104 The Cambrian and 



workmanship. Schemes of development and nomenclature worked 

 out on such a plan must inevitably disfigure science by loading it 

 with incongruous names ; and, worse still, must hinder its true 

 progress, by nattering a very mischievous spirit of premature 

 generalization. 



He twits me with " lagging behind " my best fellow-labourer 

 and friend. It may be so ; but I have not clung to the skirts of 

 his garments, or hindered his progress ; for we have not worked 

 together among the Silurian and Cambrian rocks of England since 

 1834. But when the author of the squib seems to tell me that I 

 am trying " to stifle " my friend to serve my own selfish purpose, 

 he insinuates what is unjust to myself, and is unworthy of his pen. 

 I have for thirty-four years kept my neck pretty steadily in the 

 geological collar without ever having known a task-master, and 

 for nearly thirty years I have devoted no small labour to the older 

 palaeozoic series, especially in the British Isles. For every year 

 which the author of the squib may have toiled among these rocks, 

 I believe that I have toiled ten ; and whatever may be thought of the 

 result of my labours, be it great or small, or nothing, this at least 

 I do affirm, that I have stood in the way of no man, and that I 

 have ever done my best to stifle any spirit of premature generali- 

 zation that might rise within myself, lest it might minister to my 

 personal vanity rather than to the lasting cause of truth. Hence 

 I have never been over-anxious to give names to ancient groups 

 of strata ; and where I have used such technical names, I have 

 Avillingly changed them when the occasion seemed to call for it ; 

 and by these very changes, made in deference to others, have I 

 more than once been led into great errors of nomenclature. So 

 far as regards the great Welsh series, I venture to affirm that, 

 from first to last, my Cambrian sections were right in principle ; 

 and that I never misinterpreted my upper groups except when I 

 endeavoured, hypothetically, to adapt them to the lower Silurian 

 groups, which, in the end, were proved to be wrong in principle. 

 When this was at length made out, it would have been an act of 

 downright folly and moral cowardice not to adhere to my original 

 classification of the great Welsh series. I believe my classifica- 

 tion will stand, because it is but a transcript of nature's true pro- 

 gressive development ; and that my nomenclature will stand, 

 because it is geographically true, and is built upon the common- 

 sense principles announced in the opening words of the sixteenth 

 chapter of ' The Silurian System,' and because (though a matter 

 of far less moment) my names have the right of priority. Herein 

 I dare to " appeal to the sense of mankind " — not in the language 

 of poetical mockery and fiction, but in plain prosaic words, which 

 are the honest transcript of my belief. 



To take away from that umbra which has eclipsed the vision of 



