July b, 1905 J 



NA TURE 



225 



The formation of ripple marks, for instance, wants 

 fuller explanation than the statement that " they owe 

 their origin to a wave-like motion set up in the 

 semifluid sediment by the water passing over it." 



The work is illustrated by a large number of 

 diagrammatic sketches by the author and photographs 

 by members of the staff of the Geological Survey. 

 .As examples, we reproduce the pictures of two 

 common phenomena which have manv points of 

 general resemblance to one another but a very 

 different origin. Plate xxxix. represents a fissure the 

 strata on either side of which have been relatively 

 displaced by earth movements, either repeatedly in 

 one direction or with a to-and-fro motion, so that 

 the walls of the fissure have been rubbed smooth, 



Our author has wisely avoided most of the shibbo- 

 leths which it is the fashion for specialists to introduce 



;into their ex])lanations of the simplest phenomena, 

 but though students may escape the interruption of 

 having to consider the exact application of mylonisa- 

 tion and schillerisation, which are not in the index, 

 though one is found in the text, they must learn the 



meaning of such terms as synclinorium or geanticline. 

 Difficulties and absurdities in nomenclature are 

 perhaps characteristic of the present phase of scientific 

 literature, and our author has been wonderfully con- 

 siderate in this matter, and has given us a very 

 useful handbook, admirable in the freshness and terse- 

 ness of its descriptions and the clearness and abund- 

 ance of its illustrations. 



fluted, and polished bv the movement. The triturated 

 rock and the fragments broken off fill the crack, and 

 this debris is often penetrated by mineral matter and 

 consolidated into a mass harder than the rocks 

 through which it passes. The walls of the fissure 

 are sometimes altered mechanically and by infiltering 

 water to a considerable depth. 



In Plate xliv., on the other hand, we see a rift 

 in the rocks filled with matter which has welled up 

 from deep-seated rock which has become molten. In 

 this case, also, the immediately adjoining portion of 

 the rock which it traverses is altered, and very 

 commonly shows slickensides when earth movements 

 have acted upon these two rocks of such different 

 tenacity and hardness ; but the composition of the 

 traversing rocks is so unlike in the two cases, and 

 the character of the marginal alterations so dissimilar, 

 that there is seldom any room for doubt as to the 

 origin of each. 



NO. 1862, VOL. 72] 



nOTES. 



Among those who are the recipients of the King's birth- 

 day honours we notice the following : — Lord Rayleigh, 

 O.M., F.R.S., has been made a Privy Councillor; Knight- 

 hoods have been conferred upon Prof. T. McCall -Anderson, 

 of the University of Glasgow; Mr. E. W. Brabrook, C.B., 

 formerly Registrar of Friendly Societies ; Dr. A. B. W. 

 Kennedy, F.R.S., Emeritus professor of engineering and 

 mechanical technology at University College, London, and' 

 president of the .Admiralty Committee on Machinery 

 Designs; Dr. Boverton Redwood; and Dr. W. J. Smyly, 

 president of the Royal College of Physicians, Ireland. 

 Colonel D. Bruce, F.R.S., has been made a Knight Com- 

 mander of the Bath. Dr. W. T. Prout, principal medical 

 officer, colony of .Sierra Leone, and Dr. J. W. Robertson, 

 late Commissioner of -Agriculture and Dairying of the 

 Dominion of Canada, have been made C.M.G.'s. Th& 



