84 Reviews — Prof. C. ScJtuchert's Text-Booh of Geology. 



sometimes coincide with faults lie says : " It is important to note 

 that the same fault which coincides with a deeply eroded wadi along 

 one part of its course may cut across a high mountain tract in 

 another part, and frequently at the latter place there is not the 

 slightest change in the contour of the surface to mark the line of 

 fault. Nothing of the nature of a 'rift' is anywhere visible; 

 faults have governed the position of drainage lines in places, but 

 erosion alone has removed the material from the valleys." In 

 discussing the relation of the faults to the Gulf of Suez, which has 

 been regarded as a trough subsidence, he refers to his papers in the 

 Geological Magazine ' in which he has brought forward arguments 

 in favour of the view tbat it is a submerged land valley. 



Enough has been said to show that this clearly written, beautifully 

 illustrated, and well-printed monograph is an important contribution 

 to our knowledge of the geography and geology of the Sinai 

 peninsula. — J. J. H. T. 



II. — A Text-Book of Geologx. Part II : Historical Geology. 

 By Charles Schuchert. pp. viii -j- 405-1026, xxxvii plates 

 printed in text, text-figures 312-522, and Geological Map of 

 North America. New York, John "Wiley & Sous, Inc. ; London, 

 Chapman & Hall, Ltd. 1915. Price 12s. nett. 



rriHE first part of this text-book, dealing with Physical Geology, 

 L was reviewed in the Geological Magazine for September, 1916. 

 Physical Geology is much the same the world over, though certain 

 aspects may be more studied, or certain theories more favoured, in 

 one country than in another. Historical Geology on the other hand, 

 unless it be ti'eated from the view-point of that observer in space 

 whom Suess imagined, almost inevitably takes its colouring from the 

 native country of the historian. This tendency is accentuated, and 

 naturally so, when the exposition is based on lectures to the students 

 of a single university. Above all is the difference marked between 

 an American and a European treatment of the subject. We are 

 therefore not surprised to find in Professor Schuchert's book, 

 embodying as it does a course delivered to undergraduates of Yale, 

 a presentation of historical, or at any rate of stratigraphical, geology, 

 which to one brought up on Sedgwick, Murchison, Geikie, and 

 Prestwich, might almost seem to be the account of another world. 

 We do indeed find such familiar names as Cambrian, Carboniferous, 

 and Cretaceous (and we must rejoice that Professor Schuchert's 

 publishers or his own better judgment have not permitted him to 

 use the Cambric, Carbonic, and Cretacic, which he has long sought 

 to introduce ) ; but even these household words have a novel content. 

 The name Carboniferous has long been restricted by American 

 geologists to the equivalent of our Coal-measures. Then this gave 

 place to " Pennsylvanian ", the Lower Carboniferous becoming 

 " Mississippian " ; and now the latter is split into an upper system, 

 the " Tennesseian ", including all formations from the Kaskaskia 



1 "Origin of the Nile Valley and the Gulf of Suez," Geol. Mag., 1910 ; 

 p. 71, and " The Gulf of Suez ", Geol. Mag., 1911, p. 1. 



