210 



phyllia 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 figui-ed among the fossils of the lower 

 oolitic system *. 



Errors like these are above every thing calculated to mislead men 

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

 But I have no right to detain you with a longer enumeration f. 

 I have stated enough to prove, that in the conduct of this work, the 

 author has shown neither the information nor the industry which 

 might justify him in becoming an interpreter of the labours of others, 

 or the framer of a system of his own. 



* See pp. 149, 176, 251, 256, 257. 



f 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 grypha;a incurva, plagiostoma 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 together. 

 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 con- 

 fusion is still greater ; for of twelve species, seven are positively misplaced, 

 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 turritellae and superb rostellaria ma- 

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

 Had the author drawn out by lot, from all the fossils in Mr. 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 overlying tertiary deposits; although the two groups have 

 not perhaps one species in common. In Plate I. two freshwater shells were 

 introduced which were not characteristic; here freshwater shells are cha- 

 racteristic, 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. 



