August 13, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



221 



plan and make-up. The preface indicates their 

 purpose in part as follows : 



'■ The present stimulus given to travel in the 

 home country will encourage many thousands 

 of Americans to study geography at first hand. 

 To make this study most profitable the traveler 

 needs a handbook that will answer the ques- 

 tions that come to his mind so readily along 

 the way. Furthermore, the aim of such a 

 guide should be to stimulate the eye in the 

 selection of the essentials in the scene that so 

 rapidly unfolds itself in the crossing of the 

 continent. In recognition of the opportunity 

 afforded in 1915 to render service of this kind 

 to an unusually large number of American 

 citizens as well as to visitors from other coun- 

 tries, the United States Geological Survey has 

 prepared a series of guidebooks covering four 

 of the older railroad routes west of the 

 Mississippi. 



"... The plan of the series is to present 

 authoritative information that may enable the 

 reader to realize adequately the scenic and 

 material resources of the region he is trav- 

 ersing, to comprehend correctly the basis of 

 its development, and above all to appreciate 

 keenly the real value of the country he looks 

 out upon, not as so many square miles of 

 territory represented on the map in a railroad 

 folder by meaningless spaces, but rather as 

 land — real estate, if you please — varying 

 widely in present appearance because differing 

 largely in its history and characterized by even 

 greater variation in values because possessing 

 diversified natural resources. . . . 



" Items of interest in civic development or 

 references to significant epochs in the record of 

 discovery and settlement may be interspersed 

 with explanations of mountain and valley or 

 statements of geologic history. . . . 



" To this interpretation of our own country 

 the United States Geological Survey brings the 

 accumulated data of decades of pioneering in- 

 vestigation, and the present contribution is 

 only one type of return to the public which 

 has supported this scientific work under the 

 federal government." 



The volume is essentially a guide to what 



may be seen from the train windows. It is more 

 especially devoted to geology and physiography 

 and in the hands of any interested traveler 

 should materially contribute to the value and 

 pleasure of the trip; throughout it has been 

 planned for readers with little or no geological 

 training, yet it will be found exceedingly valu- 

 able by geologists who are traveling through 

 the region and seeing as much as possible from 

 the train window. 



It consists of 244 pages, 49 plates of views 

 and 25 maps which cover the route from Omaha 

 to San Francisco and from Ogden to the 

 boundary of Yellowstone Park. The maps are 

 on a scale of about 8 miles to the inch; the 

 country adjacent to the route is represented by 

 contours with a 200-foot interval; all railroad 

 stations are represented with their elevation 

 and the miles are indicated by the crossties on 

 the railroad line, every tenth being numbered. 

 The geological formations are mapped, only 

 the boundaries being given with a letter to 

 indicate the member; in this way colors are 

 avoided and the map is essentially a geographic 

 one, not confusing to the traveler who is not 

 geologically minded, but adequate to the geol- 

 ogist, with the help of the cross-sections given 

 on many of the maps. The maps are so in- 

 serted in the text that they may be conveniently 

 before the traveler while reading. 



The text is a station-to-station itinerary. 

 In it one finds much data on the population 

 and history of towns, cost of railroad construc- 

 tion, on bridges, cuts and fills, location of early 

 forts and settlements, history of mining camps 

 and their production, discharge of streams and 

 potential water power, irrigation, amounts of 

 farm production, a random note on vegetation, 

 archeology and fauna of Great Salt Lake. 

 There is, however, more of geology and physi- 

 ography than of these other topics. Large and 

 numerous footnotes carry explanatory and sup- 

 plementary data on the formations passed 

 through and on their fossil contents, on the 

 history of early settlers, battles with the 

 Indians, the history of railroad building, etc. 

 Much of this is popular in nature and for the 

 traveler who is not scientifically trained. 



While the description applies almost en- 



