208 Abstracts of Foreign Memoirs. 
with two members corresponding to the Rotheliegende and Zechstein 
respectively, and in true contact with the American Trias. Instances, 
he thinks, will be found in Kansas and also near Beavertown on the 
Canadian River. 
M. Marcou also asserts his discovery of a true Miocene flora at the 
bottom of the Cretaceous series in Nebraska. The fossils occur in 
a freshwater formation, in which is a Cyrena, formerly found by the 
author in New Mexico; and he especially identifies Laurus primi- 
genia, Unger, and a Fern, ‘near the Lycopods,’ among the fossils. 
This deposit is ‘No. 1’ of the Cretaceous series of Hayden, con- 
taining lignite, fossil wood, impressions of dicotyledonous leaves, 
Equisetum (?), Pectunculus Siouxensis, &c. 
Lastly, M. Marcou objects to the use of Brachiopoda as character- 
istic fossils, and believes that their place in the animal series in this 
respect is even lower than that of Corals !—D. T. A. 
REVIEWS. 
—+—— 
Man anp NATURE; oR, PHystcAL GEOGRAPHY, AS MODIFIED BY 
Human Action. By Georce P. Marsu. 8vo. pp. 560. London: 
Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. 
HIS volume is one of considerable interest to the geologist, al- 
though it does not profess to communicate original matter or new 
views. It is a somewhat expanded account by an exceedingly in- 
telligent American writer, well acquainted with Europe and Euro- 
pean literature, of various operations in nature, chiefly connected 
with human influence, by means of which the surface of the earth is 
now undergoing such changes as would be recognized hereafter 
among geological phenomena. Something of this has already been 
done by Sir Charles Lyell in his great work on the Principles of 
Geology; but other considerations, not less important, are here 
introduced, and numerous facts and inferences are put forward for 
the first time. 
That climatic changes, in countries entirely or very largely occu- 
pied by man, have, in the course of time, been brought about by the 
various changes in the face of nature, induced by human wants and 
tastes, there can be no doubt; and it is certain that, of all these, the 
removal of forests has been the most important, both directly and 
indirectly. No one can travel in Greece or Asia-Minor, none can 
visit the North African shores, no one can even run through Italy, 
without being aware of modifications of the surface and of climate in 
places once very thickly peopled, but now almost without inhabit- 
ants. ‘There is equally little difficulty in proving, that not only 
there, but generally throughout Central and Southern Europe, the 
climate on the whole, and within the historic period, has become 
more extreme; and the rivers have assumed more and more the 
character of torrents. ‘This is well exemplified in the case of the 
Seine, a river which, owing to its great distance from any mountain~ 
