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Having been consulted by the Ordnance Board, in June 1835, Buckland, Sedgwick, and Lyell, as President of the Geological Society, had recommended that De La Beche's geological mapping be extended. This recommendation, which was at least condoned by Lyell, is not incompatible with my intepretation of Lyell's hostility to De La Beche. In June 1835 Buckland, as always, strongly supported De La Beche. Sedgwick at that time was not convinced that De La Beche was wrong on the Devonian question. Only in September 1835, having seen Murchison's recent sections of Pembrokeshire, did Sedgwick begin to think that Murchison might be right on the Devonian question; and in any event he saw the correction of De La Beche and Williams as entirely a matter for Murchison and not for himself; see Murchison to Buckland, 11 September 1835, Geological Society of London, Murchison Collection; and Sedgwick to Lyell, 20 September 1835, in Clark, and Hughes, , op. cit. (32), i. 446–8. Close attention to chronology reveals, therefore, that in June 1835 Sedgwick had no evidence for suspecting De La Beche's competence. Lyell, who at that time opposed De La Beche's interpretation of the Devonian culm-measures, would have been in a minority in questioning De La Beche's competence. In any case, as the elected President of the Geological Society, he was hardly in a position to doubt De La Beche's capabilities.Google Scholar

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