M*%»ttd^ 



t 1 1 i •: 



AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



[THIRD SERIES.] 



♦♦♦ 



Art. XXII. — Sedgwick and Murchison : Cambrian and 

 Silurian : by James D. Dana. 



Erroneous impressions have long existed among American 

 geologists with regard to the relations to one another, and to 

 Cambrian and Silurian geology, of Sedgwick and Murchison. 

 The Taconic controversy in this country served, most unrea- 

 sonably, to intensify feelings respecting these British fellow- 

 workers in geology, and draw out harsh judgments. Now that 

 right views on the American question have beeu reached, it is 

 desirable that the facts connected with the British question 

 should be understood and justly appreciated. 



Sedgwick and Murchison were literally fellow-workers in 

 their earlier investigations. Professor John Phillips, in a 

 biographical sketch of Sedgwick,'-" whose intimate friendship 

 through fifty years "he had the happiness of enjoying," 

 speaks thus, in 1873, of their joint work : 



" Communications on Arran and the north of Scotland, in- 

 cluding Caithness (1828) and the Moray Firth : others on 

 Gosau and the eastern Alps (1829-1831) ; and still later, in 

 1837, a great memoir on the Palaeozoic strata of Devonshire 

 and Cornwall, and another on the coeval rocks of Belgium and 

 North Germany, show the labors of these intimate friends in 

 the happiest way — the broad generalizations in which the 

 Cambridge professor delighted, well supported by the indefat- 

 igable industry of his zealous companion." 



* Nature, Feb. 6, 1873, vii, 257. 



Am. Jomi. Scr. —Third Series, Vol. XXXIX, No. 231.— March, 1890. 

 12 



