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SOME NEW BOOKS. 



Judd's Lyell. 



The Student's Lyell : A Manual of Elementary Geology. Edited by John 

 W. Judd. Svo. Pp. xxiv, 635, with a geological mapi and 736 illustrations in 

 the text. London : John Murray, 1896. Price gs. 



It will be a sad day for the learners of geology when the lucid and 

 suggestive writings of the great geological philosopher are pronounced 

 to be altogether too behind the times to have an educational value. 

 In so rapidly advancing a science such a probability is not very 

 remote, and we are proportionately grateful to those who, like the 

 late Martin Duncan, and the present editor, Professor Judd, do their 

 best to bring the well-known " Student's Elements " up to date. It 

 is a thankless task to revise the writings of a previous author, 

 especially when they have the fame and the individuality possessed 

 by the writings of Sir Charles Lyell ; but among British geologists 

 there are few whose grip of the science in its physical aspects would 

 fit them for the work so well as the learned Dean of the Royal College 

 of Science. 



The original plan and methods of the book are followed, including 

 the arrangement that naturally commended itself to the prophet of 

 uniformitarianism, of beginning with the newer rocks, less altered 

 than the older ones and deposited under conditions less different from 

 those of our own day. Much, however, has been added to the text 

 and much has been altered ; this is especially observable in the 

 portions dealing with stratigraphy and petrography. To accommodate 

 the additions, the more detailed matter is printed in smaller type, 

 some of it being in double columns. This has the advantage of 

 marking for the beginner those portions that he will be wise to omit 

 on a first perusal, and to study when reading through the book a 

 second time, on which occasion it might be as well for him to reverse 

 the order of the historical systems and to take the oldest first. On 

 the whole, this additional matter seems to us worthy of the honour- 

 able place that it occupies, and if we think that some sections are a 

 little too detailed while others are not dealt with fully enough — well, 

 we also know that this is a matter on which no two geologists would 

 be agreed. For the mere sake of illustrating our meaning, we would 

 suggest that half-a-page is not quite enough to devote to the whole 

 Palaeozoic basin of Bohemia, the rocks of which were laid down in a 

 different sea under far other conditions than those of Britain, and, 

 thanks to Barrande, form the type for all the Palaeozoic rocks of 

 south-eastern Europe. Again, if it be necessary to give, as on p. 336, 

 a table of correlation of the Mesozoic rocks in different areas, we fail 

 to see why the large series of such rocks in North America should be 

 represented by only " Freshwater Strata of Western Territories," 



1 We give this on the faith of the title-page : there is no map in the copy sent to 

 us ; further, owing to a misprint in the signature, sheet d d has been wrongly folded. 



