364 Reviews — Prof. Neivherry — 



and the captivating style of the '' Old Eed Sandstone," there is here 

 a clear statement of the present state of our knowledge in regard to 

 this remarkable store-house of Devonian fishes. Perhaps the most 

 interesting chapter in the volume is that on Scottish G-eology, con- 

 taining a narrative of the progress made in the geological exploration 

 of Scotland by the Government Surveyors, and by individual enter- 

 prise, together M^th an enumeration of the problems yet requiring 

 solution. While the amount of work done is great, Dr. Page clearly 

 shows that it has but begun. 



We greatly regret that Dr. Page did not in his selection confine 

 himself to such papers as those to which we have alluded. We are 

 seldom able to agree with the author in his theories or dreams. In 

 development views he out-Darwins Darwin. The illustrious ex- 

 pounder of Variation by Natural Selection sought to explain the 

 origin of the present state of things — Dr. Page carries his develop- 

 ment dreams into the future, and is not afraid to tell us of the 

 "Whither" of man and of his associates, all the necessarily higher 

 progeny of the present order of beings ! Still less do we sympathise 

 with his Geologico-theological papers. If Biology is not Dr. Page's 

 forte, still less so is Theology. We do not know whether, in the 

 encyclopedian scheme of Manuals with which Dr. Page was lately 

 or is still engaged, he had in contemplation a Manual of Theology. 

 Our author would certainly produce something novel in this direc- 

 tion, but if he should treat on the history of the science, we would 

 humbly recommend his entering on some preliminary investigations, 

 as we doubt whether he would find a single theologian among his 

 countrymen who would accept of the statement on page 112 in his 

 Essay on Geology and Modern Thoughts, as at all in accordance with 

 his creed. 



Dr. Page has done real useful work, and aided so largely to pro- 

 mote a taste for geological pursuits — especially among the young — 

 that we do not like to find a single leaf of his book taken up with 

 vain speculation, in promoting which too many writers are already 

 engaged. There is still so much real work to be done in the fair 

 and legitimate field of geological research that no one need dream 

 now-a-days. 



III. — Notes on the Latek Extinct Floras of Nokth America, 

 with Descriptions of some New Species of Fossil Plants from the 

 Cretaceous and Tertiary Strata. By J. S. Newberry, 1868. 



THE author brings together all the published materials regarding 

 these floras, and adds a large amount of new facts and de- 

 scriptions of many new species. The Cretaceous flora of North 

 America had so modern an aspect that, notwithstanding the Ameri- 

 can geologists insisted that stratigraphically it was of Secondary 

 age, Heer and others who described the specimens held it to be 

 Tertiary from the character of the fossils. In Europe the Secondary, 

 Tertiary, and Eecent Floras are widely separated from each other. 

 In North America, however, the genera now living form a larger 

 proportion of these extinct floras than the genera which have dis- 



