satisfied themselves that the region called Cambria, at a time, it will be recollected, when none of its fossils were described, is made up of the same strata, and contains the same organic remains, as the lower Silurian rocks, whose contents were so long ago described by myself. Inquiries and researches in various parts of Europe, in which I have taken part, and in America and other countries, have been followed by similar results; and as the lower Silurian types of life have everywhere proved to be the oldest, the term Cambrian has never yet been applied to strata characterised by any group of animals peculiar to them. The adoption of the proposal of Professor Sedgwick would, in truth, destroy the Silurian system of rocks. For whilst he leaves me the Caradoc sandstone, he would cut away from it the next underlying formation, or my own Llandeilo flags; though it is known to every one who has worked in these primeval rocks, that many of the same species of shells and trilobites characterise both the Caradoc and Llandeilo formations. How, then, is the geologist to draw any line of separation through the middle of a group, the members of which are thus naturally united? How call one part of it Silurian, and another Cambrian ? How, indeed, break up a natural system of life in which a great number of fossils are found to be common to its upper and lower divisions? That the Silurian base-line, on which Professor Sedgwick lays so much stress, was inaccurately defined in many parts when my labours in Siluria terminated, is very true; but it was essentially correct in Shropshire, and all that might lie beneath it was left to himself to determine. The chief phenomena I described in Siluria, after seven years of labour, have stood the test of time; and a companion whose friendship I shall never cease to value, must not lay to my door the loss of a Cambrian kingdom, in the occupation of which I had no share. Its invaders have been the geological surveyors, who literally could not do otherwise than interpret a region (the fossil contents of which had never been delineated) except by comparing it with tracts long well known, through my detailed descriptions of their rocks and fossils. These surveyors have shewn, that the very strata which in Shropshire and Montgomeryshire I described as lower Silurian, to the west of my "Cambrian" Longmynd, roll over in great undulations to Snowdon itself. Hence it is now useless to refer back to the inaccurate portion of a line of boundary on my old map, which is little more than a demarcation between my own hunting-grounds and those of my friend. Cambria was, indeed, his own country, in which, amid grand contortions of the rocks, he had ably mastered many physical difficulties besides those of slaty cleavage: and I respected this territory, in the full persuasion that its strata would prove to be of higher antiquity than my own, and, if so, that their contents would be distinct. The appeal to nature by our associates has decided otherwise. When we take leave of Wales, where the tombs of primeval life are obscured by numerous sheets of porphyry and other igneous rocks, how clearly do we read in the book of nature, opened out in the north of continental Europe, that Silurian fossils constitute the earliest recognisable creation. This fact I have explained in the first chapters of “Russia and the Ural Mountains." It is also proved in the works of Barrande on Bohemia, Hall and other geologists in the United States, and in Canada by Logan. In all these countries, as well as in France and Spain, where they have been analysed by De Verneuil and his countrymen, or in Portugal, where they have been recognised by Daniel Sharpe, the lowest discoverable fossils have been invariably identified as Silurian; whilst Bronn, in Germany, and D'Orbigny, in France, have so tabulated them. In conclusion, I may remark, that if my friend's suggestion were capable of adoption, a result must follow, which even in his zeal to animate his Cambrian rocks, he could not wish to carry out-viz., the erasure of the word Silurian from the geological maps of the continent of Europe, and even from those of Scotland and Ireland! In most of these regions, wherever Silurian rocks exist, it is their lower part only which prevails; and hence all such strata may be claimed as Cambrian, on the very same grounds as those which recently induced Professor Sedgwick to term “Cambrian” a ridge of rocks in South Cornwall, which, from its well-known imbedded fossils, was pronounced by me to be Silurian, in 1846. On the same principle, the tracts of the north of Ireland, described as Silurian by Portlock, must now change to "Cambrian ;" and even the very Irish fossils collected by Griffith,* and named Silurian by that author and M'Coy, must be rebaptized. These, and the great mass of the Scottish and continental rocks of this age, offer scarcely any representatives of the upper Silurian group; and hence, if deprived of all lower Silurian strata, the now wide-spread Silurian system would be almost restricted to the borders of England and Wales, a part of Cumberland, and the island of Gothland. As this must inevitably be the issue, if the proposed division of the older British rocks were generally applied, I have been compelled to state my objections plainly, and to point out the confusion and vast changes which must ensue, if a nomenclature be disturbed, which, founded on a natural arrangement, has been extended by my contemporaries to all quarters of the globe. RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON. P.S.-The following poetical squib from the pen of a mutual friend and a profound naturalist, who listened to the recent discussion on this subject, at the Geological Society, may prove more effective than my prose, in sustaining the rights of Siluria and Carac tacus: *Author of the Geological Map of Ireland. "Silurian beds we in myriads number, 6 Cambrian strata stat nominis umbra,' S. says M. knows not his beds when he's got 'em, SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. METEOROLOGY. 1. Five Hundred Persons destroyed by a Water-Spout.-On Saturday intelligence was received at Lloyd's, under date Malta, Monday, the 8th instant, of a most awful occurrence at the island of Sicily, which had been swept by two enormous water-spouts, accompanied by a terrific hurricane. Those who witnessed the phenomena describe the water-spouts as two immense bodies of water reaching from the clouds, their cones nearly touching the earth, and, as far as could be judged, at a quarter-of-a-mile apart, travelling with immense velocity. They passed over the island near Marsala. In their progress houses were unroofed, trees uprooted, men and women, horses, cattle, and sheep were raised up, drawn into their vortex, and borne on to destruction: during their passage rain descended in cataracts, accompanied with hailstones of enormous size, and masses of ice. Going over Castelamare, near Stabia, it destroyed half of the town, and washed 200 of the inhabitants into the sea, who all perished. Upwards of 500 persons have been destroyed by this terrible visitation, and an immense amount of property, the country being laid waste for miles. The shipping in the harbour suffered severely, many vessels being destroyed, and their crews drowned. After the occurrence, numbers of dead human bodies were picked up, all frightfully mutilated and swollen. GEOLOGY. 