REVIEWS 637 



earlier interest. He assigns as an especial occasion for adding 

 another to the treatises on glaciology the predisjjosition of most 

 authors to advocate some particular interpretation of the facts rather 

 than to describe the facts themselves. He has made it his endeavor to 

 follow the e.xample of a judge rather than an advocate. To the 

 extent of maintaining a judicial spirit he seems to have been quite 

 successful. I'Uit in assuming to perform the functions of a judge 

 he appears to have overlooked a prerequisite quite as essential as 

 impartialitv, viz., an intimate knowledge of the law and the facts in 

 the case. Twenty years of specialization in petrology is scarcely an 

 ideal preparation for donning the judicial ermine in the glacial cause 

 celelwe. The inevitable lack of close familiarity with the glacial inves- 

 tigations of recent years is displayed throughout the work. It has led 

 the author to depend upon other compilations, and these not always 

 the best. As a result much of the matter does not come to the 

 reader even at second hand. Haworth and Wright were evidently 

 very serviceable in the preparation of the book. In some notable 

 instances a compiler is quoted as authority instead of the original 

 investigator, even when the original literature is easily accessible and 

 well known. Further currency is given to some things which were 

 doubtful at the outset and which have since passed beyond serious con- 

 sideration, for example, the alleged benches 1700 feet above the sur- 

 face of the Great Lakes, and the hypothetical Lake Ohio, based on 

 the hvpothetical Cincinnati ice dam. The lack of an intimate com- 

 mand of the subject also appears in the author's inability to adjudicate 

 theories when it is quite possible to do so. This is pointedly illus- 

 trated in his summation of the hypotheses respecting the formation of 

 kames and eskers, in which he sa3'S : " On the whole, rivers, swollen 

 by melting ice and snow, seem the more probable cause, but it is still 

 open to discussion whether kames and eskers are to be regarded as 

 monuments of sub-glacial torrents or as marking the path of streams 

 which, in the latter part of the glacial epoch, cut their way through 

 expanses of soft and fine material which subsequently have been 

 removed" (p. 168). The latter alternative is wholly beyond seriou 

 consideration, as it is altogether inapplicable to the phenomena. 



The work is divided into three sections, Part I, relating to the 

 existing evidence as found in Alpine glaciers and in Arctic and 

 Antarctic ice-sheets : Part 11, relating to traces of the glacial epoch, in 

 which lake basins and their relations to glaciers, the parallel roads of 



