Revieii-s — Stanjord'.s Geological Atlas. 559 



II.— Stanford's Geological Atlas of Great Britain [based on 

 Keynolds's Geological Atlas], with plates of cbaractenstic fossils, 

 preceded by a Descriptiou of the Geological Structure of Great 

 Britain and its Counties, and of the features observable along 

 the principal lines of Railway. By Horace B. Woodward, 

 F.R.S., F.G.S. pp. X and 140, with 34 geologically coloured 

 Maps and 16 double octavo Plates of Fossils geologically- 

 arranged. (London, 1904 : Edward Stanford, 12-14, Long 

 Acre, W.C. Price 12s. Gel) 



EVERY well-informed person at the present day is not necessarily 

 a geologist ; nevertheless, there are a vast number of people who 

 are more or less acquainted with geology (if it is only " a bowing 

 acquaintance," like Mark Twain's with the Prince of Wales). To 

 those more or less interested in this study, and especially for those 

 who have little time to spare, a handy vade-mecum, a small book, not 

 too small, as a pocket-companion, to beguile the tedium of travel in 

 an agreeable and intelligent manner, is likely to command the 

 attention of the public. The book before us weighs only 18 ounces, 

 and measures 5 by 7| inches, just the size for a bicycle bag or 

 a side-pocket, and is crammed full of information of the best quality 

 and written by an experienced practical geologist, who tells his 

 readers what is to be seen of geological interest on every line of 

 railway and in every separate county in the kingdom, illustrated 

 by 34 maps coloured geologically, so that he who rides, by road or 

 rail, can take out his book and look or read as he is so minded. 



Before starting out, the beginner should at least read the first 

 34 pages, which in clear and simpile language will convey to him 

 an outline of what geology teaches about the broad features of our 

 island, and how they have been produced by the agencies of the sea 

 or by rain and rivers, or the slow movements of the solid crust, 

 during vast periods of past geological time ; how the old sediments 

 which form our stratified rocks were accumulated and afterwards 

 uplifted, and then slowly carved out into earth's physical features, 

 just as a sculptor might carve the features of a man out of a block 

 of mai'ble, or, as the same thing is sometimes done now, by means of 

 the ' sandblast ' process — so our hills and dales and great cliffs 

 and rugged mountains have been slowly carved by atmospheric 

 agencies, ice, snow, frost, rain, and rivers, nay, even by wind and 

 sun, heat and cold. 



The reader will get some notion too of the periods of geological 

 time and of the relative antiquity of the various rocks, which he will 

 speedily recognise in the handy little maps of the counties by their 

 several geological colours, first as expressed in the frontispiece of the 

 whole of Great Britain, admirably executed by chromolithography,. 

 as Stanford's know so well how to do it. Each geological colour is 

 numbered in the Index on the General Map, and on a larger scale on 

 the single folding-plate (facing p. 1), which gives at a glance the 

 number, colour, and name of each formation and the names of its 

 characteristic fossils. Then, if the reader be going to travel from 



DECADE V. — VOL. I. NO. XI. 33 



