280 Revieios — Juhes- Browne s Student's Handbook of Geology. 



As usual in treatises of this class, but scant courtesy is paid to 

 the post-Piioceue deposits, especially the non-Glacial ones. They 

 generally come last, and, like the final letters in an encj'clopsedia, 

 or the unfortunate Invertebrata in many a so-called Natural History 

 Book, there is no room left for adequately dealing with them. Dare 

 we suggest that the greater difficulty in correctly unravelling their 

 history as compared with their more showy precursors in geologic 

 time has also something to do with the case ? Anyhow, the refusal 

 to grant them a ' system ' name to themselves is, we think, for many 

 reasons to be regretted. 



The order adopted in treating of each system is to give, first, the 

 Nomenclature and Classification, then come the Life of the Period, 

 the Stratigraphy, the Physical Geography, and finally a list of 

 Eeferences. Where they lend themselves to it, these sections are 

 appropriately, though we feel bound to say not always satisfactorily, 

 illustrated ; while a full index concludes a well got up volume so 

 far as regards paper and print. The illustrations are of very unequal 

 merit. The new maps and sections are most admirable, and so too 

 are some of the figures of fossils. Far too many of these latter, 

 however, are from old and worn-out blocks, like the figure of 

 Homalonotus on p. 141, which first did duty so many a long year 

 ago that we scarce like to compute its age ; while others, like the cut 

 at the top of the same page, looking like some post-Bank-holiday 

 fragment of feminine adornment, scarcely depict the objects they 

 ostensibly represent. We are thankful to record, however, that the 

 pig-tailed Mammoth with his wooden shoes is conspicuous by his 

 absence. 



On the whole Mr. Jukes-Browne is to be congratulated on the 

 attempt he has made to grapple with a difficult subject, and we 

 imply no disrespect to him if we say that it is only too manifest 

 a work of this description can in the future only be successfully 

 brought out if produced under the auspices of a combination of 

 specialists. 



A geologist who has worked all his life at stratigraphy has had 

 no adequate opportunity of making himself properly acquainted, 

 for the purposes even of a work of this sort, with the advance of 

 knowledge in the sister sciences of zoology and palseozoology, 

 botany and pala3obotany. 



Mr. Jukes-Browne will do well, therefore, when preparing future 

 editions, to take counsel with experts in these several sciences. Guided 

 by them, he will see the advisability of making many modifications, 

 such as the breaking up of the list of mammals at present banded 

 together as "New-comers in the older Thames Gravels," and certainly 

 the removal therefrom of the Eoman introduction, Gerviis dama. He 

 will learn that more than one worked flake has been found in the 

 lower brickearth of the Thames Valley below London ; and so on, 

 and so on. He will further be assisted in bringing his nomenclature 

 of the fossil forms of life somewhere within the range of modernity. 

 Even as it is our author might here, of himself, have improved 

 upon what he has done. A little reflection would have convinced 



