234 ReviewH — Lord Avehuri/'s Scenery of England. 



beds of gravel and sand, erratics or peat. The chapters which 

 follow deal with the general Configuration of our Island ; the 

 Coast; the Origin of Mountains; Volcanoes; the History of Rivers, 

 their Courses; Lakes; the Influence of Rocks on Scenery ; Downs, 

 Wolds, Fens, Moors, and Commons ; Law, Custom, and Scenery ; 

 Sites of Towns ; and Conclusion. 



The full enjoyment of our scenery can only be realized by those 

 who, while admiring its picturesqueness, recognize that the 

 wonderful story of its origin and development is still more absorbing. 

 It is no longer difficult to acquire an elementary knowledge of 

 the mode of deposition of the sedimentary rocks, of their position in 

 the geological series, and of the fossils which characterize them. 



To those who have not already studied the subject, the first 

 chapters in Lord Avebury's book will provide a most useful intro- 

 duction, and, like the draught and pills of the apothecary, the book 

 may be accompanied by a dose of Woodward's Table of British 

 Strata and Geikie's Geologically Coloured Map of England and 

 Wales, each hanging from its appropriate nail on the library wall, 

 ready for reference. As a matter of necessity in such a book, 

 mountains, hills, rivers, and lakes occupy an important place, and 

 of necessity fill a large space (eight chapters and nearly 250 pages) 

 in the scenery of England. 



And here, parenthetically, we would venture to ask his Lordship, 

 since he includes Wales in his book, why does he not call it the 

 "Scenery of England and Wales"? It must be on the principle 

 that the greater includes the less ; nevertheless, the Principality, 

 with a population of 1,698,161 and a Prince of its own, will surely 

 rise up to a man '■ to know the reason why " Snowdon is spoken of 

 as " our loftiest English mountain " ! Spirit of Owain Glyndwr d« 

 (Owen Glendower), awake ! arise ! defend thy heritage as of old. 



There are few points in the physical geography and scenery of 

 our country which can be explained without a clue from its 

 geological construction. In the peculiar courses followed by some 

 of our rivers, which occasionally take an apparently inexplicable 

 turn at nearly a right angle, the secret may lie in the direction 

 taken by great lines of fracture in the rocks. In general the great 

 lines of uplift and the varying nature of the rocks have exerted 

 most influence. The subject is a complex one, but the history of 

 rivers is fully dealt with by the author in the light of the most 

 recent researches on the subject. 



It is, perhaps, unfortunate that figures should ever be used to 

 express the immensity of geological time. There are few readers 

 who can realize the meaning of 100,000,000 years, which the author 

 says must have elapsed since the commencement of life on our 

 planet, or of 200,000 years since the beginning of the Glacial 

 Period, or even of the 50,000 years before our time at which that 

 period may have ended. Geological time is better expressed in 

 terms of the changes which have taken place during its progress. 

 "The top of Snowdon was once the bottom of a valley"; "Our 

 Scotch and Welsh mountains are so low because they are so old," 



