582 REVIEWS 
Observation on the Magdalen Islands. By JoHN M. CriarKe. N.Y. 
State: Mus; «Bullosr4o,, orm) Rp: 53; “pls. 77, and: many, 
unnumbered figures. 
This picturesque chain of islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with 
their romantic history of destruction to navigation crafts beginning back 
in the fifteenth century, and their vicissitudes of land tenure that have 
demoralized their development, have a simple geology. Below the 
sedimentaries are badly broken volcanics, associated, in part, with 
extensive bodies of gypseous clay. The formation of the gypsum is 
inferred to be due to the action of sulphur on overlying limestones. 
These limestones and associated shales carry a marine fauna of Mis- 
sissippian age. Overlying these is a series of red sandstone of Permian 
age. Of peculiar interest is the presence of dreikanters in the red beds. 
The species from the limestone and shale fauna were found by Dr. 
J. W. Beebe to be largely different from the typical Mississippian 
fauna, a fact that calls for a basin in which to develop, separated from 
the Mississippi basin. The species are described and illustrated. 
A ene 
Address Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Geological 
Society of London. By W.W. Watts, president of the society. 
Proc. Geol. Soc. London, Vol. LXVII (1911), 62-93. 
Earth history is a history of successive geographies, and of the rela- 
tion of those geographies to the living beings which successively charac- 
terized them. The geological record of any single region is a chronicle 
of two chief classes of events, a downward movement and uplift. The 
cycle of deposition is characterized, when uplift is taking place, by a 
thalassic or deeper water period, a deltaic or shallower period, and a 
terrestrial period. With resubmergence comes an estuarine period, 
and later still, a recurrence of thalassic conditions. The conditions 
in Britain during the Carboniferous period are compared to present 
conditions in the Gulf of Mexico region, and the British Ordovician 
geography finds a modern parallel in the Festoon Islands of the Pacific. 
The recurrence and non-recurrence of types in cycles of deposition 
are discussed. Some of the effects of earth movement are seen in the 
metamorphism and shearing of rocks, its connection with vulcanicity 
and the formation of ore bodies, and its influences on life. 
ACE he 
