118 Reviews—Baker’s ‘ Maxims ;’ Kelly's ¢ Errors, 
&e., are admirable, and evince a master-mind. But indeed there is 
no part of the book which does not deserve perusal. The author 
means, if another edition is called for, to enlarge the work ; and we 
can offer him no better compliment than to say, that we wait with 
interest for the second edition. 
We wish we could say as much for the next book on our table. 
We know the author as a geologist of some repute, and long expe- 
rience; and he has done good service among the rocks of his native 
country. A better hammer was never wielded; and, if he had per- 
severed in mapping strata and collecting fossils, as he began, and 
never written a controversial book, 14 would, we think, have been the 
better for his fame. We are bound to criticize as well as praise 
him. 
His object in ‘ Notes upon the Errors of Geology’ is stated in the 
preface. It is ‘to show that the approved geological theories of the 
last forty years, as well as all that went before them, require to 
be corrected. So far we agree with him. His arguments, he says, 
convince himself; and, as his ‘new theory is a startling one, and 
nothing (he says) is proposed in it which is impossible,’ we ought to 
gain something by its study. ‘It is an unpalatable task,’ he remarks 
truly, ‘and perhaps ungracious, to find fault with the speculations, 
or the visions, or the fancies of anyone. We should like therefore 
to avoid doing so, and will endeavour to be as lenient as possible ; 
though, as the author says he expects strong criticism, it might be 
as well to fulfil his expectation. The purely geological part of the 
work has some merit, although the preface starts with an error. Half 
the Devonian fossils are not common to the Carboniferous rocks; and 
Mr. John Kelly ought by this time to know better. The book is to 
produce a great change in the ‘fundamental parts’ of Geology; and, 
if Hutton asserted that ‘ our planet is built of the ruins of an older 
world, and that before i there were pre-existing continents’ (p. 4), 
we may well wish for some improvement. ‘Such imaginary conti- 
nents, our author says, ‘do not appear to have any facts to support 
them.’ And he has an immense objection to an older world, which 
must have been made out of an older still, and so on,—like the fleas 
in the parable. But to be serious, Mr. Kelly must not try to re- 
arrange the whole of the earth’s crust. We have systems enough 
already, and we do not want that on p. 7. 
After pitching over Hutton, our author attacks Murchison and 
Lyell, but is more gracious towards Sedgwick. His observations 
are so scattered, that it is difficult to follow them ; but we think his 
remarks on the possibility of forming Coal-measures out of the waste 
of continents, at the present rate of atmospheric action, are very 
reasonable. So also about the origin of the Old Red Sandstone, which 
was certainly, to a large extent, volcanic. So, indeed, are many 
rocks which have been supposed to be chiefly of aqueous origin. 
And Professor Sedgwick’s long-reiterated axiom, that the mass of 
our Paleozoic trap-rocks are lavas recomposed by marine action, 
’ finds an energetic expositor in the author of this book. His idea 
extends further, for he would break up these volcanic rocks, granite 
