136 Reviews — Dall\ Tertianj Fauna of Florida. 



which they owe their origin have been unequal, and to show the 

 direction of these inequalities. Dififerences in the depth of the 

 erosion of the solid rocks and in the breadth and the thickness of 

 the detritic deposits should also be noted. 



9. It is obvious that great importance attaches to the organic 

 remains of the raised beaches. Not only should the detritic deposits 

 be carefully looked over, but research should also be made in the 

 rocky platforms, the cliffs, and caves, where one might find boring 

 shells, cirripedes, or adherent corals. 



la E "V I E "VT" S. 



I. — The Marine Tertiary Fauna of America and Europe. 

 By Clement Reid, F.R.S. 



THFi completion of Professor W. H. Dall's monograph on the 

 Tertiary Fauna of Florida, begun in 1885, places in our hands 

 exceedingly valuable material for the study of certain problems that 

 have much exercised European geologists.^ It is at last possible 

 to make some sort of comparison between the raolluscan faunas 

 inhabiting the two sides of an ocean in Tertiary times ; fresh light 

 is thrown on the vexed question of the connection or isolation of 

 the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at various periods; and incidentally 

 we may perhaps learn something as to the former course of the 

 Gulf Stream. 



We are not prepared to criticise, and it is impossible to analyse 

 in detail, the descriptions of the mollusca in so large a monograph. 

 Attention should be drawn, however, to the beautiful way in which 

 the book is printed and illustrated ; and we must congratulate the 

 Wagner Free Institute on the high standard which has been kept 

 up. The only complaint that might be made from an artistic 

 standpoint is that the numerous plates look perhaps a trifle hard. 

 But anyone who has worked much at the critical determination of 

 closely allied species will recognise that this, if a fault at all, is 

 a fault on the right side; these illustrations, for scientific purposes, 

 are far better than the soft and somewhat woolly lithographs to 

 which we often have to refer. 



The deposits which yield the mollusca range in time from Eocene 

 to Pliocene, and include various strata on the western side of the 

 Atlantic besides those of Florida. Almost all the species diifer from 

 those of Europe ; and thus they do not support the idea, suggested 

 by a study of the echinoderras, that during Oligocene times the 

 Mediterranean region may have been connected with the Antilles by 

 a continuous coast or belt of islands. 



The discordance between the mollusca and the echinoderms, just 

 referred to, raises a question of some interest. Is it not a discordance 



' '♦ Contributions to the Tertiary Fauna of Florida," by Professor W. H. Dall, 

 Wagner Free Institute of Science, Philadelphia, pp. 1620 and pis. Ix (1890-1903). 



