Revieus — Sir H. H. Roworth — Ice or Water. 277 



•connectioa with the older and simpler lake hypothesis. Having 

 •elsewhere reviewed the geology of the Teign basin upon the basis of 

 the lake theory/ my attention was called to views which had been 

 more recently propounded in respect to the clays and gravels. In 

 subjecting these to examination I have endeavoured to do so with 

 scientific spirit and method, for having so far interested myself in 

 the problems I desire to find a rational interpretation of the geology 

 of a neighbourhood which is very familiar to me. 



I^ S "V I IE "W S. 



L^IcE OR Water. Another Appeal to Induction prom the 

 Scholastic Methods of Modern Geology. By Sir Henry H. 

 HowoRTH, E.C.I.E., D.C.L., F.R.S. In three volumes. Vols, i 

 and ii. (Longmans, 1905.) 



TO some books justice can be done in a short notice, but hardly to 

 such a one as this. Reviewing " Ice or Water " in the pages 

 of the Geological Magazine is something like condensing an ox 

 into a teacup, once depicted in an advertisement. Besides that — 

 though this reduces the quantity of material — the work is not yet 

 complete. We have only the first and second of three volumes, and 

 may thus misunderstand their author, as we lack his final summing 

 up. Here, however, we are probably saved from any grave error by 

 a lucid and rather lengthy preface, and by being told that the book 

 is virtually a continuation of those learned works with which we are 

 a,ll familiar — "The Mammoth and the Flood " and "The Glacial 

 Nightmare." It may therefore suffice to state, as shortly as possible, 

 the contents of these two volumes, adding, as the book is entitled 

 an appeal to induction, one or two comments on the author's use 

 of this method of reasoning. 



In "The Mammoth and the Mood" Sir H. Howorth, as he tells 

 •us, explains certain well-known phenomena by " a cataclysm on 

 a widespread scale, which caused very important dislocations of the 

 earth's surface, accompanied by gigantic tidal waves " (would not 

 the dislocations cause the cataclysm, if that word be used in the 

 ordinary sense ?) ; and in " The Glacial Nightmare " he prefers it, 

 after a critical discussion, to the invocation of a Great Ice Age as an 

 explanation of the " last touches and alterations made in the 

 configuration of a large part of the earth's surface and of the soft 

 deposits which cover it." 



The opening chapters of the present work are devoted to a critical 

 examination of the Astronomical and Meteorological Theories of an 

 Ice Age ; from which both, and especially the former, emerge 

 in a dishevelled condition. The author next dismisses as unsatis- 

 factory other explanations, some of them only modifications of 

 Croll's, till the stage, as at the end of " Hamlet," is strewn with the 



1 Trans. Devon. Assoc, 1903, pp. 631-645. 



