424 Reviews — Geological Tables. 



labours, as far as it concerns the Palaeozoic formations, liave been 

 brought together for English readers by Murchison in his " Siluria;" 

 wliilst Prestwich and Lyell are chief among those who have collated 

 the works illustrative of the Tertiary groups of strata and fossils ; 

 and for the Secondary Formations, we have, besides our home geo- 

 logists, Phillips, Fitton, Mantell, Strickland, Morris, Wright, etc,, 

 numerous good Grerman and French guides, as Fraas, Oppel, Geinitz, 

 Alberti, Marcou, Hebert, Coquand, D'Archiac, etc., in correlating and 

 enumerating their manifold and various groups. 



There are some, especially Constant Prevost and Godwin-Austen, 

 who have greatly influenced the character of geological tables, by 

 insisting on the importance of clearly defining the categorical value 

 of the marine and the freshwater deposits respectively, as direct 

 indications of the existence of land and of sea, whether in vertical 

 succession or in horizontal continuity. This idea is prominent and 

 well illustrated in a table produced by Prof. W. King, and entitled 

 " Synoptical Table of Aqueous Eock-groups," etc. (fifth edition, 

 Belmont, near Galway, July, 1863), the marine strata being arranged 

 in a parallel column with those of land and freshwater origin. 



Students were long ago indebted to Webster and Buckland for an 

 elaborate diagrammatic section of a portion of the Earth's crust, 

 with figures of animals and plants characteristic of the three great 

 periods of the Earth's history, as then known. Without the palseon- 

 tological figures, this section has been for many years among the 

 most saleable of the geological diagrams issued by Eeynolds (Strand), 

 and by the Working Men's Association (King William Street). How- 

 ever much improved Mr. Eeynolds's editions of this diagram have 

 been by the introduction of perspective countrj'^, and by Prof. Morris's 

 amendments, it still wants a proper treatment of the " metamorphic" 

 rocks, so called, which are really the crumpled and altered Lauren- 

 tian and other strata, there being properly no metamorphic forma- 

 tion or system by itself. The same weakness is present in Eeadwin's 

 " Tabular View," etc. (1858, Eeynolds & Co., Old Broad Street), and 

 even in Morris's " Geological Chart" (new edition, 1868, Eeynolds, 

 Strand), which is one of the best of Geological Synopses, as it shows 

 at one view the order of succession of the stratified rocks, with their 

 mineral characters, principal fossils, average thickness, localities, 

 and uses in the arts. These points are also aimed at in Eeadwin's 

 smaller Tabular View of the arrangement of British Eocks, etc., above 

 mentioned. In the still later " Geological Table," by W. Parsons 

 (Stanford, Charing Cross), the British fossiliferous strata and their 

 characteristic fossils (genera and species, as in Morris's Chart), are 

 enumerated, and some miscellaneous remarks on each group, chiefly 

 compiled from Lyell and Murchison, are given in a parallel column. 



Charts and tables, illustrated by figures of fossils, grouped accord- 

 ing to their geological occurrence, are much in request with many 

 students. Such a table we have already referred to as having been 

 published in Buckland's " Bridgewater Treatise" (1836). Another 

 was issued with D'Orbigny and Gente's " Geologie appliquee," etc., 

 1855 ; but the best are those by Neree Boubee (Paris) and J. Lowry 



