Reviews — Department of Mines, Western Australia. 35 



them green rocks. But to distinguish two sets of Devonshire rocks 

 as "greenstones" and "green rocks," as I myself did in ray own 

 paper on the subject, is to make a very fine technical distinction. 

 and one very likely to confuse the non-technical reader. It need 

 scarcely be mentioned that the green rocks, like the greenstones, are 

 often grey ; and that some of the chlorite-schists, alias green rocks, 

 are, to all appearance, neither green, chloritic, nor schistose : hut 

 this is a mere detail. 



Postscript. — The foregoing notes were out of my hands before 

 I had had the advantage of seeing Mr. L. Fletcher's recent work, 

 "An Introduction to the Study of Rocks," in which the author 

 classes phyllites with argillaceous schists, and proposes the 

 term " mero-crystalline " to describe volcanic rocks which are not 

 holo-crystalline. If " mei - o-cry stall ine " might also be applied to 

 schists which are not holo-crystalline, it would greatly facilitate the 

 description of certain intermediate rocks which have been hitherto 

 indescribable. In Geol. Mag. 1892, Vol. IX, Pis. VII and V11I, 

 two rocks are figured, and elsewhere described as a quartz-schist and 

 a chlorite-schist. Both these are courtesy titles, as neither rocks are 

 preeminently fissile; moreover, the one is not holo-crystalline and 

 the other is not prominently chloritic. What is much wanted is 

 a substantive to correspond with the adjective " schistose," a term 

 often used to define fissile volcanic rocks which have no pretensions 

 to the title " schist"; e.g. a " schistose diabase." " Schistoid " would 

 be convenient, but barbarous. A " mero-crystalline quartz-schistoid 

 with detrital quartz and tourmaline " would sufficiently define the 

 prominent characteristics of the one rock above mentioned, whereas 

 "an holo-crystalline albite -uralite- schistoid " would indicate the 

 salient peculiarities of the other. In the one rock the description 

 would suggest to the reader a sedimentary origin, and in the other 

 a volcanic one, a result much to be desired in the cases in question. 



EEVIE "W S. 



I. — Report on the Department of Mines of Western Australia 

 for 1894. Perth, 1895. 



THE rapid progress and brilliant prospects of the gold-mining 

 industry in Western Australia will cause this White-book to 

 be carefully read by great numbers of people in this country. As 

 was to be expected, there is much information given concerning 

 the auriferous districts and the mines in them, over two-thirds of 

 the reading matter consisting of a report by Mr. S. Gdczel, the 

 Assistant Government Geologist, on the goldfields of the interior. 

 Mr. Goczel's facts are interesting, but he buries them beneath such 

 a mass of stilted and redundant phraseology that the process of 

 digging them out is far from enjo} r able, and will hardly be a 

 relaxation to the gold-miner. He tells us that Archaean rocks 

 underlie the whole of the great interior tableland, and that they are 



