Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors.
Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected section. This may be called the "Principle of the Golden Spike. " Then stratigraphical nomenclature can be forgotten and we can get on with the real work of stratigraphy, which is correlation and interpretation.