Young's claim was more general than Laplace's, and likewise upheld Fermat's principle even in the case of extraordinary refraction, in which the rays are generally not perpendicular to the wavefronts. Unfortunately, however, the omitted middle sentence of the quoted paragraph by Young began "The motion of every undulation must necessarily be in a direction perpendicular to its surface ..." (emphasis added), and was therefore bound to sow confusion rather than clarity.