i8 9 6. SOME NEW BOOKS. 131 



Mantell taught the learners of his day where and how to collect fossils. 

 The existing manuals on field-geology are addressed rather to those 

 who know a good deal already, and wish to apply their knowledge in 

 mapping, or else who have to attempt the unravelling of the structure 

 of unexplored regions. These are therefore too dull and concise for 

 most beginners. The elementary text-books are written too much in 

 the form of digests of known facts and current theories to be suffi- 

 ciently suggestive of observation and thought to the class of students 

 that we have in mind. The present treatises on palaeontology are 

 admirable summaries of existing knowledge or popular sketches of life 

 groups ; but they have not Mantell's stimulating enthusiasm, and do 

 not send men forth to collect with the same energy as did that author's 

 " Medals of Creation." 



Professor Cole's new work admirably supplies this want. It is 

 not a formal systematic text-book, but the student who has travelled 

 across England with it will be more likely to become a useful geologist 

 than one who has read a volume of three times the size. It begins 

 with a chapter on the " Materials of the Earth," which is necessary, 

 and is necessarily dull ; but it is the only dry chapter in the book. 

 After having learnt from this the simple properties of rocks and 

 minerals, and how to identify them, the student is recommended to 

 go into some hill country and study " A Mountain Hollow," which is 

 the subject of the second chapter. Here he learns how to examine a 

 section, to study erosion and wind and water, to distinguish between 

 talus, drift, and bed rocks, to watch the formation of clouds, their 

 descent as rain and snow, and to see glaciers at work, or to trace the 

 signs of their former existence. Thus a mountain hollow is made to 

 serve as an object lesson to illustrate many important geological 

 phenomena. In the same way the student is directed to the valley, 

 along the sea-shore, across the plains, to the craters of dead volcanoes, 

 and over granitic highlands. The three final chapters tell him how to 

 read the annals of the earth, narrate how the stratigraphical suc- 

 cession was first determined, and guide him across the stratified 

 " Surrey Hills " and over the contorted Alpine Mountains. 



The book is elementary, but contains much which will repay 

 perusal by advanced workers, for it has a charming combination of 

 antiquarian references with the latest results of modern work. Papers 

 are abstracted of which the ink could hardly have been dry when the 

 proofs of this work passed through Professor Cole's hands. And side 

 by side with these are stories of last century speculations and 

 scientific hoaxes. Occasionally, the author has accepted results 

 which are of startling significance, but which are nevertheless hardly 

 likely to be verified. Thus he retains life in the Archaean series, 

 replacing Dawson's Eozoon by Cayeux's Radiolaria, though the latter 

 are almost certainly as inorganic as the former. He accepts man as 

 Lower Pliocene in age (p. 241) on the strength of Noetling's 

 testimony. Occasionally, the conclusions of physical evidence have 

 been adopted without reference to the teaching of palaeontology or 

 neontology as, e.g., in reference to the formation of the Caspian Sea 

 (p. 145). But these are details ; in his use of recent references the 

 author usually shows great discrimination and caution. The illustra- 

 tions of geological phenomena quoted are always apt and refreshingly 

 original ; for the book is the work of a man who loves the open air 

 and has travelled far and wide with his eyes open, and he has thus 

 been able to draw his examples from all sorts of odd corners scattered 

 over the north-western quarter of Europe. 



There is one further feature in the book which would alone make 



