308 Reviews—Fée’s Darwinisme. 
(says Prof. Whitney) to uphold the theory that has been so often 
maintained, that all, or even a portion, of the Auriferous Slates are 
older than the Carboniferous; not a trace of a Devonian or Silurian 
fossil ever having been discovered in California. Indeed, gold, in- 
stead of being chiefly limited to Silurian rocks, occurs in no incon- 
siderable quantity in Metamorphic rocks belonging as high up in the 
series as the Cretaceous group (see also p. 330). With regard to 
the detrital auriferous deposits, they consist of materials brought 
down from mountain-heights above, and deposited in pre-existing 
valleys; beds of ancient rivers, and in lake-like expansions of former 
watercourses, during the later Pliocene epoch, and not at the Drift 
or Diluvial period, as is proved by the remains of the plants and 
animals imbedded in them. ‘These auriferous deposits were suc- 
ceeded throughout the whole extent of the Sierra Nevada by heavy 
accumulations of volcanic sediments, ashes, pumice, and finally by a 
general outpouring of lava, covering and concealing under hundreds 
of feet in thickness the auriferous gravels. 
[The Hallstadt beds alluded to above, forming a subdivision of 
the South European Triassic group, are well developed in the 
Eastern Alps, and contain extensive beds of Rock-salt at Aussee, 
Hallstadt, Hallein, and elsewhere, which, wrought either by min- 
ing or by artificial brine-works,* yield an important item (about 
£7,000,000) to the Austrian Government. The fossiliferous lime- 
stone, lying above the salt-works at Hallstadt, is worked for 
marble, and has yielded a large series of characteristic fossils to the 
care and labour of M. Ramsauer, who has been also successful in 
his archeological researches in this district, and has discovered in 
the old cellarium of the salt-mines, the bronze pickaxes of the ancient 
people who worked the salt, it appears, about four centuries B.c. | — 
J. M. 
REVIEWS. 
—_++—_—_ 
‘Le DaArwWInIsME: OU, EXAMEN DE LA THEORIE RELATIVE A L’ORI- 
GINE DES Esprcres. Par A. L. A. Féin. Paris, 1864. 
ARWINISM, as the Theory of the Origin of Species by 
Natural Selection is sometimes, especially by theological 
adversaries, absurdly called, has in this author no very formidable 
opponent. M. Fée admits certain modifications of animal and 
vegetable forms, but recognizes no other influence in their produc- 
tion than that of a Final Cause. The extinction of certain anoma- 
lous forms is ascribed to the fact that Nature’s ill-directed efforts 
having failed to adapt their organization to the circumstances under 
which they were placed, they have gradually succumbed to the 
destructive agencies by which they were surrounded, and have been 
removed from the earth by a natural process, not of selection, but 
‘depuration.’ The author’s right to pronounce upon the physiologi- 
* Water, poured in from above, and left awhile to dissolve the salt, is recovered 
by pumping, and evaporated, after being led to a distance of many miles. 
