Silurian Discussion. lOo 



have become at length acquainted with Sir R. I. Murchison's com- 

 ment on an abstract (' Literary Gazette,' March 6) of a paper 

 lately read by myself before the Geological Society of London. 

 Had this comment been merely an exposition of certain general 

 views of classification or nomenclature which differed from my own, 

 it would have passed on my part without any further notice ; but 

 it contains assertions that are founded in mistake, and, I believe, 

 contrary to fact ; and it ends with a poetical squib, which may 

 perhaps, among persons more open to mockery than to argument, 

 have helped to raise a minute's laugh against me. Squibs are, 

 after all, but sorry arguments. They seldom promote the cause of 

 truth, and they never minister to good temper. I think I know 

 my poetical antagonist — ex ungue leonem — and I forgive the lion. 

 His roar, like that of the illustrious Bottom, is as gentle " as the 

 note of any sucking dove." I am told that he is " a profound 

 naturalist ;" and, if I am right in my man, this is true to the 

 very letter, and beyond the letter. But has he ever cast a philo- 

 sophical view over all the older rocks of Britain, so as to be a 

 good judge on a general question of classification and nomencla- 

 ture bearing upon the distribution of the oldest physical groups 

 in this island? I might, perhaps, have answered this question 

 in the affirmative, as a matter of belief or of courtsey, had I not 

 read this poetical illustration of his mistaken nomenclature and 

 narrow creed. He is a naturalist and a poet, and in this instance, 

 more of a poet than a naturalist ; for poets deal best in fiction. 

 Martial's weapons are too fine for geology ; if my poetical friend 

 means to be a geologist, Vulcan's hammer will serve his purpose 

 better. 



When he tells me that " Silurian beds we in myriads number," 

 I tell him, in reply, that in Cambria I can outnumber his beds 

 when five times told, though I begin my reckoning below any 

 rock which has ever had its place fixed in a true Silurian section ; 

 and when he adds that of " Cambrian strata stat nominis umbra" 

 I retort upon him, that it is he who has put them in the shadehy 

 daubing his own mistaken colours over them. Let him leave 

 them where nature placed them, and they will then shine forth in 

 their true colours — the grandest, the best-marked, and most 

 glorious objects of the whole British palaeozoic series. 



He, it seems, has been inverting Nature's history by reading her 

 story backwards ; by adopting a scheme in which he names the 

 palaeozoic ancestors after their palaeozoic progeny, instead of the 

 progeny after their ancestors ; by building his garrets in the air 

 before he has so much as thought of the lower stories of his 

 fabric ; or (to leave figures) by giving a name to the great Cam- 

 brian series, borrowed from a newer country in which that series 

 is not found ; and by vindicating this name by a " downward de- 

 velopment," such as mocks the whole order of nature's laws and 



