368 Notices of Books. [July, 
that the present work may become a work of reference for those 
who may be investigating the paths of comets as in future time 
they may appear to us. 
Geology of Oxford and the Valley of the Thames. By Joun 
Puitiurps, M.A., F.R.S., &c. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
1871. 
THE work before us, the excellency of which is attested by the 
name on the title-page, is calculated from its extremely practical 
nature to do more for the study of geology than any amount of 
scientific manuals. ‘To a young man whose mind is opening 
as minds do open when they are first thrown amidst the new 
intellectual arena to be found in a University town, a book like 
this may be of inestimable value. We cannot imagine a present 
more likely to influence for good the future career of a young 
man for the first time going up to Oxford than one which should 
give a purpose to his leisure hours, lead him to notice the world 
around him, and supply a purpose to the time devoted to recreation 
and to exercise. Such is Professor Phillips’s book. From the 
Malvern and Gloucestershire hills to the Reculver; from gneiss . 
and granite to the alluvium of the Essex marshes; from Cam- 
brian fossils to bronze celts, the river which more than any other 
contributes to the commercial superiority of England lays open 
to the willing student pages upon which are written the history 
of the great world of nature in a style less difficult to master 
than the involved sentences of Thucydides, and in a continuous 
history in which there is no fear of finding more of myth than 
of fact. We shall hope to see the student, who in the morning 
plods through the difficulties of the Greek historian, the legends 
of the Latin chronicler, and the arguments of Greek philosophers, 
obeying the impulses he receives from our English Bacon, going 
forth to gain air and exercise, not to a mere bodily athleticism, 
but, under the guidance of another professor, studying the stone 
quarries of the neighbouring country, watching the flowing of 
the water, and collecting day by day evidences of the changes 
in what now is a river-basin, was more than,once a mighty 
estuary, and has even formed the bed of a glacial sea. The 
work of Professor Phillips is exhaustive. He traces the history 
of those who have made the valley of the Thames their special 
study; and when we remember that this begins with Tradescant 
of the ‘‘ Physic Garden,” and includes Smith and Buckland, we 
see that this is almost a history of English geologists. The 
physical geography of the whole valley and its surrounding hills 
is carefully treated with diagrams of the appearance of the 
country submerged to various depths. The tributary rivers 
receive a due share of attention, and are all traced to their source; 
and then each geological period has a chapter to itself, in which 
