20e Review of " Outlines of the 



dices and sneers of their countrymen, were not to^ be 

 damped, or disheartened. They have presented to the 

 world the grand outUnes of the geology and mineralogy of 

 this vast country, and left nothing to be done by the nume- 

 rous geologists, who have sprung up under their patronage 

 and instruction in almost every part of the land, but to sup- 

 ply the local details and put a finishing hand to the picture. 

 It is in our newer, or, as they are sometimes called, the 

 tertiary formations, that the greatest deficiency exists. 



The work, at the head of this article, comes to us under 

 circumstances calculated to excite high expectations of its in- 

 terest and value. It is the joint production of two gentle- 

 men, with whose names we have been familiar in the later 

 publications in Europe, on mineralogy and geology : and it 

 professes to embody all that has hitherto been ascertained 

 by themselves, or others, relative to the intertiai structure of 

 a country, which, as a whole, has probably been more 

 thoroughly explored, than any other on the globe. The 

 volume before us is only the first part of the work ; and em- 

 braces a description of all the rocks in England and Wales, 

 above the coal formation, (that being included,) in the order 

 in which they occur, reckoning downwards. '' The pres- 

 ent part," says Mr. Conybeare, " has been presented to the 

 public without waiting for the completion of the second, 

 chiefly because it contains the history of those formations 

 which have been as yet fully examined in England alone, 

 and of which a detailed description was required to fill an 

 important chasm in the science of geology." The definite- 

 ness and accuracy, with which these formations are descri- 

 bed, have really delighted and surprized us. We were not 

 aware, from consulting the detached papers in the 'trans- 

 actions of the London Geological Society, and in the pub- 

 lic Journals, that such a degree of perfection had been at- 

 tained in the history of the secondary and tertiary rocks. 

 Several important and extensive series are described, which 

 are wholly unknown to most of our recent elementary trea- 

 tises on geology. 



We have not read this work with the eyes of verbal crit- 

 ics, and we confess ourselves to have had some prejudices 

 in favour of the writers, from what we had seen of their ear- 

 lier productions; too well known to need enumeration. 

 With the purity and neatness, not to say occasional elegance 



