470 NATURAL SCIENCE. June, 
geological surveys. Queensland, though behind certain of the other 
colonies, has now made the very handsome contribution to geological 
literature which lies before us, published under the authority of the 
Minister of Mines. 
Mr. Jack, after ten years’ experience on the Geological Survey 
of Scotland, was appointed Geologist for Northern Queensland in 
1877, and since that time has been unravelling the geology of the 
country and studying its minerals and mines. A number of isolated 
reports have already been published by himself and his assistants, 
and materials for the present work have been accumulating for the 
last fifteen years. In 1881 Messrs. Jack and Etheridge, Junr., deter- 
mined to combine their labours, and published an Australian 
Geological Bibliography. Then followed a handbook explanatory 
of the exhibits in the Colonial Exhibition of 1886, which in some 
measure led up to the volumes which have just appeared. 
So great a mass of detail and so many subjects are treated of 
that it is impossible critically to review the book, and we can only 
give an outline of its contents. Speaking generally, for the strati- 
graphical and mining sections, Mr. R. L. Jack is responsible, while 
Mr. R. Etheridge, Junr., has undertaken the paleontology. The 
method of arrangement adopted is mainly stratigraphical, each series 
of rocks, beginning with the oldest, occupying a separate section. 
The minerals and fossils are treated of according to the age of the 
deposits that contain them, instead of being relegated to separate 
appendices, as is perhaps more usual. In many respects this 
arrangement is the most convenient, but it is not altogether satisfac- 
tory, for in the absence of any subject index it is very difficult to find 
the references to particular minerals, unless one already knows the 
age of the formations in which they occur. Persons, places, and 
fossils are well indexed. 
The oldest rocks in which fossils have yet been found in Queens- 
land are the Middle Devonian, though below these occur various 
slates and schists of unknown age. Then follow unconformably the 
Permo-Carboniferous, Trias-Jura, and Upper and Lower Cretaceous. 
Between the Upper Cretaceous and the Lower Volcanic and Drifts, 
here doubtfully classed as Miocene, there is a wide gap, and the real 
age of the Tertiary rocks of Queensland is by no means settled, for 
fossil evidence is absent. The curious deposit of auriferous sinter at 
the celebrated Mount Morgan Gold Mine is considered by Mr. 
Jack to be of Tertiary date, though the evidence is not conclusive. 
The section on Post-Tertiary rocks will be one of the most 
interesting to the European geologist, for in these rocks occur the 
remains of the wonderful extinct marsupials of Australia, and of 
numerous extinct birds. Discussing the question of glaciation in 
Australia, Mr. Jack writes: ‘‘ No evidence of a Post-Tertiary 
Glacial Period has ever, so far as I am aware, been met with in 
Queensland, unless the presence of temperate plants on some of our 
tropical mountains be taken to afford the necessary proof.” Further 
on, however, he mentions a recent visit to the celebrated glaciated rocks 
near Adelaide, in company with Professor Tate. Mr. Jack, after 
ten years’ study of glaciation in Scotland, is a far better authority 
than most of the geologists who have discussed the matter, often 
without going to the spot, and we are interested to learn that he 
‘came to the conclusion that Professor Tate’s observation was 
correct in every particular, and, in addition, satisfied [himself] that 
the movement of the ice must have been from south to north.” 
