Xlvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



the beds of which it consists are found to extend over a much larger 

 tract of country than was originally supposed, merely because another 

 name had been applied to the latter, when they were supposed to be 

 different from those first described and named. 



I am also of opinion that Prof. Sedgwick in the course of the 

 whole argument has laid far too great a stress on what he calls the 

 natural break below the May Hill Sandstone ; this break appears to 

 be a mere local pheenomenon, unknown in other parts of the forma- 

 tion, and not differing either in character or degree from similar 

 breaks in other countries to which such importance has never been 

 assigned, as e. g. in the Carboniferous Series of the Thiiringer Wald. 



There are, however, statements in this Introduction affecting the 

 character of the Council of this Society, which, in the position I now 

 occupy, I should not be justified in passing over in silence, however 

 willingly I should have preferred adopting such a course ; and I trust 

 therefore that you will bear with me while I endeavour to refute 

 the unjust charge which Prof. Sedgwick has brought against your 

 Council *. I omit as irrelevant all notice of such vague assertions 

 as that " there is not one Member of the Council who, so far as 

 English evidence is concerned, has sifted the question to the bottom 

 and examined it in all its bearings Some of them have dog- 

 matized very broadly on very narrow and erroneous knowledge," 

 &c. But when Prof. Sedgwick accuses the Society of being less 

 truth-loving in its spirit than formerly, and states that in order to 

 prevent the risk of mischief, the Council seem now resolved to wage 

 war upon all discussions and canvassing of opinions on points which 

 they themselves wish to regard as settled, I am bound to tell him as 

 temperately but as decidedly as I can, that he is altogether mistaken 

 as to the spirit by which the Council of this Society has been 

 animated. If Prof. Sedgwick during the last three or four years had 

 more frequently been able to come among us, and for this reason I 

 the more regret the state of his health which has prevented it, he 

 would have found on numerous occasions the same lively animation 

 of discussion, and the same independence of tone and spirit which he 

 affects to miss amongst us ; and he would have found the same zeal 

 in the cause of truth as ever existed in former days. He would have 

 found that the Council had no fear of running counter to the sup- 

 posed interests of some scientific bodies ; that they did not wish to 

 suppress discussion on points which they themselves wished to regard 

 as settled. With regard to himself, he would have found a feeling of 

 respect and veneration as due to one of the fathers of the science, 

 and he would now perhaps recollect what he appears to have for- 

 gotten, that with reference to the suppression of any matter contained 

 in his own papers, the Council were only acting in a spirit of self- 

 defence, and for the interest of the readers of the Journal, when they 

 determined, after the controversy between himself and the author of 

 the * Silurian System' had been carried on for some time, and the views 

 of both on the question of disputed nomenclature had been fully and 

 freely discussed, that they would not allow any more merely contro- 

 * See the Supplement to the Introduction. 



