374 Bevieics — Chamherlin and Salhhurifs Geology — 



green succulent herbage was replaced by dry spiny plants; tbe 

 giant marsupials died of hunger and thirst ; hot winds swept across 

 the dusty plains, and the once fertile basin of Lake Eyre was blasted 

 into desert (p. 151). 



As to the flooding of Lake Eyre, the distance to Port Augusta (at 

 the head of Spencer's Gulf) is 260 miles, and the surface of Lake 

 Eyre is 39 feet below sea-level ; this would give a fall of one inch 

 and a fifth to the mile to a canal, so that the water would doubtless 

 flow through such a channel. It is the enormous loss by evaporation 

 which ofiers the most insuperable obstacle to any project for the 

 improvement of this great area. 



" The quantity of water carried into Lake Eyre by the Diamantina 

 and the Cooper is enormous. The Diamantina rushes along like 

 a mill-race; the Cooper flows in a broad sheet, in places twelve miles 

 wide ; and both rivers sometimes flow for months. Mevertheless, 

 though the southern part of Lake Eyre frequently holds water, no 

 man has yet seen the lake either full or nearly full. And if these 

 two large rivers cannot fill Lake Eyre basin, a sluggish fifty feet 

 wide canal would be as successful as a Melbourne water-cart trying 

 to induce one of its broad thoroughfares to lie quiet in a dust-storm " 

 (p. 349). 



We should like to give our readers a specimen of the author's 

 vivid descriptions of the Australian natives ; space does not, however, 

 admit ; but they must certainly get the book and read about the 

 so-called ' Aboriginee.' We feel sure that those who take up 

 Dr. Gregory's book will not lay it down again until they have 

 read it through, and that they will enjoy it in the process as 

 thoroughly as we have done. 



IL — Geology : Processes and their Eesults. By T. C 

 Chamberlin and E. D. Salisbury, pp. xix and 654, with 

 24 plates (maps) and 471 text-figures. (London : John Murray, 

 1905. Price 21s. net.) 



THE first volume of this new Textbook of Geology by Professors 

 T. C. Chamberlin and Rollin D. Salisbury, of the University of 

 Chicago, strikes us as a serious and conscientious attempt to grapple 

 with the first principles of earth-knowledge in its entirety, aud the 

 attempt has been as successful as any such comprehensive attempt 

 can expect to be. Everything is classified and well ordered, and 

 the essence of the available information on the various branches of 

 the subject is condensed into pithy generalized statements with 

 only just sufficient exemplification to illustrate the argument. 

 Everywhere we are made to feel that the work is the product of 

 men with a practical grasp of their material, who have striven to 

 express in their own way all that they have learnt. Therefore this 

 is not a textbook made in the too frequent way, " as apothecaries 

 make new mixtures, by pouring out of one vessel into another." We 

 find in consequence that even when the authors lead us over fi\miliar 

 ground we are frequently brought to fresh view-points. It must be 



