omitted altogether ; and the Pecten 

 quinquecostatus is the characteristic fossil of the green sand. 



" One who was even moderately acquainted with the characteristic forms 

 of organic remains could never have been led into such a complication of 

 errors ; and they are the more discreditable, as the greater part of them 

 might have been avoided by the mere exercise of the humblest duty of a 

 compiler." 



