Reviews — Colonel Greenwood's Rain and Rivers. 413 



Above each hard gorge will invariably be a comparatively wide 

 horizontal valley Eivers have the power to cut narrow chan- 

 nels or ravines, but they have very little power of widening these. 

 Disintegration and the wash of rain widen these ravines into broad 

 valleys. While this is going on, rivers convey to the sea what rain 

 brings to them, .... rain is constantly shoving the whole surface 



of the earth down towards the sea No drop of rain runs an 



inch on the surface of the earth without, as far as it goes, setting 

 some soil forward on its road to the sea, and it wont run back again. 

 No return tickets are given. It wUl wait there, and go on by the 



nex-t-rain Neither wind nor water, under any circumstances, 



ever travels empty-handed In comparison to the broad waste 



from the wash of rain, the waste by the direct action of rivers may 

 be reckoned as nothing, .... rivers are mere labourers or accessories 



in the affair This universal portage of soil by rain .... may 



also be seen, ociilus fidelihus, whenever a fence runs horizontally 

 along the side of a hill. A natural terrace is then formed, .... the 



good soil which was on its way to the valley is arrested In 



France I have seen deep terraces result from very narrow strips left 

 uncultivated to decide fields or properties."^ In chapter xiv. the 

 author advocates the theory that man may have existed during the 

 Silurian period, and asserts that " myriads of sj)ecies of megathe- 

 riums, dinotheriums, anoplotheriums, or anyotTiertheriums (sic), may 

 have existed before the Silurian or primary and metamorphic period, 

 without a vestige of their fossil remains being found in these 

 strata." (!) One of the best chapters in the book is on "The 

 Travelling of Sea-beach." 



VI.— OUR SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 



1. The Quarteklt Journal of the G-eological Society of Lon- 

 don for August, 1867, No. 91, opens with Mr. Ealph Tate's paper 

 " On some Secondary Fossils from South Africa," a region whose 

 geology and palceontology has several times before occupied the 

 pages of both the Transactions and the Journal of this Society. 



The fossils described are fourteen species of plants, thirty-nine 

 mollusca, two corals, three serpulse, and one cidaris ; illustrated by 

 two double and three single octavo plates. The remains are, unfor- 

 tunately, very fragmentary ; so much so, indeed, in some instances as 

 to render their accurate determination a matter open to grave doubt. 

 Cidaris pustulifera (Plate viii., fig. 9) ; Trigonia Goldfussi (Plate 

 vii., fig. 6), and Karaites Africanus (Plate vii., fig. 5,^) are instances 

 of species founded on very slender evidence. Nevertheless, South 

 African geologists may thank Mr. Tate for the work he has accom- 

 plished, and we hope they will try to send better specimens home 

 next time for description. 



1 See a defence of this theory by G. Poulett Scrope, Esq., in Geological 

 Magazine for July, 1866. 



2 In the Explanation to Plate vii. p. 174, the names of figs. 4 and 5 are transposed, 

 and in that of Plate yiii. fig. 9 it is omitted altogether. 



