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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 
Geology of Northumberland and Durham, with a Geological Map. 
By Guoree Tare, F.G.S. (From the Nat. Hist. Trans. of Northumb. 
and Durham.) 8vo. Newcastle, 1867. 
An Essay on the Geology of Cumberland and Westmoreland. By 
H. A. Nicnorson, D.Sc., M.B., F.G.8., &. 8vo. London, 1868. 
Tur Geological Surveyors of Great Britain have not yet, by far, 
finished their examination of the northern counties of England, 
which, though comprising the great coal-field of Newcastle and 
Durham on the east, and that of Whitehaven on the west, and con- 
taining the rich lead-mines of Allendale and the hematite-mines of 
Ulverstone, are for the most part bleak and barren, whether pre- 
senting moorlands of sand-rock and limestone in Northumberland 
and western Durham, or equally barren crags and mountains in the 
more picturesque Lake-district. These regions, however, have not 
had less attention from geologists than the more fertile lands to the 
south, or than the well-worked districts of Scotch geology. New- 
castle has had its eminent geologists, and continues to publish the 
scientific transactions of its naturalists, with successive observations 
made by good geologists from the Tees to the Tweed. Mr. George 
Tate’s memoir, before us, is one of these well-considered communi- 
cations, based on the long experience and daily notes of a local 
observer, to whom every hill and vale, every crag and dene, every 
stream and loch are familiar, who has watched the changes of the 
coast, the cuttings of roads, the excavations of quarries, and all the 
minute but important evidences of geological structure given by 
wells, by husbandry, by pickaxe and spade, from season to season 
and year to year. The principal object of this pamphlet (being an 
introduction to the elaborate memoir entitled “A new Flora of 
Northumberland and Durham,” forming volume ii. of the Nat. Hist. 
Transact. of Northumb. and Durham) is to supply data to help the 
botanist to see how far the flora of these two counties is influenced 
by geological structure; and therefore the mineral characters and 
range of the various rock-masses are specially treated of; but the 
history of the rocks, as successive formations characterized by dif- 
ferent organisms, is also indicated with clearness, as well as the 
disturbances they have suffered by subterranean action, accompanied 
with voleanic rocks, and giving rise to many features of the country. 
Besides these igneous rocks (such as greenstone and basalt, of Post- 
carboniferous age, and Postsilurian syenite and porphyry), Mr. G. 
Tate has to notice :—the superficial peat and gravels, and the older 
gravels, sands, and boulder-clay of the Glacial period; the probably 
Triassic sandstones of South Durham; the various members of the 
Permian group; the rich and interesting Carboniferous formations, 
namely, Coal-measures, Millstone-grit, Mountain-limestone (in its 
upper part calcareous, and carbonaceous below), and Tuedian beds 
(well defined and thus named by Mr. Tate in 1856); the Upper 
