144 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



science, in order to eliminate errors and supply omissions in a subject 

 too wide to be adequately covered by a single individual, however 

 varied his attainments. 



The Lower Oolites in England. 



The Jurassic Rocks of Britain. Vol. iv. Lower Oolitic Rocks of England 

 (Yorkshire excepted), by H. B. Woodward, F.G.S. 8vo. Pp. xiv., 628, with 

 plates i., ii., and woodcuts. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of the United 

 Kingdom. London : Printed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1894. 

 Price los. 



This is the companion volume to the one reviewed in Natural 

 Science, vol. iv., p. 69, and it is by the same author. Whether the 

 strictures then passed on the " get-up " of the volume have led to 

 improvement, we will not presume to say ; at any rate, the present 

 volume shows a pleasing contrast to the earlier one, though it is still 

 much below the standard befitting such a publication. The volume 

 deals with the Lower Oolitic rocks of England, Yorkshire being ex- 

 cepted. Such a division of the geographical extent of the Lower 

 Oolite may be convenient ; but it seems to give undue prominence 

 to Yorkshire, and to throw an unfair burden on the author of the 

 present treatise. It is an immense, and, if we may say so, too 

 ambitious a task for one man to cover so much ground. Such a 

 proceeding may indeed possess the advantage that if the author be a 

 strict palaeontologist his readers know that, by whatever names he 

 alludes to species, the same form receives the same name in different 

 districts. This is, of course, not the case with different observers, and 

 hence much of the difficulty of geological correlation results. Unfor- 

 tunately, even this advantage is thrown away in the present instance. 

 The weakest part of the whole work is the palaeontology, not because of 

 any want of ability on the part of those responsible for it, but because 

 they cannot bring themselves to appreciate the needs of modern work. 

 At the same time, the wisdom of expecting two or three men to grapple 

 with all the present intricacies of palaeontology, until separate mono- 

 graphs placing the subject in available form have been prepared, may 

 well be doubted. In consequence of this policy the result is, as the 

 Director-General says in a somewhat apologetic preface, " A general 

 memoir which is intended to present a broad but detailed picture." 

 We have no fault to find with this intention ; but the detail should be 

 accurate. 



The scope of the volume is from the zone of Ammonites Jurensis to 

 the Cornbrash. The zone of ^. jurensis was treated in the companion 

 volume of the Lias. It is here included to form, with the A. opalinns- 

 zone, a division, " Midford Sand," which is parted between the Lias 

 and the Inferior Oolite — the term Midford Sand being qualified by 

 the words " Yeovil " or " Cotteswold," according to locality, a con- 

 cession which will be understood by those acquainted with the strata 

 and with recent literature. Besides the zone of A . opalimis, only three 

 other zones are admitted in the Inferior Oolite. The labour of further 

 subdivision has been shirked, under the plea that other zones are only 

 local — a curious plea, when some of those not admitted were traced 

 across Europe thirty and forty years ago. 



The whole of what is called "Great Oolite Series" — from Fuller's 

 Earth to the Cornbrash — is divided into two zones, of which the 

 Cornbrash takes one, that of A mmonites macrocephalus. Something seems 

 to require explanation here. A. macrocephalus has usually been 



