974 REVIEWS 



been confounded with it. The Natchez formation, however, lies 

 unconformably on the Lafayette, as the writer has demonstrated. The 

 contact shows that the Lafayette had acquired its peculiar ferrugination 

 and partial induration and had been deeply eroded, before the Natchez 

 formation was deposited. The latter holds pebbles of the brick-red, 

 semi-indurated sand of the former in its unconformable layers at the 

 contact. The Lafayette sands and gravels are wholly removed from 

 genetic connection with the glacial series, and the inferences from 

 their " torrential " character should be entirely dismissed. The extraor- 

 dinary fact about the lower Mississippi valley is the scantiness of 

 glacio fluvial deposits of a coarse nature. 



The term Champlain is not unlike charity in its mantling function, 

 and the pall of the latter is usually much needed in reviewing any- 

 thing that goes under the caption of the former. Strictly applied to 

 the marine deposits of the Champlain valley and their chronological 

 equivalents, it serves a useful purpose, but when it is made to cover 

 not only these, but the deposits of several different stages of the 

 glacial epoch, its utility is of the inverted order. There is some slight 

 mitigation of these "inherited blunders," to use the expressive phrase 

 of Goode, in the work in hand, but only slight. The Champlain 

 epoch is made to include the low altitude deposits without regard to 

 how they may be sandwiched among the glacial stages. The result of 

 this high-altitude, low-altitude mode of classification is a serious mis- 

 conception of the real nature of the history of the glacial period. 



The weakest points in the book are found in the treatment of the 

 two ends of the geological column, the pre-Cambrian, which is very 

 scantily treated, and the post-Pliocene which largely neglects the 

 investigations of the last decade. 



In the discussion of the antiquity of man in America, the doubt- 

 ful nature of the evidences associated with the auriferous gravels of 

 California are judiciously stated, but the more distant eastern relics 

 are treated with less reserve. The Babbitt find at Little Falls, Minn., 

 is cited as a "good example" of these, and perhaps it is a good 

 example, as the canons of good science were quite ignored in giving 

 it to the public, and the reference of the relics to the same age as the 

 deposition of the beds in the superficial portion and in the talus of 

 which they are found involves a palpable absurdity, as explicitly shown 

 by Holmes. It would seem that students should be taught frankly 

 that the evidence of Quaternary man in America is sharply challenged. 



