168 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Feb. 25. 



touch upon the real question in debate. They do not give us the 

 means of establishing the relations of the Llandeilo group to the 

 groups above it and below it, in any general sections which define the 

 lower Palaeozoic series. This fatal objection does not apply to the 

 Bala limestone ; which becomes a true typical group, and is capable 

 of receiving a permanent name, because its place is well defined in the 

 grand development of the older Palaeozoic series of Wales ; and on 

 that account it obtains its place in the Tabular Section. 



I accept the interpretation of the structure of Wales as given in the 

 great map, published under the direction of Sir Henry de la Beche, 

 which is one of the noblest works of its kind that has appeared since 

 Geology was a science. In this map we have the superficial deli- 

 neation of the true system of Siluria perfectly represented in its most 

 minute details ; and the authors have, for the first time, laid down 

 the range of the Caradoc group in a manner that is intelligible and 

 complete. But they have given the name " Lower Silurian" to all 

 the vast series of rocks in Wales, which are below the Caradoc Sand- 

 stone. I do not believe that their authority, great as it is, can per- 

 manently establish a name that is geographically incongruous and 

 historically unjust. Passing over the strange geographical and geo- 

 logical incongruity of merging all Cambria in Siluria, although the 

 groups of the former include the whole lower palaeozoic series, and 

 the groups of the latter country include only the upper members of 

 that series, — and passing over the palseontological objection based on 

 the assumed fact that there are two systems of animal life in the 

 upper and lower divisions of the same great series sufficiently distinct 

 to require separate zoological names, — ^dismissing these considerations 

 from the question, I affirm that the name " Silurian" given to the 

 great Cambrian series below the Caradoc group is historically unjust. 

 I claim this great series as my own by the undoubted right of con- 

 quest ; and I continue to give to it the name "Cambrian" on the right 

 of priority, and, moreover, as the only name yet given to the series 

 that does not involve a geographical contradiction. The name " Si- 

 lurian" not merely involves a principle of nomenclature that is at war 

 with the rational logic through which every other palaeozoic group of 

 England has gained a permanent name, but it also confers the pre- 

 sumed honour of a conquest over the older rocks of Wales on the 

 part of one who barely touched their outskirts and mistook his way 

 so soon as he had passed within them. 



I claim the right of naming the Cambrian groups, because I 

 ffinched not from their difficulties, made out their general structure, 

 collected their fossils, and first comprehended their respective rela- 

 tions to the groups above them and below them, in the great and 

 complicated palaeozoic sections of North Wales. Nor is this all, — I 

 claim the name " Cambrian," in the sense in which I have used it, as a 

 means of establishing a congruous nomenclature between the Welsh 

 and the Cumbrian mountains, and bringing their respective groups 

 into a rigid geological comparison ; for the system on which I have, 

 for many past years, been labouring is not partial and one-sided, but 

 general and for all England. 



