Notice of some remarks by the late Mr. Hugh Miller, author of The testimony of the rocks, The old red sandstone, &c. &c.

Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of some remarks by the late Mr. Hugh Miller, author of The testimony of the rocks, The old red sandstone, &c. &c. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the publication of the charge. To a judgment thus unconsciously clouded, see how naturally all that followed became distorted. I had said that the proceeding of the author was a fallacious use of a generalization made for a purpose, and upon a principle not properly available for the writer's argument; and the author forgetting the distinction between ^fallacy and z.falselwod, and overlooking too the grammatical relation of the parts of the sentence, italicized the words made for a purpose,'' so that his readers could not avoid the suggestion that it was the fallacioiLS use and not the generalization, which had been said to be made for a purpose inapplicable to his object. Nay more; such was the effect upon the author's mind, that he closed his quotation with an &c. at the very point at which began the sentence which I have read to you, referring to the esteem in which he was deservedly held in the United States —took no notice whatever of the tenor of that sentence, but said, so far the Proceedings of the Academy. It need not surprise you, sir, after such ex- amples, to find that I am said to treat the carboniferous period as the latest of the palaeozoic series. A glance at my phraseology will be sufficient to show you that the series referred to was one reckoned from the carboniferous rocks downwards, (back- ward in order of time,) and that the rocks in this series were selected by me to show the inconsistency of the argument with the facts; and that my choice had no connection with the limit- ation of the palaeozoic system. That my use of the word series was not a novelty, may be easily shewn by reference to British as well as American authors.* I have no wish to multiply these observations; my peculiar personal interest in the misapprehen- * The use of the word series in describing the subdivisions of the palaeozoic system, is by no means an innovation, but is, on the contrary, a return to the language formerly in very common use among the members of the Geological Society, as any one may see on turning over the pages of the early volumes. Synopsis of the Classification of the British Palmozoic Rocks. By the Rev, Adam Sedgwick, M. A., F. R. S., Woodwardian Professor and Fellow of Trinity ColUye, Cambridge. London, 1855.
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