82 Reviews—Dr. J. W. Gregory’s Geology of To-day. 
a se alienum putat. In serious research this spreading of one’s self 
is apt to make tne result rather thin, with holes too easily picked ; 
but in a work of the present kind comprehensive knowledge and 
broad views are all to the good. With this capacity Dr. Gregory 
combines many years’ experience of lecturing to all sorts and 
conditions of men, and the facile touch of the ready writer. There 
are authors who would have been more cautious and exact, others 
whose style would have lent greater distinction to a narrative 
deserving of the highest literary skill; but taken on the whole we 
doubt if any man living could have made a better job of it for the 
public, the publishers, and himself. 
A few improvements may be suggested. The relation of fiords 
and foldings to the rotation of the earth (p. 153) is expounded more 
securely than in the author’s recent book on the subject, but is far 
too condensed for the general intelligence. The statement on p. 307 
that the sub-Crag implements prove the presence of pre-Glacial man 
in this country is not very easily reconciled with the conclusion 
(p. 817) that ‘‘the geological history of man is confined to the 
Pleistocene Period’, and that paleoliths are not likely to be found 
below the Boulder-clay; Dr. Gregory may be right in claiming that 
much of the Red Crag has been redeposited (‘‘ when” is another 
matter), but can he claim the whole of the Norwich Crag series as 
Pleistocene? Few, even amongst the most mechanistic of philosophers, 
will be found to agree that ‘‘ all the definitions of life and of vitality 
apply to the more complex forms of crystal growth” (p. 234); 
perhaps Dr. Gregory does not sufficiently realize that life is a property, 
not of a certain form of matter, but of an organism. If the 
wind that rounded the grains and cut the pebbles of the Torridon 
Sandstone was dry, its dryness may have been due to cold or to 
passage over an ice-field; we cannot ‘‘safely conclude that the North 
Atlantic was not then in existence” (p. 194). In Dinotherium it is 
not the canines but two incisors of the lower jaw that are bent 
downward (p. 279). On p. 192, Atikokamia, from a Lower Eozoic 
limestone in Canada, is accepted as a fossil, but there are respectable 
geologists who regard it as of inorganic origin. Dr. Gregory kindly 
gives the etymology of generic names: he may like to note that the 
Greek for a beast is Oyp, for moss (or mossy seaweed) Bpvov, =bryon 
not brion; that Megalania does not mean the big butcher, but is 
derived from j\ayw, 1 roam; that ‘‘bent-jaw” is Camptognathus, 
but that the name he wants is Compsognathus, meaning ‘‘ elegant 
jaw’. ‘‘Mont Pelée” is a false concord. The English grammar 
also has suffered, probably from too rapid proof-reading. 
The illustrations deserve a word of praise, but it should have been 
pointed out that the setting of Karl Hagenbeck’s reproductions of 
extinct saurians is, from the nature of the case, not so appropriate 
as the backgrounds which Miss A. B. Woodward has given to her 
‘vigorous sketches of similar monsters. More reference might have 
been made in the text to some of the plates. The striking frontispiece 
—a statue of Agassiz pitched head-first through a stone pavement— 
will help to sell the book, but we can find no further reference to it 
and no explanation except that some-one or some-thing ‘“‘upped with 
