Reviews— Rome and others, on Drift-deposits. 267 
(2) Notes on A RameLe THROUGH Wates. A LECTURE DELIVERED 
to THE WorcesTER Natourat History Society, February, 1864. 
By W.S. Symonps, Rector of Pendock. London: R. Harpwicks, 
pp. 20. 8vo. 1864. 
(3) Notes on THE DRIFT-DEPOSITS OF THE VALLEY OF THE SEVERN, 
IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF COALBROOK-DALE AND BRIDGNORTH. 
By Grorcr Maw, F.S.A., F.L.8. 8vo. pp. 14, 1864. (From the 
Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc.) 
(4) Appress or Principat Dawson, President of the Natural His- 
tory Society of Montreal, read at the AnNnuaL Menrtine, May, 
1864. S8vo. pp. 12. (From the Canadian Naturalist.) 
HE first of these works is a somewhat heavy pamphlet on a sub- 
ject that was very recently of considerable interest. Were it 
not for the exceedingly bad taste displayed in a profusion of indifferent 
jokes, personalities, and heavy banter, and the want of thorough 
appreciation of the whole question involved, we should be inclined 
to speak of this work as a fair popular account of the Abbeville dis- 
cussion. As, however, that particular matter has been somewhat 
forgotten in the rapid accumulation of other and better evidence 
from the Bruniquel and Gibraltar caves and elsewhere, and as the 
subject is really not one to joke about, we can hardly recommend our 
readers to avail themselves of Mr. Rome’s labours. In his second 
chapter he endeavours to show that, although the Mammoth, the 
Reindeer, the Rhinoceros, and other locally extinct species may have 
lived in Europe contemporaneously with man, this does not necessarily 
involve a very great antiquity for either. The actual determination 
of how many thousands or tens of thousands of years a given geo- 
logical event may have required has always seemed to us as unim- 
portant as it is impossible. That all recent discovery points to the 
existence of races of men living in Europe very much longer ago 
than the traditional 6000 years is certain. Granted this, ‘the an- 
tiquity of man’ is established in Sir C. Lyell’s sense, and the very 
great changes in physical outline and climate that have taken place 
since the Rhinoceros bones were buried with human implements are 
certainly sufficient to require a great and probably an incalculable age. 
The Rev. Mr. Symonps’ lecture, though containing nothing new 
to geologists, is a convenient résumé of some of the chief points known 
concerning the Glacial Period as represented in North Wales, and a 
careful study of it might do much to convince Mr. Rome that the 
time needed by the changes there to be traced can hardly be measured 
by centuries. 
The Drift-beds of the Severn-valley, carefully described by 
Mr. Maw, afford additional evidence of the gradual nature of the 
latest changes, and the variety of movements needed to account for 
the present condition of things. It is by such estimates only, and 
by the knowledge obtained by studying the recent deposits carefully 
in various partsof England and Europe, that the student of geology 
acquires the knowledge required to speak with authority on the 
2 
