Reviews — Gotta! s Geology and History. 77 



Part I. contains an explanation of the Geographical position of the 

 ancient district of Aquitania, and the physical features of the special 

 district of Dordogne. The Caves of the Vezere, their contents, 

 mode of infilling, and relative chronology. 



These few pages contain much interesting information, in addition 

 to the explanation of six very effective tinted plates, comprising 

 illustrations of flint cores and flakes, lance- and spear-heads, barbed 

 instruments formed of Eeindeer-horns (probably used as harpoons 

 for spearing fish), and lastly a plate of very interesting illustrations, 

 carved on pieces of bone and horn, representing the heads of Deer, 

 Horses, Bulls, Fish, etc., and displaying no mean amount of artistic 

 feeling in their execution. We shall refer to this work again, 



IV. — Geology and History ; a Popular Exposition of all that 

 IS known of the Earth and its Inhabitants in Pre-Historic 

 Times. By Bernard von Gotta (Professor of Geology at the 

 Academy of Mining, Freiberg, in Saxony.) Translated by E. E. 

 Noel. 1865. pp. 84. London : Trubner & Co. 



IN this little book we have a succinct account of the evidences 

 hitherto discovered and recorded of the early traces of Man on' 

 our planet, followed by observations on the Darwinian theory. Dr. 

 Cotta remarks — " If Darwin's theory is correct, it must find its 

 confirmation in Geology ;" he therefore adds some observations on 

 the organic remains found fossil in sedimentary rocks. We fully 

 agree with the author when he cautions us (p. 64) " that it will not 

 do to attribute the negative evidence in regard to higher organisms 

 in the older formations merely to accident, (or) to fortune not 

 having yet favoured their discovery," and suggests that, " as some 

 of them are just as well suited for preservation in a fossil state as the 

 lower," "it seems but natural to conclude that they did not exist at 

 the time the older strata were formed." But when (at p. 69) he 

 asks us to concur with him that " the strata containing recognizable 

 organic remains, i.e., the entire series of recent formations, up to 

 the Silurian and Cambrian, represent a part only, at the most the 

 half, of the time that the Earth has been inhabited by organized 

 creatures," we must beg to demur. If fishes do occur in Silurian 

 Strata (p. 64) , they are but represented by fragmentary remains in 

 the Upper Silurian, chiefly from the Ludlow bone-bed, as it is called, 

 a deposit largely composed of Crustacean spines; and a single 

 example from the the Lower Ludlow, of Church Hill, near Leint- 

 wardine, Shropshire (a Pteraspis), helow which, in age, we have 

 73,000 feet, or considerably more than half the entire thickness of 

 fossiliferous and sedimentary deposits, involving a sufiicient lapse of 

 time (we think) for all the lower forms of life to apj)ear in succession. 

 Surely we need not, even on the Darwinian theory, ask for another 

 life-period, equal to that actually known, and represented by about 

 24 miles in thickness of stratified deposits. 



We cannot conclude this notice without remarking that there is 

 much more useful information in this book, small as it is, than in 

 many a more pretentious volume. 



