APPENDIX I. 



NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



Annals of British Geology, 1893. A digest of the books and papers published during the 

 year; with an introductory review. By J. F. Blake, M.A., F.G.S. London: Dulau 

 & Co., 1895. 



British geologists are to be congratulated on having presented to them in so convenient 

 a form a resiimi of the work published during the year. The volume contains abstracts of no 

 fewer than 730 books and papers, and forms an invaluable guide to those who have access to 

 the originals, whilst to those who have not such access the abstracts will in most cases furnish 

 all the information necessary. The value of the work is much increased by the presence of 

 figures, most of which illustrate newly-described species of fossils, and are reproduced by 

 photography from the original drawings. Several, however, are woodcuts, and these are 

 mainly used to illustrate sections. 



Of considerable value is the introductory review, which occupies twenty-four pages, and 

 in which the author classifies and criticises the more important publications of the year. The 

 work may be cordially recommended to those engaged in the study of geology. 



Collected Papers on some Controverted Questions of Geology. By Joseph Prestwich, D.C.L. 

 (Oxon.), F.R.S., F.G.S. London : Macmillan & Co., 1895. 



The present volume consists of a series of reprints from the Nineteenth Century, the 

 Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, and 

 the Proceedings of the Royal Society. 



The first two articles are devoted to a consideration of geological time, Professor Prest- 

 wich setting forth his well-known views as to the uniformity of geological changes through all 

 time. The opinion most prevalent in England up to the present time has been that the 

 agencies concerned in causing changes at the surface of the globe have acted with perfect 

 uniformity, not only so far as the kind of action is concerned, but also with regard to the rate 

 at which these changes were produced, and only a comparatively few years ago the number 

 of English geologists who regarded any variation in this rate as probable might easily be 

 counted on the fingers of one hand. At the present time, however, there seems a tendency to 

 admit the possibility of a faster rate of change in the conditions of increased precipitation and 

 heightened temperature which existed at former periods of the world's history, and this would 

 be an approach to the position maintained by Professor Prestwich, viz. , that there has always 

 existed uniformity in kind, but no uniformity in degree. 



The second paper deals with the above consideration in conjunction with Croll's theory as 

 to chronological measurements as bearing on the antiquity of man. 



The third paper deals with the age of plateau man, whilst the agency of water in 

 volcanic eruptions is treated in the fourth, an attempt being made to show that the cause of 

 the vast escape of steam from active volcanoes is not that water exists occluded in the lava at 

 the volcanic foci, but that the waters are surface waters, which in their descent come in contact 

 with the lava in the duct of the volcano as it approaches the surface. 



The questions of the thickness of the earth's crust and the rate of increase of temperature 

 on descending through that crust are treated and discussed in the two last articles. 



Professor Prestwich's views on these subjects are always welcome, and geologists will be 

 glad to have the present set of collected papers put into their hands in a convenient and 

 easily accessible form. 



A Popular Treatise on the Physiology of Plants. By Dr. Paul Sorauer, Director of the Ex- 

 perimental Station at the Royal Pomological Institute in Proskau (Silesia). Translated 

 by F. E. Weiss, B.Sc, F.L.S. , Professor of Botany at the Owens College, Manchester. 

 London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1895. 



If it is to the inconvenience experienced by Professor Weiss from the want of a text-book 

 suitable for his gardener-students at Manchester that we owe the present translation of Dr. 



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