REVIEWS 387 



interesting to recall that de Montessus' interest in earthquakes was first 

 awakened when he was a resident in Central America giving instruction 

 in military science. The greater part of his work has, however, been 

 accomplished in France as a major of artillery, for much of the time upon 

 recruiting service. The last proofs of the present work he revised in 

 South America, where he now directs the seismological service of the 

 Republic of Chili. W. H. H. 



Research in China. Vol. I, Pt. I: Descriptive Topography and 

 Geology. By Bailey Willis, Eliot Blackwelder, and R. H. 

 Sargent. Vol. I, Pt. II : Petrography and Zoology. By Eliot 

 Blackwelder; Syllabary of Chinese Sounds, by Friedrich 

 Hirth. Vol. II: Systematic Geology. By Bailey Willis; 

 Atlas, by R. H. Sargent. Washington, D. C. : Carnegie Insti- 

 tution, 1907. 

 These sumptuous volumes constitute a monumental contribution to 

 Asiatic geology. They are signal productions not only in their substance 

 and form, but in the fact that they are a gift of productive industry to pro- 

 gressive science, and a tribute of one of the newest phases of civilization to 

 one of the oldest. They give expression also to a departure from inherited 

 methods in that, though the work was circumscribed by limitations of time 

 and means, and confessedly but expeditional, it was given a high degree 

 of maturity so far as it went, with the definite expectation that other mature 

 work, by some competent organization, will be duly fitted on to it on either 

 hand. The territory attempted was mapped topographically as wxll as 

 geologically, and both with a degree of fidelity, so far as one can judge, com- 

 parable to that of an official survey of the better order. The limitations of 

 any survey made by such an expedition are necessarily great, but there is 

 ground to believe that, in this case, these are chiefly limitations of area merely. 

 The ground covered embraced a selected tract in the province of Shan- 

 tung in northeastern China, chosen because of its Cambro-Ordovician 

 terranes, and a strip, of rather wandering course, reaching from the prov- 

 ince of Chili in north-central China westward and southward and then 

 southeastward, through the provinces of Shan-si, Shen-si, and Hu-pei, 

 terminating at the lower cafion of the Yang-tsi-kiang. The formations 

 involved range through the whole geological column, but the more notable 

 phenomena brought to attention are those of the Cambro-Ordovician, the 

 Siluro-Devonian, the Carboniferous, and the Tertiary-Quaternary, These 

 are treated descriptively in Vol. I, and systematically and philosophically 



