DrcrMBER 27, 1906 | 
NATURE 
THE GEOLOGY OF ARMENIA. 
A Treatise on the Geology of Armenia. By Dr. 
Felix Oswald. Pp. viit+516. (Iona, Beeston, 
Notts: Published by the Author, 1906.) Price 
il, 1s. net. 
HIS is a remarkable book from the point of view 
of the mere collector, and, in all seriousness, 
libraries should hasten to secure it. It has been hand- 
printed by the author, page by page, almost in the 
Caxtonian manner, and we are informed in a manu- 
script note that only 100 copies exist. That it was 
printed at all is due in the first instance to the rather 
stringent requirements of the University of London, 
to which it was presented as a thesis. It served its 
purpose there, but obviously deserved a wider circula- 
tion. It now appears with numerous hand-printed 
and hand-coloured geological sections, and some ex- 
pressive, but not equally necessary, plates of fossils. 
The result is a book which is typographically a | ~ 
pleasure to read, each page being firmly printed in 
letters which are really black; and the hard travelling 
which lies at the back of its production is almost 
equalled by the subsequent and skilful industry of the 
author. 
Dr. Oswald’s work should stand on shelves of 
reference beside Mr. H. F. B. Lynch’s fine volumes 
on Armenia, since the geological observations on 
which it is based were made when the two authors 
travelled together through a region of immense geo- 
graphical and historic interest. About half the book 
describes Dr. Oswald’s own original results, and the 
remainder contains a valuable review of what has 
been previously written on the geology of Armenia. 
It is clear that we have here an unusually full work 
of reference; and the author-compositor has not 
shrunk from completing it by an index of sixteen 
pages. 
The mountain-folding that determines the structure 
of Armenia (p. 9) seems to have occurred in Lower 
Permian, ante-Tithonian, and post-Oligocene epochs. 
The pressure in each case came from the south—Dr. 
Oswald writes ‘resultant pressure,’’ which we pre- 
sume refers to the resultant of various forces within 
the crust. ‘‘ The northern limit to all this mountain- 
folding was formed by the great granitic ‘ horst’ of 
the Meschic Mountains.’”? The Caucasus is held to 
owe its present development to post-Miocene pressure 
from the north-east, which broke up the Armenian 
sediments into blocks. While Prof. Penclk in a recent 
publication prefers to regard such blocks as the result 
of vertical forces, Dr. Oswald sees in them (p. 10) 
“as much an expression of the tangential stresses in 
the earth’s crust as the folds of the Caucasus itselt.’”’ 
The volcanoes of Armenia have arisen along the post- 
Miocene lines of fracture, and the larger ones occur 
at points of intersection. 
The most striking contribution of the author to our 
geological knowledge is the account of the Nimrud 
volcano (chapter ix.), the first survey of which was 
made by him and Mr. Lynch in 1898. We all may 
be grateful to the Vali of Bitlis, who caused fifty 
soldiers to encamp in the crater in order to keep off 
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197 
bandits during these scientific investigations. The 
crater is five miles across, and its rim rises four 
thousand feet above Lake Van. The account of its 
structure and petrography is thus by itself no mean 
achievement. 
The existence of Mr. Lynch’s book has left the 
present author little scope for picturesque deserip- 
tion; but one landscape at least (p. 252) is brought 
vividly before us, where the broad dioritic downs of 
Kazikly Dagh end suddenly in ‘ precipices seamed 
by torrents,” and the country drops 5000 feet in four 
miles to the Meiriman Dereh. 
Dr. Oswald’s review of preceding literature contains 
many useful criticisms and suggestions (pp. 355 and 
356, for example). The book is not intended to be 
read from cover to cover as a narrative of travel; but 
it should obviously be made accessible to all future 
travellers in Armenia. GoeAT ys 
OUR BOOK SHELF. 
Position-line Star Tables: for Fixing Ship’s Position 
by Reduction to Meridian and Prime Vertical with- 
out Logarithmic Calculation. By H. B. Goodwin, 
R.N. Pp. xiv+96. (London: J. D. Potter, 1906.) 
THERE are several tables in use which will enable 
a mariner to derive the correct meridian altitude of an 
object when the altitude near the meridian is known. 
Mr. H. B. Goodwin has constructed tables which will 
give a correction of.a similar character to obtain from 
observed altitudes near the prime vertical the correct 
altitude on that circle. If the object does not cross 
the prime vertical, the author employs the circle of 
maximum azimuth. The tables are not general, but 
refer to certain bright stars, eleven in the northern. 
and six in the southern hemisphere. Seeing that 
some of the declinations fall very close together, 
as those of « Andromedz, Pollux, « Corone, &c., 
there might have been some advantage in computing 
the tables for regular intervals of declination rather 
than for selected stars. 
It is not difficult to derive a system of corrections. 
which give the corrected altitude on the prime vertical, 
but are such tables necessary? The problem is to 
derive most readily the hour angle from an observed 
altitude of a known object in a given latitude. The 
advantage of referring the object to the prime vertical 
is not equally apparent; but the object of the author 
in a great measure is to avoid logarithmic calculation. 
This he has effected, and his arrangement is ap- 
parently convenient and sound from the analytical 
point of view. But if the suppression of logs. is to. 
necessitate such multiplication as 303-2x2.97 and 
418.4 x 3-23 (numbers taken from the examples given), 
it is hard to see what improvement has been made. 
We have worked out some of the examples both by 
means of these tables and also by solving the ordinary 
triangle ZPS. We have no hesitation in preferring 
the old-fashioned method. But we admit it requires 
great familiarity with tables before their full value is 
appreciated, and possibly anyone who has given the 
same amount of study to these tables that the writer 
has been obliged to give to logs. would prove the 
superiority of Mr. Goodwin’s tables. But some people 
seem positively mad on tables. Would any sane man, 
or anyone who could work such a sum in decimals 
as that just quoted, use a table for converting seconds 
of time to the decimals of a minute? Yet such a 
table is given here, evidently with the idea that some- 
one would use it to find out that 24 seconds was equal 
