Reviews. 67 



after all be "a hitherto unknown group of carnivorous cetaceans, 

 with necks of extraordinary length,"' perhaps allied to the Zeuf/lodon. 

 This form, at present only known in the fossil state, is regarded by 

 Professor Huxley as intermediate between the true Cetaceans and 

 the Seal. No less than twenty-two species of living Cetacea are 

 recorded as British, of which three belong to the Ziphioid group ; the 

 Seals, including the "Walrus, number six species. We may add that 

 the work is an auiplitication of articles contributed to " Science Gossip," 

 by Mr. Southwell, and it contains a number of woodcuts in addition to 

 those previoi^sly published. Footnotes indicate the sources where 

 more detailed information may be obtained ; hence the work will 

 be found a most useful handbook for Naturalists, while containing 

 plenty of matter interesting to the general reader. H.B.W. 



The Gcologxj of the Country Around Xottiiniham. By W. T.\lbot Aveline, 

 F.G.S. Geological Survey Memoir. Second Edition, 1880, 51 pp., 

 price Is. 

 This Memoir describes the area included in Quarter-sheet 71 N.E., on 

 the southern edge of which Nottingham stands. The first edition 

 appeared in 1861, but since that time, as the author points out in the 

 preface, " much additional geological evidence has come to light," and 

 the result is that the number of pages is moi'e than doubled. The 

 geological formations represented are the Coal Measux-es, the Permian, 

 and the Trias. Much of the interest of the district clusters round 

 the Permian, which in its extension southward from Durham here 

 dies out. The Keuper Rocks, with the newly-discovered Basement 

 Beds, and the thin bed of conglomerate that fonns the lowest bed of 

 the " Waterstone " sub-division are described ; but Mr. Aveline differs 

 from the discoverers of the Basement Beds. He not only considers the 

 identity of the white sandstone at the base of the Keuper at Notting- 

 ham with the Keuper Basement Beds of Cheshire and Staffordshire 

 as uncertain, but regards some outliers of these beds four or five miles 

 west of Nottingham as belonging rather to the conglomerate at the 

 base of the " Water stones," and has so mapped them. It should be 

 mentioned that they were originally mapped by Hull as Bunter Pebble 

 Beds, which they resemble in some respects, and are at least sixty feet 

 thick. It is, therefore, extremely unlikely that they can be the 

 equivalents of the few inches of conglomerate that represent the 

 ancient shingle beach of the Keuper "Waterstone" period. All the 

 formations are faithfully and tersely described, and the Memoir con- 

 tains as much information compressed into its pages as it would be 

 possible to introduce within the same limits. There is a good deal of 

 useful colliery iufoi-mation, and the work is illustrated with half-a- 

 dozen woodcuts. Not the least valuable feature of the Memoir is a list 

 of the books and papers bearing on the geology of Nottingham that 

 have been printed since 1711). This is the work of Mr. W. Whitaker, 

 B.A., P.G.S. J. S. 



