344 Geology. — On the Order of Succession of Rocks. 



fied, or entirely merged, together with the modern classification 

 of rocks, in the improved views which may belong to a further 

 progress in the science, is not improbable : we are of opinion, 

 however, that the present state of geological knowledge does not 

 warrant any material interference with the arrangements ac- 

 companying the tabular view. No part of the world presents 

 such a complete assemblage of the rocks of the geological series 

 as England, and in an especial manner of the secondary rocks. 

 It is this circumstance which has caused geological knowledge to 

 be pre-eminently cultivated by the English. Mr. William Smith, 

 the father of English geology, was the first to assign a proper im- 

 portance to the rocks of the oolitic series : many of them received 

 local names connected with the places where he identified them ; 

 the term cornhrash has been censured as a barbarism ; but it was 

 eminently characteristic — as upon a future occasion we shall 

 show — of the rock to which Mr. Smith, in the first instance, ap- 

 plied this designation. Many of these English names thus given 

 by Mr. Smith, have been changed by French geologists. Kim- 

 meridge clay, so called from a small place on the English coast 

 where this bed is found, has already received in France the re- 

 spective names of marne argileuse havrienne, and argile de hon- 

 Jleur. Oxford clay is called argile de dives. This perhaps is in- 

 separable from the building up of the science ; observations made 

 simultaneously in diflferent countries, will be noted in the respect- 

 ive language of the countries where they are made, and the final 

 simplification of what is really injurious to science, is often re- 

 tarded by a degree of national feeling it is painful to sacrifice. 

 At some future day, no doubt a more simple character will be 

 applied to classification and nomenclature in geology, and what 

 Lavoisier did for chemistry will be done for this science. We 

 shall receive it with gratitude, whether it comes from the country 

 of Cuvier, Al. Brogniart and Elie de Beaumont, the acknow- 

 ledged ornaments of the French school of geology, or from any of 

 their celebrated colaborators across the channel ; but since we 

 cannot adopt the synonymes of all nations into a tabular view of 

 the geological series — and we foresee that the war of classifica- 

 tion and synonymes will be waged among geologists before a 

 treaty of peace is signed amongst the Zoologists — we recommend 

 to our readers to adhere to the established names we present 

 them with, because they are recognised in the treatises most ac- 



