It is often said that controversies advance science. I believe, on the contrary, that they retard it—that they are wholly mischievous, and that all good scientific work is done in silence, till done completely. For party in politics, there are some conceivable, though no tenable, reasons; but scientific controversy in its origin must be always either an effort to obscure a discovery not yet distinctly established: and it seems to me there are but two courses for a man of sense respecting disputed statements;—if the matter of them be indeed doubtful, to work at it, and put questions about it, but not argue about it; so the thing will come out in its own time, or, if it stays in, will be no stumbling-block; but if the matter of them be not doubtful, to describe the facts which prove it, and leave them for what they are worth.

Though the oldest English Whales yet named are found in the Crag, Prof. Sedgwick, a quarter of a century since, obtained from Ely some anchylosed cervical vertebræ evidently Cetacean. The fossil was found at Roswell Pit in the Boulderclay, but the Professor writes, ‘I have not the shadow of a doubt that it was washed out of the Kimmeridge (or the Oxford) Clay, for both clays are near at hand. In condition it is exactly like the bones from those clays; and is utterly unlike the true Gravel bones, whether in the dry Gravel, or the Till.’* This is unmistakeable, for the specimen is mineralised with phosphate of lime; and so could have been derived from no deposit newer than the Crag.

The very important addition to our knowledge of the Belemnitidæ contained in Professor Huxley's Memoir on Xiphoteuthis encourages the hope that, by following the steps of Mr. Day, we may clear up some other perplexities among the Cephalopoda of the Lias. One of the singular forms which presents itself for more complete inquiry is the fossil called by Mr. J. Sowerby Belemnites pistilliformis, found at Lyme-Regis. It is not the species so named by Blainville, which belongs to quite another part of the series of strata. The phragmocone is as yet undiscovered. If a considerable number of specimens be examined, including varieties of figure—club-shaped, fusiform, and subcylindrical,—there will appear enough of resemblance to the guard of Xiphoteuthis to suggest the probability that the phragmocone might be slender and elongate as in that fossil. The same idea has, indeed, already been expressed by Quenstedt (‘Der Jura’) in reference to Bel. clavatus, Blainv., a fossil rather common in the Lias, and which is probably identical with Bel. pistilliformis of Sowerby. Quenstedt expressly proposes to join Orthoceratites elongatus of De la Beche, which was unprovided with a guard, with Bel. clavatus, still deficient of a phragmocone. And, in addition to the English example of that phragmocone from Lyme, he figures (‘Der Jura,’ pl. 17, fig. 9) another, having similar general characters, from the Lias of Heckingen.