February 20, 1908] 



NA TURE 



371 



at Leure we have two avenues, one S. 23° E. and 

 ■another N. 66° E. (Eig^. 17), avenues therefore prac- 

 tically parallel to the two at Avcbury, and doubtless 

 used for the same purposes. 



Norman Lockyer. 



.1 STL'DV Oh' THE RIVER TRENT.' 

 'pHIS little book is a clearly written popular 

 •'■ account, in part amplified, and in part — rather 

 unfortunately, we think — abbreviated, of the author's 

 prisidential address to the Lincolnshire Naturalists' 

 I'nion. It deals with the geological structure and 

 history of the Lindsey division of Lincolnshire, 

 fspeeially in relation to the vicissitudes, actual or 

 >upposed, of the river Trent. 



The author is not the first, nor is he likely to be 

 the last, to try conclusions with the intricate story 

 of the Lincoln Gap, that sharp and sudden breach 

 through the escarpment of the Lower Oolites by 



are devoted to an exposition of Prof. Davis's work, 

 and his very convenient terminology is explained with 

 all necessary clearness, though the general reader 

 for whom the book is written will no doubt be puzzled 

 b}' the reference without the necessary definition to 

 a " peneplain." 



The author attributes over-much of the levelling of 

 the great plains of the Jurassic clays to the Trent, 

 and seems to imply that while these valleys were in 

 process of formation the escarpments by which they 

 are bounded stood where we now see them, a con- 

 fusion which he shares with many recent writers, who 

 fail to recognise that escarpments are incessantly re- 

 ceding-. On the other hand, it is satisfactory to find 

 that he takes due account of the possibility that the 

 Trent may have been captured by the Humber drain- 

 age in pre-Glacial times, have been restored to its 

 primeval course through the Lincoln Gap in conse- 

 quence of an ice-barrier across the Humber, and 

 again in post-Glacial times re-captured by the Humber 



PAala. 



The .•Egir, Gainsborough, October 



ang the after-waves, 

 Lindsey and Tri 



£. 11^, CarUr, Gainsborough. 

 ally called ' ' The Whelps. " From " The Shaping of the 



which the little strike-river, the Witham, abruptly 

 doubles across into the fenlands of the Oxford, 

 .\mpthill, and Kimeridge clays, and so reaches the 

 Wash. 



Since the publication in 1862 of Jukes 's epoch- 

 marking paper on the river valleys of the south of 

 Ireland, in which the cardinal principle of river- 

 capture was enunciated, the Trent and its anomalous 

 course has furnished a theme and an illustration to 

 writers on our British rivers. Ramsey used it, Mr. 

 Jukes Browne added much additional evidence and 

 gave greater definiteness to our conceptions of the 

 potentialities of river-adjustment, and Prof. Davis, in 

 his splendid contribution to evolutionary potamology, 

 adopted and amplified Mr. Jukes Browne's views. 

 .Still later Mr. Burton further extended the study of 

 the Trent, and furnished data inaccessible except to a 

 Trent-side resident. The earlier chapters of his book 



1 "The .Shaping of Lindsey by the Trent." By F. M. Burton. Pf. 

 xii+59. (London : A. Brown and Sons, Ltd., 1907.) Price 2s. net. 



NO. 1999, VOL. 'J~'\ 



svstem, though not so decisively but that in seasons of 

 flood it swept again across from the old elbow of 

 capture at Newark and discharged its waters into the 

 Wash. The Romans controlled this propensity by 

 the erection of extensive floodbanks, but the de- 

 generate moderns neglected to keep them in repair, 

 so that in 1795, and twice in more recent times, the 

 river has temporarily re-occupied its old course. 



The later history and activities of the Trent are 

 well described, and a special word of commendation 

 must be bestowed upon the splendid half-tone illus- 

 trations, and in particular the two pictures of the 

 bore or .-Egir (" Sea-tempest is the Jotun Mgir, a 

 very dangerous Jotun ; and now to this day, on our 

 river Trent as I learn, the' Nottingham bargemen, 

 when the river is in a certain flooded state . . . call 

 it Eager; they cry out 'Have a care, there is Eager 

 coming.' " — Carlyle). These are, we think, the finest 

 pictures of this phenomenon that we remember to 

 have seen. The e.Kcellence of the half-tone illustra- 



