Februast 14, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



257 



ern part above water until just before the pres- 

 ent stage in the development of the archipel- 

 ago. This idea seems to receive support from 

 the fact that the Achatinellidas are almost con- 

 fined to that part of the island, but it appears 

 doubtful in view of the very large number of 

 endemic Hymenoptera in Hawaii. 



T. D. A. COCKERELL 



Geologie du Bassin de Paris. Par M. Paul 



Lemoine. Paris. 1911. Pp. ii+408; 



137 figures; 9 maps. 



Beginning with the classic " Description 

 geologique des environs de Paris," by Cuvier 

 and Brongniart, which reached a third edition 

 as early as 1835, there have been a number of 

 excellent general works on the geology of the 

 Paris basin, that by Stanilas Meunier, first 

 published in 1875, being perhaps the most 

 used. Whatever the French do, they do well, 

 and the Paris basin is such classic ground for 

 the mesozoic and cenozoic geologist and pale- 

 ontologist that the present work is of very 

 great interest. That the book is well planned, 

 well written and well illustrated is indeed but 

 faint praise. M. Lemoine, who is vice-presi- 

 dent of the Geological Society, has been work- 

 ing in the area for a number of years for the 

 Geological Survey and is well equipped for 

 the task of digesting the eight hundred odd 

 memoirs treating of the area and combining 

 their results with his own researches. 



After three preliminary chapters devoted to 

 an introduction for amateurs, and a historical, 

 physiographic and tectonic discussion of the 

 area, he plunges into the detailed geologic 

 history of the basin^ which commences with 

 the Triassic. The Jurassic and Cretaceous of 

 the Paris basin may be said to have furnished 

 the standard for the world, as they have also 

 so largely furnished the nomenclature, and 

 these periods are treated at length. The very 

 modern and altogether admirable work of the 

 French paleontologists, particularly on the 

 faunal facies and their correlation with par- 

 ticular sediments, is fully discussed and dia- 

 grammatically illustrated. Tertiary geology 

 may be said to have been born in the Paris 

 basin, even if Sir Charles Lyell was one of 



the wise men present at the birth, and here 

 again the treatment is full and accurate. The 

 Eocene in particular, because of the alterna- 

 tion of marine faunas with littoral, lacustrine 

 and continental deposits containing land 

 plants and terrestrial mammals, deserves to 

 be and is rapidly becoming the world standard. 

 The time is not far distant when the French 

 etages will be used in all countries where 

 men interest themselves in Tertiary history. 

 Osborn has applied them with considerable 

 success in his discussion of American mam- 

 mal horizons and they lend themselves with 

 equal readiness to discussions of the paleo- 

 botanical history of North America. 



The book contains nine double-page maps 

 and 137 text figures, every one of which is 

 excellent, and will prove a most useful travel- 

 ing companion for visiting geologists. The 

 author is to be warmly congratulated, and it 

 is to be hoped that American students will not 

 only read the book, but try to imitate its 

 method in their own geological writing. 



Edward W. Berry 



Johns Hopkins University 



SCIENTIFIC JOUBNALS AND AETICLES 

 The opening (January) number of Vol. 14 

 of. the Transactions of the American Mathe- 

 matical Society contains the following papers : 



F. N. Cole: "The triad systems of thirteen 

 letters. ' ' 



H. S. White: "Triple systems as transforma- 

 tions, and their paths among triads." 



G. D. Birkhoff: "Proof of PoincarS's geometric 

 theorem. ' ' 



S. Lefschetz: "On the existence of loci with 

 given singularities. ' ' 



B. H. Camp : ' ' Singular multiple integrals, with 

 applications to series. ' ' 



Oswald Veblen : ' ' Decomposition of an n-space 

 by a polyhedron. ' ' 



C. N. Moore: "On convergence factors in double 

 series and the double Fourier series. ' ' 



Virgil Snyder : ' ' Algebraic surfaces invariant 

 under an infinite discontinuous group of birational 

 transformations. Second paper. ' ' 



N. J. Lennes: "Note on Van Vleck's non- 

 measurable sets. ' ' 



T. H. Gronwall : ' ' Some asymptotic expressions 

 in the theory of numbers." 



