Reviews—Geikie’s Text-Book of Geology. 83 
morphism his arguments are much weaker, and some of them will 
have no weight whatever with many British geologists. In effect, 
so far as Britain is concerned, his argument rests largely upon the 
asserted fact that the Highland metamorphic rocks of the north-west 
of Sutherland and Ross “demonstrably overlie fossiliferous Lower 
Silurian rocks.” Now we are not among those who deny the 
possibility of the transformation of aqueous into crystalline rocks 
by means of regional metamorphism, or the probability that altered 
equivalents of some of the 8. Scottish Silurian rocks do actually occur 
in the Highland region. But we so distinctly believe the fact that 
the truly metamorphic rocks of the north-west do not overlie and 
follow the fossil-bearing rocks in natural sequence can be so fully 
proved in the field, that we feel this threadbare argument ought soon 
to wholly disappear from the controversy. We hope that the timid 
little section on page 584 of Dr. Geikie’s work, by which this 
specious, but moribund, view is illustrated, is destined to be the last 
of its race to be pressed into this unnatural service. 
The fifth section of the work (Book V.), on Paleontological 
Geology, may be looked upon as an introduction to the purely 
stratigraphical and theoretical division of the subject. It contains some 
well-considered paragraphs, but the author chafes visibly under the 
curb imposed by the doctrine of geological contemporaneity; and the 
instinct of self-preservation leads him to make much of the handy 
theory of colonies-—that convenient refuge for the stratigraphic 
destitute. He parallels the famous colonies of Bohemia with the 
well-known fossil-bearing bands in the Silurian of South Scotland. 
We believe this comparison to be the best that could be made. In 
both areas the disputed successions are founded upon corresponding 
appearances, and in both cases the belief in the orthodox view is 
probably destined soon to be confined solely to its authors. Both 
are, however, valuable warnings, with which the future student of 
historical geology could ill afford to dispense. One is the fruit of 
paleontology without stratigraphy—the other of stratigraphy with- 
out paleontology. 
In Book VI. we enter upon the subject of Historical Geology itself. 
Although the author is careful to impress the student with the fact 
that this is unquestionably the highest branch of the science, yet it is 
evident enough that, in his own eyes, as in those of the vast majority 
of modern physical geologists in sympathy with him, it has rather 
the appearance of an oppressive nightmare of piles of undigestible 
facts and meaningless strings of names. Since the death of Edward 
Forbes, the breath of British genius has never swept over this valley 
of dry bones, and the man has yet to arise who shall summon them 
again into life, and demand from them the final solution of the great 
riddle of evolution, which the patient embryologists and dreamy 
cosmogonists of the present are vainly seeking for elsewhere. These 
facts in themselves have clearly little attraction for the author, 
except in so far as they are connected with his own life-work and 
with former supposed phases of earth development. For the purely 
paleontological department of the subject, he does not attempt to 
