362 Woodward's Geology of Norfolk. 



distance, will draw the waters from the southern and throw 

 them over the northern hemisphere, by which the present con- 

 tinents will be once more submerged under the ocean, and 

 again covered with marine strata. In 4594 years from this 

 time the perihelion point will pass the equator ; about which 

 period the author anticipates that the waters, retiring from the 

 southern to the northern hemisphere, may cause another 

 universal deluge : but he consoles the inhabitants of Britain 

 by observing, " at a period so remote it can signify little to all 

 who now 'fret through life,'" whether our island shall have 

 its seedtime or harvest, or shall be buried in the darkness of 

 the deep during the greater part of the next 8000 years." We 

 cannot stop to state the objections which might be made to 

 this theory ; in one respect the author has not done it justice. 

 He omits to take into account the eccentricity of the earth's 

 orbit which is now diminishing; but at a former period the 

 perihelion distance of the earth from the sun was less than 

 the present one, and the impulse of the waters must have 

 been greatly increased thereby, if his system be true. We 

 cannot omit to notice an error into which the author has fallen, 

 by describing the earth's orbit to be in " the form of an egg" 

 (p. 5.) ; and afterwards he speaks of the " broad end of its egg 

 form ; " forgetting that a true ellipsis cannot have one end 

 broader than the other, both ends of the major axis being 

 equally distant from its foci. 



We wish that some competent mathematician and astronomer 

 would examine with attention the cause which Sir R. Phillips 

 assigns for the accumulation of the ocean in the southern, 

 and its former retreat from the northern, hemisphere, as it 

 appears to admit of direct proof or refutation. 



Woodward, Samuel: An Outline of the Geology of Norfolk. 

 8vo, 64 pages, with maps, and plates of fossils. Long- 

 man, 1833. 



Mr. Woodward is already favourably known by his Syn- 

 optical Table of British Organic Remains. The present 

 small volume, relating to a county of which the geology has 

 been less accurately examined than any other district in 

 England, cannot fail to be acceptable to English and foreign 

 geologists. The chief reason why the geology of Norfolk 

 has remained obscure is owing to so large a portion of its 

 surface bein£ covered by beds of clay, sand, and gravel, re- 

 garded as alluvial and diluvial depositions. Mr. Woodward 

 has given a map and general section of the county, in which 

 the extent of the tertiary and upper secondary formations is 

 delineated. The first consists of that peculiar formation, 

 called the crag. The secondary formations consist of the 



