41Q REVIEWS — POPULAR GEOLOGY. 



presents science under new and singularly suggestive aspects. 

 Lecture five relates to the Lias Hills of Eathie, — a most remarkable 

 deposit near tlie town of Cromarty, the birth-place of the author ; 

 the Trias and Permian systems, and the carboniferous era with its 

 rich and beautiful Flora. The Scottish audience, as well as the 

 Scottish authorship, is present throughout the volume. The Scot- 

 tish Archaeologist, Wilson, is referred to in the first Lecture. The 

 Scottish poet, " Delta," is called in, in Lecture third, preparatory to 

 the idealising of nature's poetical associations, in reference to Geology. 

 Lecture fourth begins with a suggestive passage from the " Guy 

 Mannering," of Scott ; and even where our author turns with Sir 

 Charles Lyell's aid to the facts and reasonings derived from the study 

 of our Canadian Lake district, it is only thereby to illustrate the 

 Geology of Scotland, " during the chiU and dreary period of the 

 boulder clay." In the sixth lecture the author is at home in 

 his favorite Old Eed Sandstone: part of the great Devonian sys- 

 tem so extensively developed in Western Canada. The Silurian 

 system closes this lecture, and completes the main scope of the work. 

 An Appendix entitled, " Descriptive sketches from a Geologist's 

 portfolio," is added at the close of the volume, for the insertion of 

 which Mrs. Miller needlessly apologises ; for nothing can be more 

 useful than such suggestive ideas as are there wrought out. Often a 

 small and apparently obscure fact thus noted down has helped to the 

 solution of a diificult problem. The wonderful arrangement of the 

 Tertiaries, for example, although far from complete, has been efiected 

 in this manner by the filling up of gaps in the succession of strata.' 

 We cannot take leave of this most interesting volume without 

 renewing the reiterated expression of regret at the irreparable loss 

 which science and literature alike sustained in the death of one whose 

 peculiar gift in popularising science, as well as in enlarging its bounds, 

 is so happily illustrated in this work. With him the popular treat- 

 ment of Geology consisted not in evading and ignoring its most 

 difficult researches, but in clothing its profoundest speculations and 

 its abstrusest inquiries in language and thoughts so fascinating that 

 the popular reader was lured on to a mastery of recondite truths by 

 the overruling influence of the master mind which presented them in 

 so attractive a guise. 



J. F. S. 



