328 Reviews — Jtidd's Students' Lyell. 



II. — The Students' Lyell: a Manual of Elementary Geology. 

 Edited by John W. Judd, C.B., LL.D., F.K.S., Professor of 

 Geology, and Dean of the Royal College of Science, London. 

 With a Geological Map and 736 Illustrations in the text. 

 8vo, pp. [24] and 636. (London, 1896 : John Murray. 

 Price 9s.) 



THE editor of the students' textbook before ns says — " The 

 writings of Sir Charles Lyell occupy so undisputed a position 

 among the classics of science that no apology is needed for the issue 

 of the present work." Still the question may not unnaturally be 

 asked what is the claim, what is the secret charm, of Lyell's 

 writings which have attracted men of science and the public so 

 strongly to accept his teachings, and even now, after he himself has 

 passed away more than twenty years, his name is still a talisman to 

 the seeker after geological truths, and his deductions are still held to 

 be the guiding principles of our science. 



If we look carefully into our Lyell we shall find that the writer 

 is not only the historian and teacher, but he is also the observer and 

 the inquirer. He takes us with him and shows us the action of rain 

 and rivers on the surface of the land ; the formation of river-valley 

 terraces and deltas ; the action of the sea, the wasting of cliffs, the 

 formation of shoals and sandbanks, and the transport of materials 

 along our coasts. We can pry with him into the extinct craters of 

 the Auvergne or watch the still active volcanoes of Etna or Vesuvius. 

 We learn from him the effects which have been brought about 

 by the upheaval and foldings of the earth's crust, and the changes 

 produced in the configuration of our continents by the agents of 

 denudation during the gradual elevation of the land, and subsequently 

 by the slow but untiring efforts of those subaerial agents ice, frost, 

 snow, rain, and rivers, through vast periods of time over the broad 

 surfaces of the earth. 



Under Lyell's guidance we are led step by step from the 

 operations of Nature now taking place around us, to reason upon 

 the condition of the earth's surface in past ages, how these earlier 

 physical changes were brought about, and what was their effect 

 upon climate and life. 



As we pursue our inquiry further and further back into the past, 

 we perceive that, notwithstanding the numerous changes which our 

 earth has undergone, and the appearance and disappearance of some 

 entire groups of organisms, other persistent types have survived, 

 often but little modified through the lapse of vast eons of time down 

 to our own day. The conclusion is strongly pressed upon us that 

 we are not dealing, as the earlier writers supposed, with a series of 

 detached and isolated geological events or periods, each separated 

 from the other and heralded by a huge catastrophe which swept 

 away all pre-existing life and was succeeded in each case by a brand- 

 new creation of its own. We now know that notwithstanding the 

 varied changes of land and sea conditions which our earth has 

 witnessed, there never was a period of total extinction of life since 

 the first organic beings made their appearance on our planet, but 



