62 Reviews: Ramsay— Geology of Great Britain. 
infusion of comparatively new matter—organic or voleanic—accord- 
ing to the spirit of the times. 
The most famous of geological denudations—the Wealden area— 
has been commonly attributed to the action of the sea; and Mr. 
Darwin once calculated the exact time its excavation must have 
occupied, if eaten out by the waves at the rate of an inch in a century. 
Mr. Ramsay proposes to accomplish the same feat by ‘atmospheric 
influences, which would probably require as many hundreds of 
millions of years as the other fantasy. The denudation of the Weald 
may have been connected with the scooping out of the last portion of 
La Manche before the opening of the Straits of Dover; for there is 
evidence that the Chalk region of East Kent was continuous with that 
of Calais until after the immigration of the present Flora of the 
Downs ; and it is pretty certain that the peculiar vegetation of the 
Hastings Sand-rock, with its Tonbridge and Azorean ferns, had been 
established at an earlier period. The localisation of plants and 
animals was accomplished by those very agencies of which we are 
accustomed to speak in terms as though they were cataclysmal ; but it 
is more than probable that during all those changes of level and 
contour the country would have exhibited to a spectator of human 
capacity the aspect of supreme repose. 
Mr. Ramsay tells us that the outlines and extent of all our coal- 
fields are determined by ‘denudations,’ and implies that they may all 
have once been continuous. ‘This, however, is scarcely consistent 
with Mr. Prestwich’s evidence of the thinning-out of the strata 
towards the margin of the Coalbrook ‘ Basin,’ nor with the prevalence 
of ripple-marked sandstones, especially in Lancashire, proclaiming 
‘old sea-margins.’ Whether the coal-measures were formed on low 
islands, or in swamps like the ‘Great Dismal,’ they must have been 
limited formations; and the existence of a coal-field in America as 
big as Great Britain does not raise a probability of many others 
having been as large. 
The origin of Lake-basins is a pet subject with the Lecturer. He 
admits that his views have met with little favour hitherto, but 
expects they will ultimately be received. And received they may 
be to some extent,—but when it is proposed to explain the origin of 
nearly all the lake-basins in the world by the excavating power of 
Ice, in former times, a large demand is made on our capacity of 
belief. Our own Lakes, those of Westmoreland for example, have 
usually been supposed to occupy depressions caused by faults. 
We do not assert that this is the true explanation; but we regret 
that Mr. Ramsay, when citing many other speculations, never men- 
tions this. The most important testimony in favour of the Ice- 
theory is that of Sir W. Logan, who states that the great American 
Lake-basins are depressions, not of geological structure, but of denu- 
dation. And he seems inclined to believe that glacial action has 
been one of the great causes which have produced those depres- 
sions. Mr. Ramsay’s notions about Rivers and River-valleys will 
probably cause some astonishment to the disciples of Mr. Hopkins. 
Starting with the undeniable postulate that river-valleys are nod 
