C8 REVIEWS. 



defect in a work of this nature ; the author's goodness, kind-heartedness, 

 and high spirits have misled his judgment, and we are sure that if he 

 would remember this in future he would do more justice to both religion 

 and science, and to his own sincere reverence for the one and devotion to 

 both. And now, in all kindness, we take our leave of him and his book. 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRITISH PALAEONTOLOGY ; or, First Descriptions of Three 

 Hundred and Sixty Species and several Genera of Fossil Radiata, Arti- 

 culata, Mollusca, and Pisces, from the Tertiary, Cretaceous, Oolitic and 

 Palaeozoic Strata of Great Britain. By Frederick M'Coy, F.G.S., 

 Hon. F.C.P.S., Professor of Natural Sciences in the University of Mel- 

 bourne. Cambridge : Macmillan and Co. 1854. 



THE work of which the title has been placed at the head of this notice is a 

 reprint of contributions made by Professor M'Coy to the " Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History" from 1849 to 1854 ; and the additions made 

 hi it to the fossil fauna of Great Britain have been principally discovered 

 by Mr. M'Coy during the arrangement of the valuable museum of the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge. As a guide to the fossils named by Mr. M'Coy in 

 that museum it may be found very useful, as the fossils may be compared 

 with the descriptions contained in the book ; but to persons not having ac- 

 cess to that museum, Mr. M'Coy's work will not have anything like the 

 same value, as it is not accompanied by any illustrations, with the excep- 

 tion of one plate and some woodcuts illustrative of new genera. It appears 

 to have been originally intended to have issued a set of plates with this 

 volume, and it is to be regretted that this intention was abandoned in 

 consequence of the expense. 



Professor M'Coy is well known to geologists in England and Ireland as 

 the author of two most valuable unpublished works, illustrative of the car- 

 boniferous and silurian fossils of Ireland; and we may, perhaps, be permitted 

 to express a hope that these works, which were printed for private circula- 

 tion, will ultimately be accessible to the geological public at large, as it has 

 not unfrequently happened that our well-known carboniferous fossils, figured 

 and described in one of these books, have been described with other names 

 by geologists unacquainted with Mr. M'Coy's labours. To these works on 

 the fossils of Ireland, Mr. M'Coy has recently added his " Catalogue of the 

 Cambridge Palaeozoic Fossils," in which many of the fossils described in the 

 present work are figured. Professor M'Coy does not appear to us to be 

 altogether free from a fault, which was at one time more common than it 

 is at present we mean the fault of making more species than is absolutely 



