February 23. 191 1] 



NATURE 



555 



GEOLOGICAL WORK IN BRITISH LANDS. 



I. — In Asia and in Africa. 



"DART iv. of vol. xxxviii. of the Records of the Geo- 



logical Survey of India (19 lo) contains two papers by 



Mr. Murray Stuart on the oil-bearing beds of western 



L 



Fig. 1. — Silt-beds uptilted by recent earth-movements, near head of Son-Sakesar Lake, Punjab. 



Prome and Kama, in Lower Burma. Maps and an ideal 

 section are provided. The strata of economic interest, the 

 Kama clays, are of Miocene age, ranging from Burdigalian 

 to Pontian. The author considers the palaeontological 

 evidence in some detail, following the determinations of 

 Dr. Noetling. Mr. Cotter treats of 

 part of the Yenangyat oilfield, of which 

 a special map is given. Mr. Datta 

 describes siliceous haematites from 

 Chanda, in the Central Provinces, 

 some of which are already used as iron 

 ores. One would like to hear some- 

 thing of the relations of the lodes to 

 the surrounding rocks, for comparison 

 with similar materials in South Africa. 

 The remainder of part iv. is occupied 

 with the results of Captain R. E. 

 Lloyd's visit to the Aden Hinterland, 

 a country rarely visited. The author 

 was able to travel ninety miles inland 

 along a line due north from Aden, 

 terminating at the town of Dala. 

 Here bedded lavas and ashes cover 

 much of the country, and Mr. Vreden- 

 burg (p. 322) suggests that these are 

 representatives of the Deccan Trap. 

 Captain Lloyd shows them to be 

 younger than certain Jurassic strata, 

 and they have been carved out by 

 denudation into plateaus. These lie 

 (P- 317) ^s much as 6000 feet above 

 sea-level. The volcanic rocks are 

 mostly basalts and dolerites without 

 olivine, in this recalling the Deccan 

 series. A curious rock is described on 

 p. 330, consisting of minute augite 

 prisms in a green ground of devitrified 

 glass, with spherical vesicles infilled 

 by zeolites, triclinic felspar, and epidote. It may be of 

 interest to remark that a precisely similar infilling of 

 vesicles is found in an andesite from Brighton, Massa- 

 chusetts. Mr. G. H. Tipper describes (p. 336) the Jurassic 

 fossils collected by Captain Lloyd, which agree with a 



NO. 2156, VOL. 85] 



series previously described by Messrs. Newton and Crick 



as indicating a fairly high horizon. Perisphinctes is the 



prevailing ammonite. 



Vol. xxxix. of the Records is occupied by a review of 



mineral production from 1904 to 1908. In vol. xl. (i9io)> 



Mr. F. R. Cowper Reed, of Cambridge, discusses (p. i> 

 the distribution of life in pre-Carbon- 

 iferous life-provinces, with especial 

 reference to recent work in Asia. '* It 

 is no longer possible," as he usefully 

 remarks, " to maintain that the 

 diffusion of Lower Palzeozoic life was 

 uniform." Mr. La Touche (p. 30) very 

 interestingly shows that recent beds of 

 silt, laid down in some cases in old 

 channels of overflow, have been tilted 

 by earth-nwvements in the lake-district 

 of the Punjab Salt Range (Fig. i). 

 The hollows of the lakes themselves 

 are, with one exception, due to faults 

 or synclinal basins in nummulitic lime- 

 stone. Among the plates from this 

 area is a fine one (Plate x.) showing a 

 " bad land " produced by the erosion 

 of solian loess. Mr. La Touche also 

 illustrates excellently " certain glaciers 

 in Sikkim " (p. 52, and Plates xv.- 

 xxiv.). These glaciers show marked 

 features of retreat during the last fifty 

 years. One of them is formed from 

 snow-slides already charged with 

 debris, and is choked from its very 

 beginning " to its fullest capacity with 

 moraine stuff " (Fig. 2). It thus be- 

 comes almost a rock-flow, in which the 

 stones are held together by ice, and no- 

 ice is visible except where it breaks 

 into cliffs (p. 56). Mr. G. E. Pilgrim 

 (p. 63) describes several new genera 



and species of mammals, mostly from the Siwalik beds. 



A giraffoid skull in the British Museum is now styled 



Indratherium. 



On p. 185 Mr. Pilgrim summarises his present results 



as to the correlation of the tertiary fresh-water deposits of 



Fig. 2. — Part of the stone- filled Alukthang Glacier, Sikkim, showing ice only where frmcture occurs. 



India. He points out that more than a hundred species of 

 vertebrates from N.W. India have been assigned to no 

 special horizons, though derived from a series of beds some 

 20,000 feet in thickness. He therefore supplies a table 

 showing their vertical distribution, which should do much 



