V.—The Devonian Question: Reply to Mr. Kinahan's Note

Extract

In the Geological Magazine for February will be found a “Note in Press,” appended by Mr. Kinahan to his paper on the “ Silurian Rocks of Ireland,” read some time ago before the Royal Geological Society of Ireland, and which I had an opportunity of hearing and replying to. On that occasion I pointed out some of the numerous defects and erroneous views which this paper contains; and could have wished that the matter had rested here, because I consider it highly unbecoming that the Director of the Survey should enter into a public controversy with one of his staff on points connected with the geological structure of the country which has been entrusted to him for elucidation. on the english and scotch surveys such conduct is happily unknown, and however the field surveyors may differ amongst themselves, and maintain their opinions in print, there has always existed a sufficient feeling of respect for the heads of the survey, as well as a just consideration of the interest and credit of the survey itself, to prevent open controversies with the heads of the survey in the public prints the solitary exception. I cannot take blame to myself for having provoked the “Note in press” to which I have referred, because there is nothing in my paper, published in the Geological Magazine, Decade II. vol. v. 1878, p. 529, to call forth the statement on the part of Mr. Kinahan that I had made “various errors in reference to the Irish rocks.”