NATURE 



49 



THURSDAY, MAY 19, 1904. 



THE STRUCTURE OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. 

 Ban und Bild Osterreichs. By Carl Diener, Rudolf 

 Hoernes, Franz E. Suess, and Victor Uhlig^. Pp. 

 xxiv+iiio. (Vienna: F. Tempsky ; Leipzig;: G. 

 Freytag-, 1903.) Price 78 kronen, or 65 marks. 



THE publication of this elaborate and serious work 

 __ implies a high regard for scientific education in 

 the countries for which it is immediately intended. It 

 is not a popular correlation of the scenic and geological 

 features of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such as 

 would appeal to the ordinary traveller ; and yet, now 

 that it has appeared, we feel that no one can properly 

 understand the regions dealt with until he has con- 

 sulted this treatise, and thus brought himself abreast 

 with current views. We recently had occasion to notice 

 (Nature, vol. Ixviii. p. 550) the admirable series of 

 brochures prepared in Vienna for the Geological 

 Congress of 1903. The Bosnian guide then fore- 

 shadowed has since appeared, and sums up a surprising 

 amount of recent observations made in the occupied 

 provinces. But these publications do not detract from 

 the value of the great work now before us, which is 

 I essentially a book for the library, clear, readable, and 

 stimulating. Its reviews of successive opinions on this 

 or that controverted area are of considerable mental 

 value, and the authors state their own conclusions with 

 a display of argument and reasoning that is rare in 

 works of reference. As in a good deal of Austrian 

 writing, the human man, scaling the hillside, or watch- 

 ing the great rivers swirling through the plains, is 

 apparent through the topographical and geological 

 details ; and even the pages on petrography, when thus 

 led up to, have an impression of the open air. 



Prof. Eduard Suess contributes an introduction, in 

 which he relates the growth of geological observation 

 in the empire, from the mining operations of the 

 sixteenth century to Partsch and Haidinger in 1850. 

 The Bohemian region is then dealt with by Franz E. 

 Suess in 322 pages, accompanied by landscape-illustra- 

 tions that convey much of the character of the country. 

 We thus see the white quarry on the Schlossberg of 

 Briix, the pastures of Eisenstein under the forest-rim, 

 and one of the great black open workings of the brown- 

 coal area in the north. The author shows well how the 

 Bohemian region spreads beyond political Bohemia, 

 and that, while watersheds divide nations, the bound- 

 aries of hill and plain define geological areas. If we 

 reach Eisenstein, for example, we must go forward and 

 make the plunge through the Bavarian forest to the 

 Danube; on the other hand, the easy undulating 

 country beyond Habern leads us inevitably to inquire 

 into the structure of Moravia. While the great 

 Bohemian " horst " is part of a range that arose during 

 the movements of Middle Carboniferous times, its 

 fundamental rocks are largely pre-Cambrian. The 

 central granites have penetrated these gneisses and 

 phyllites at a period which may be later (p. 56) than 

 the Ordovician, and have profoundly modified and 

 intermingled with the gneisses. The schists, on the 

 • other hand, possibly through their having been nearer 

 NO. 1803, ■^OI- 70] 



the surface at the time of the intrusion, show a fairly 

 sharp line of contact. Similar phyllites appear in 

 Moravia in the cores of gneissic anticlinals, reversing 

 the usual relations of such masses. Unless thrust- 

 planes can be called in, it is clear that this region 

 offers much room for speculation. Dr. F. E. Suess 

 (p. 76) urges that considerable movements took place 

 in Moravia before the great bow of old rocks, stretch- 

 ing from the Sudetic to central France, was folded and 

 upheaved in the Carboniferous period. This is 

 rendered likely by the antiquity of the rocks them- 

 selves, and is supported by the occurrence (p. 114) of 

 pebbles of the early gneisses and amphibolites in pre- 

 Cambrian conglomerates near Pribram. 



The famous question of Barrande's " colonies " is 

 dealt with historically and succinctly (p. 141)- 

 Among other interesting details, we can only refer to 

 the evidence for the existence of central European 

 deserts in Permian times ; to the almost complete 

 absence of marine Mesozoic deposits from Bohemia 

 until the entry . of the amazingly world-wide Ceno- 

 manian sea (p. 166) ; and to the comparatively recent 

 origin of some of the ore-deposits in the Erzgebirge 

 (p. 243). An excellent coloured map concludes this 

 section. 



Dr. C. Diener then enters on his difficult task of 

 describing the Eastern Alps and the Dinaric Karst. 

 He traces the central zone from the Swiss border, until 

 it breaks off against the incurving areas of subsidence 

 on the fringe of the Pannonian plain. The gneissic 

 axis of northern Styria alone survives, and connects 

 the Alps below Vienna with the Karpathians. While 

 Iho ,^uthor's debt to Prof, E. Suess is manifest and 

 acknowledged, he feels bound to join those critics 

 who regard the Alps as resulting from lateral 

 thrusts in two opposite directions, instead of from a 

 one-sided action (pp. 637 and 641). He is unable to 

 recognise, either from the lie of the folds or from the 

 curve of the whole chain, the outer from the inner side 

 of a mountain system. The Dinaric folds thus present 

 their concave side to the Servian mass against which 

 they have been pressed, while the area of subsidence 

 occupied by the Adriatic lies on the concave side of 

 the Alps and on the convex side of the Dinaric system. 

 Very many geologists will agree with Dr. Diener 

 when he says of the southern Alps, 



" Hebung, nicht Senkung-, ist also hier der Effekt 

 der Zusammenfaltung gewesen. Fine wirkliche 

 Senkung hat nur bei dem jiingeren Einbruch des 

 .Adrialandes stattgefunden " (p. 638). 



The remarkably late origin of the Adriatic subsidence 

 is emphasised on pp. 607 and 629, tlie alluvial sands of 

 southern Istria being probably involved, and the move- 

 ments being certainly post-Pliocene. The Alps, on the 

 other hand, are regarded as having remained 

 stationary at this epoch, in opposition to the views of 

 Dr. Heim. 



The island-like masses of folded rocks that rise, as 

 a welcome feature, above the lower Sava plain are 

 once more regarded as the partially buried spurs of 

 the eastern Alps (p. 566), and not as portions of an 

 older system. Dr. Diener finds himself also opposed 

 to the torsional views of Mrs. Ogilvie-Gordon in re- 



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