REYIEWS OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 337 



certain rocks, but the geologist must be prepared to meet with a different order 

 of animal and vegetable remains extra limites, since each district differs from the 

 other in many important particulars. 



Our author places the probable appearance of Man in the world somewhere in 

 the supracretaceous period ; but, with the requisite caution ever present in the 

 rational geologist, declines pointing to what part. He "cannot undertake to 

 decide so important a problem upon the mere evidence of the absence of human 

 remains from tertiary deposits, because such negative applies only to the European 

 and North-American tertiaries, none other being explored." It is, therefore, not 

 for us to decide that human remains will not be found in the tertiary deposits of 

 some other portion of the globe. " Or," continues Prof. P., " if never in Euro- 

 pean regions this result should arrive, who is to assure us that, in countries more 

 early peopled than these ' far western isles,' neither lakes nor estuaries of the 

 tertiary era received and preserved some remains of Man, or traces of his works ?" 

 —p. 193. 



It is inferred that bones have entered the fissures and caves in which they are 

 found in one of the three following modes : — 1. Some of the caves were occupied 

 by predaceous animals; 2. Quadrupedal reliquiae were drifted into other caves 

 and fissures by water ; 3. Other caves, again, communicating with the surface, 

 have received the bodies of quadrupeds which fell into them, or their bones removed 

 from small distances (p. 219). For several interesting instances of these modes 

 of imbedding bones we must refer our readers to the subsequent pages of the 

 work under notice. 



The close connexion between earthquakes and volcanoes is very generally 

 admitted, and Mr. Phillips adds that " it is also capable of sufficient proof that 

 earthquakes generally precede volcanic eruptions." Modern disturbances, however, 

 sink into insignificance when compared with the awful eruptions which in former 

 cycles must have taken place to form the various " faults," and the contortions 

 of strata causing the undulation of surface constituting the immense variety of 

 hill and dale, mountain and valley, and their concomitant geological basins. 

 The ordinary effect of an earthquake is displacement of the solid mass of the 

 ground, and violent agitation of the liquid parts (p. 244) ; and in recent times its 

 effect is merely to produce a yawning of the ground, or a slight elevation of 

 certain parts. But this is no argument against the volcanic origin of mountains ; 

 since volcanic eruptions have probably been decreasing in vigour ever since the 

 beginning of the world. 



" In corroboration of a cooling globe" says our author, " we might here quote the phenomena 

 of ancient organic life, which certainly agree with it, so far as to show that vegetation of a tropical 

 character, corals, and other zoophyta, Crocodiles and other reptiles analogous to the animals of hot 

 climates, formerly inhabited the land and sea near the polar circles ; and indicate that the surface 

 of these now cold zones was then of a temperature explicable only by a greater heating influence 

 communicated from within the earth."— p. 284. 



