228 Revieics — A. C. Setvard's Fossil Plants. 



Wales, for they consist almost exclusively of two or three varieties 

 of the genus Melosira, and, rarely, a few examples of Navicula. 

 With the diatoms there is also a small proportion of acerate spicules 

 of fresh- water sponges. The markings of the diatoms are as 

 perfectly preserved as in recent forms. Detrital materials are 

 ahsent in the beds, but in a few instances impressions of leaves 

 of plants have been noticed. All the deposits are distinctly of 

 fresh-water origin, and probably of Tertiary age. Professor David 

 considers that the constant association of volcanic rocks with the 

 diatomaceous beds is not accidental, as probably hot springs, and the 

 lavas also, furnished supplies of silica to the lakes in which the 

 diatoms lived. It is evident that the preservation of these beds is 

 in many instances due to being overlaid by basaltic and trachytic 

 lavas. 



The diatomaceous deposits in Queensland, like those of New 

 South Wales, mainly consist of Melosira, but in those of Victoria 

 the variety of diatoms is considerably greater, and fourteen genera 

 have been enumerated in some of the fresh-water beds. 



G. J. H. 



I?, E AT' I IB -W S. 



I. — Fossil Plants. For Students of Botany and Geology. By 

 A. C. Sewakd, M.A., F.G.S. Vol. I. 8vo ; pp. xviii, 452, with 

 111 illustrations. (Cambridge: Messrs. C. J. Clay & Sons, 1898. 

 Price 12s.) 



PALEOBOTANY is no new creation of the fin du siecle, although, 

 indeed, the subject has undergone considerable modification with 

 the advance of botanical knowledge, more especially since it has 

 been so largely assisted by the advances made in histological research. 



We cannot but recall with gratitude the labours of such men as 

 Sternberg, A. Brongniart, Lindley and Hutton, Goppert, Bowerbank, 

 Schimper, Hooker, Williamson, Carruthers, De Saporta, Grand'Eury, 

 and many others, who have paved the way for the botanist of to-day 

 who desires to take up the study of Fossil Plants. 



The author of the present volume is already favourably known as 

 filling the office of Lecturer in Botany in the University of Cambridge, 

 and has been a worker for the last ten years at paleobotany, one of 

 his early papers having appeared in this Magazine for 1888 (p. 289) ; 

 he is also the author of two volumes of a "Catalogue of Mesozoic 

 Plants in the British Museum" (1894-5), and of several other 

 jjapers of importance communicated to the Geological Society and 

 elsewhere. 



He tells us that "The subject of Pal^eobotany does not readily lend 

 itself to adequate treatment in a work intended for both geological 

 and botanical students. The botanist and geologist are not always 

 acquainted with each other's subject in a sufficient degree to 

 appreciate the significance of palceobotany in its several points of 

 contact with geologj' and recent botany It needs but 