2. Sir Charles Lyell on Progressive Geological Development.— Sir Charles Lyell in a lecture read at Ipswich a short time ago, on Progressive Development, concluded by explaining the theory which he had advocated in his works, in opposition to that of progressive development. He believed that there had been a constant going out and coming in of species, and a continual change going on in the position of land and sea, accompanied by great fluctuation in climate; that there had been a constant adaptation of the vegetable and ani mal creations to those new geographical and climatal conditions. At the present moment we found contemporaneously a marsupial fauna in Australia, and mammalia of a different and higher grade in Asia and Europe; we also found birds without mammalia in New Zealand, reptiles without land quadrupeds in the Galapagos Archipelago. and land quadrupeds without reptiles in Greenland. In like mar ner, in successive geological eras, certain classes, such as the rept may have predominated over other vertebrata throughout wide areas; but there is no evidence that the adaptation of the fauna, as above explained, had been governed by any law of progressive development. In those classes of the invertebrata which were best known, and fully represented in a fossil state at all geological periods, the oldest or Silurian fauna was as highly developed as the corresponding fauna in the recent seas. Our ignorance of the inhabitants of the ancient lands was the chief cause of our scanty acquaintance with the highly-organised beings of remote epochs.-(Literary Gazette, No. 1824, p. 17.) 3. Desor on the Drift of North America.—The drift is the last phase of any importance through which the earth passed before it became fitted for the habitation of man. Were it not for these deposits, a great portion of this continent, including the district embraced in this report, would have been a waste of naked and barren rocks, covered partially with heaps of dry sand, or rough detrital materials. Through the long-continued agency of water, these materials have not only been reduced and dispersed, but also mingled in such proportions as to afford a most appropriate soil for vegetable and animal life. When afterwards the rise of the continent caused the waters to recede within their present limits, they left behind them those wide drift-covered plains, destined to become, in the lapse of time, the seat of an industrious, intelligent, and prosperous nation. We think ourselves justified in considering the period when the waters, after having done their work, began to recede, as the beginning of that new and grand era which has been properly called the Era of Man, and of which the alluvial period is the introduction.—(American Journal of Science and Arts, vol. xiii., No. 37, 2d Series, p. 109.) 4. Lieut. Charles Henry Davis on the Connection between Tides and Alluvial Deposits.—So long ago as September 1848, he wrote, "I have recently arrived at some interesting conclusions concerning the connection between the tides and other currents, and the alluvial deposits in the depths and on the borders of the ocean; and my views bear out the theory that attributes the principal changes in the conditions of the earth's surface to causes now in operation. I am able, I believe, to shew a permanent and mutual relation between the local and general tides on the one hand, and the eastern border of the United States on the other; between the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and the currents by which they are washed. The sandy deposits on the Atlantic border are remarkable in outline as well as in quantity. A narrow strip on the coasts of Florida and Georgia spreads out into those prominent capes and enormous banks and shoals which give such a peculiar character to our navigation. On the shores of Europe the vast deposits of similar material at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, and in the North Sea, are to be traced to the same laws of tidal action. The theory will also account for simi lar deposits elsewhere, and for banks and shoals composed of the coralline detritus in the Indian Seas." Since this was written, Lieut. Davis has given the American Academy his views on what may be termed Tidal Geology, and the consequent formation of shoals, banks, bars, beaches, nooks, and sea-walls; and he has succeeded in tracing the effects of great causes through all their mysterious phases, with the cautious observation and inductive experiment which science demands.—(Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. xxi., p. xcii.) In this note we 5. Different Gneiss Formations.—-Many years ago we observed in our Highlands, gneiss associated with conglomerate, and great veins of gneiss traversing gneiss. These facts have been verefied by the discovery of similar phenomena in other countries. have only space for the following. Gneiss is now divided into the following formations: 1. Primary gneiss, that associated with certain granites, and forming the fundamental or oldest formation of the crust of the earth; 2. Transition gneiss, that which rests upon transition rocks, as greywacke, clay-slate, and old red sandstone, and even alternates with them; 3. Secondary gneiss. This formation rests upon lias, and is well seen in Switzerland. We have no intimation that gneiss has been met in the tertiary class. 6. Pseudomorphic Nature of Serpentine. Many years ago Steffens and Jameson noticed the gradual transitions from trap to serpentine, as observed in Germany and Scotland. Very lately the celebrated George Rose of Berlin has illustrated this important view in a very interesting manner.-(Leonhard and Bronn's Jahrbuch, 5 Heft, 1851.) 7. Cause of the Thermal Waters in Western Asia-Minor.—The cause of the abundance of warm springs in this quarter of the globe, in all formations from the alluvial to the oldest rocks, is doubtless owing to the extensive igneous action within no great depth beneath the surface of the country; a fact evinced by the frequency of earthquakes, but more especially by their extent; for they almost invariably extend from one end of it to the other, as well as to the neighbouring islands. Neither time nor change of government has contributed so much to the destruction of the hundreds of magnificent cities which once covered this country, as the desolating influence of the earthquake; and many are the cities that now exist, which have been prostrated over and over again, and rebuilt, each time in diminished splendour, until at last they are little better than collections of huts, when contrasted with their original condition. All the country at the present day seems to be as much subject to them as formerly. The only part of Western Asia-Minor where phenomena are seen strictly analogous to those of active volcanoes, is in the Catacecaumene or Burnt district, situated in Lydia, about one hundred miles east of Smyrna. Numbers of volcanic cones exist in the neighbour |