A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
History
A century of science in America : $b with special reference to the American Journal of Science, 1818-1918
American journal of science; Science -- United States -- History
Just as in America the base of the Paleozoic was involved in a
protracted controversy, so in England the Cambrian-Silurian succession
was a subject of long debate between Sedgwick and Murchison, and among
the succeeding geologists of Europe. The history of the solution is so
well and justly stated in the Journal by James D. Dana under the title
“Sedgwick and Murchison: Cambrian and Silurian” (=39=, 167, 1890), and
by Sir Archibald Geikie in his Text-book of Geology, 1903, that all that
is here required is to briefly restate it and to bring the solution up
to date.
Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873) and R. I. Murchison (1792–1871) each began to
work in the areas of Cambria (Wales) and Siluria (England) in 1831, but
the terms Cambrian and Silurian were not published until 1835. Murchison
was the first to satisfactorily work out the sequence of the Silurian
system because of the simpler structural and more fossiliferous
condition of his area. Sedgwick, on the other hand, had his academic
duties to perform at Cambridge University, and being an older and more
conservative man, delayed publishing his final results, because of the
further fact that his area was far more deformed and less fossiliferous.
In 1834 they were working in concert in the Silurian area, and Sedgwick
said: “I was so struck by the clearness of the natural sections and the
perfection of his workmanship that I received, I might say, with
implicit faith everything which he then taught me.... The whole
‘Silurian system’ was by its author placed _above_ the great undulating
slate-rocks of South Wales.” At that time Murchison told Sedgwick that
the Bala group of the latter, now known to be in the middle of the Lower
Silurian, could not be brought within the limits of the Silurian system,
and added, “I believe it to plunge under the true Llandeilo-flags,” now
placed next below the Bala and above the Arenig, which at the present is
regarded as at the base of the Ordovician.
The Silurian system was defined in print by Murchison in July, 1835, the
Upper Silurian embracing the Ludlow and Wenlock, while the Lower
Silurian was based on the Caradoc and Llandeilo. Murchison’s monumental
work, The Silurian System, of 100 pages and many plates of fossils,
appeared in 1838.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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