1869.] Geology and Palseontology. 119 



rocks are exposed, and by suggestions for routes whicli cannot fail 

 to be of great service to future explorers of the district. 



Vesuvius has acquired another historian, in the person of Mr. 

 J. Logan Lobley, who has pubhshed a descriptive and geological 

 account of that volcano. No new facts are adduced with which 

 the previous writings of more eminent geologists have not already 

 made us acquainted, but the appearance of the book is especially 

 opportune, when Vesuvius, by another eruption, is again drawing 

 to itself the attention of scientific men. 



Palaeontologists will be glad to hear of the appearance of the 

 first part of the ' Osteogvaphie des Cetaces vivants et fossiles,' by 

 MM. Van Beneden and Paul Gervais. We shall, however, defer 

 our notice of the authors' conclusions until the completion of this, 

 as it promises to be, imj^ortant monograph. 



In accordance with the recommendations of a Eoyal Commission, 

 the Swedish Diet of 1856-57 voted, for a term of three years, 

 a sum of money for a geological exploration of Sweden, and the 

 pubhcation of maps relative to it. Since 1858, owing to grants 

 by future Diets, the work has gone on uninterruptedly, and during 

 the ten years from 1858 to 1867 about 226 square miles have been 

 explored and mapped. One of the results of this survey has been 

 the publication, by Dr. Erdmann, of his investigation upon the 

 Quaternary Formations of Sweden.* He considers that at the 

 close of the first phase of the Glacial period, when the continental 

 glaciers had attained their maximum development, and extended 

 over the greater part of the country, the level of the sea was much 

 lower than it now is, causing the region occupied by the Baltic and 

 the Gulf of Bothnia to be part of the dry land. This was 

 succeeded by an inverse movement, — the sea commenced to rise, 

 and continued to encroach upon the land, until it reached, at the 

 epoch of the transition between the Glacial and Post-Glacial period, 

 a much higher level in some regions than its present limits. The 

 waters then once again commenced to recede, and continued this 

 movement until they had reached, little by httle, their present 

 level. 



The Scientific Society to which Dr. Pteynes intended to com- 

 municate the results of his investigations upon the geology and 

 palaeontology of the Department of Aveyron having been dissolved, 

 he has published them at his own expense, and we now have before 

 us his exhaustive treatise. Two-thirds of the department are 

 occupied by igneous rocks, but in the arrondissements of St. 

 Aflfrique and Milhau, the sedimentary rocks are represented by 

 Upper Silurian, the Coal Measures, Permian, Trias (Bunter, 

 Muschelkalk, and Keuper), Infralias, Lower Lias (Middle and 



* ' Expose des formations Quatemaii'ea dc la Suede,' par A. Erdmauu . 



