Excerpt from Address Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Geological Society of London, on the 18th of London, on the 18th of February, 1842: And the Announcement of the Award of the Wollaston Medal and Donation Fund for the Same Year

Adopting from ourselves the word Paleozoic, Mr. Phillips ex tends however its original meaning, and applies it to all the strata con taining organic remains, from the oldest formation to the Magnesian limestone inclusive. His Lower Paleozoic rocks are admitted to be exactly synchronous with those which were worked out as types under the name of Silurian, and yet be entirely omits that term in his parallel table of equivalents, in which he styles them Transition and Primary Strata whilst for the ordinary names to parallel with his Middle Paleozoics, the much newer terms of Eifel and South Devon are made use of - terms of comparison, it will be recollected, which were introduced by Professor Sedgwick and myself long after the establishment of the Silurian type. I ask those geologists who supported me by their approbation throughout my labours, if the name first proposed by him who worked out and defined a system of classification, is to be suppressed when not only no evidence is brought to disprove its value, but when succeeding observers in various parts of Europe and America have sanctioned it. But as this is now simply a subject of nomenclature, and my facts are not disputed, let us see whether for all the practical purposes of our science, the term Silurian, as first proposed, ought to be preferred, in use, to the term Lower Paleozoic, which is to supplant it. The word was chosen because it was liable to no misconceptions, and never could lead to false theoretical deductions. It is, as be fore stated, simply a geographical name, derived from a region con taining newly defined types of succession. When subsequently we used Paleozoic as a comprehensive term for all the older rocks, Professor Sedgwick and myself intended to apply it generally to that great series which embraces the Carboniferous, Devonian or Old l Silurian and Cambrian groups.

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