310 Reviews — Dr. A. W. Rowe — Zones of the White Chalk. 



" the writer pins his faith to Zoology, and to Zoology alone, for while 

 it is true that broad lithological features give us a natural division- 

 line between certain zones in some localities, it is equally clear that 

 these same features fail us in the case of identical zones in other 

 districts ; but the fossils never fail us if we collect with sufficient 

 care." This is doubtless true in the case of a coast-section, where 

 a long tract including several zones is exposed and every bed is 

 accessible, but it is not true of inland sections, which are usually 

 isolated quarries or short railway cuttings, often much obscured by 

 talus, and only accessible at certain points. In such places fossils 

 do often fail us, as Dr. Eowe will find if he ever essays to carry his 

 researches inland. 



The value of Dr. Eowe's work lies in his demonstration that an 

 ordinary cliff-section of Chalk afi'ords ample material for the estab- 

 lishment of zones and for their exact local delimitation. Incidentally, 

 of course, he has recorded much valuable stratigraphical information, 

 and has largely increased our knowledge of the fossils of the English 

 Chalk. There are, indeed, few workers who are both willing and 

 able to devote themselves to the systematic collecting of fossils 

 from every accessible foot of a long series of beds ; few men would 

 voluntarily spend all their vacations in collecting thus exhaustively 

 from one set of beds, while members of the Geological Survey cannot 

 do so, because they are primarily surveyors and have to give most 

 of their time to the work of mapping. If instead of a mere fossil- 

 collector the Survey had a field-palseontologist, a man of scientific 

 training who ranked equally with the surveyors, the descriptive work 

 of the Survey would undoubtedly be improved. 



To produce good stratigraphical work there should be organised 

 collaboration between the surveyor and a palEeontologist, unless the 

 two capacities are combined in one man. In appreciating Dr. Eowe's 

 work we must remember that he does not put it forward as strati- 

 graphical work ; he calls his papers zoological, but inasmuch as they 

 deal with zones they are essentially stratigraphical, and only want 

 stiffening with a little more lithological detail to make them complete 

 stratigi'aphical studies. As it is, his descriptions are frequently 

 incomplete because he omits to notice obvious lithological peculiarities. 

 Thus the zone of BJiynchonella Cimeri near White Nothe is dismissed 

 in eight lines, and the same zone as shown at Mupe Bay in six lines, 

 although its lithology is abnormal and interesting. I point this out 

 simply because the work he has done is so good and so full of detail 

 that one regrets he did not include what would have made it a finished 

 study. 



In reviewing the papers which have suggested the above remarks 

 we shall briefly notice the salient points of each. In his first (on 

 the Chalk of the Kentish coast) he commenced with the Margate 

 Chalk, and showed that the zone of Marsiipites is divisible into two 

 bands or sub-zones, a lower characterised by TJintacrinus and an 

 upper to which Marsupites is restricted, and he has since found that 

 this subdivision holds good throughout the south of England. The 

 next critical point was the discrimination of the zones of Micraster 



