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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



Geology of Northumberland and Durham, with a Geological Map. 



By GrEOEGE Tate, P.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. Nicholson, D.Sc, M.B., E.G.S., &c. 8vo. London, 1868. 



The 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 hsematite-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 jjicturesque 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 Elora 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 charactei'S 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 volcanic 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 



