Reviews—Geikie’s Text-Book of Geology. 8) 
with interest and enthusiasm, so full of his subject, and so anxious 
for light and knowledge, as to be able to recognize at a glance the 
import and value of the work of others, and willing to allow that 
the humblest observer may arrive at a part of the truth. In the 
stratigraphical half his interest is less living and personal, and his 
work occasionally becomes perfunctory, didactic and defensive. His 
official position as Director-General of the Geological Survey, and 
the traditions of his school, forbid his calm presentation of the views 
of .all sections, and force him into the position of an exponent and 
apologist of the views of his office and party; and he becomes the 
grave teacher and the infallible authority, cold and unsympathetic, 
whose ipse dixit is final and conclusive. We feel assured that in both 
departments his work will bear its natural fruits. For one who 
will painfully wade through his elaborate section on Stratigraphical 
geology, hundreds will study the physical chapters with pleasure and 
with profit. : 
The veterans of the old British school of Hutton, Lyell, and 
William Smith, will hail the appearance of this volume with un- 
alloyed pleasure. The finest and most attractive portion of the work 
—that upon Dynamical Geology—is filled with the very spirit of 
Lyell himself. In the elaborate paragraphs of his stratigraphical 
sections, and in his strenuous advocacy of the Colonial theory, the 
author is preparing a magnificent tribute to the memory of William 
Smith. In the vagne and nebulous beauty of his own provisional 
cosmogony he affords us a new and striking demonstration of the 
fact that there is no rest for the sole of the foot but upon the great 
principle of Hutton. The spirit of restless inquiry, of search after 
absolute truth, raised in the first half of the work will not be stilled 
by anything in its later pages. These earlier portions are certain to 
attract students, and will form the very best possible training for the 
thorough investigation of those higher branches of the science, which, 
of late years, have been so sadly neglected in Britain. The straining 
after picturesque provisional generalizations, the confusion of fact and 
opinion, and the affectation of non-recognition of all but properly 
constituted authority, rarely, but occasionally met with in its pages, 
and which jar upon the feelings of the modest and conscientious 
worker in the science, constitute a fresh proof, if any were required, 
of the necessity for the members of the Geological Society of the 
present to hold fast and firm to their fundamental rule of “collecting 
facts, instead of fighting over hypotheses.” 
In the light of these facts, as they gradually develope themselves in 
the immediate future, the rising race of young geologists will see for 
- themselves that our science is still in its very infancy—and that some 
of the mightiest problems in British geology yet await solution. Out 
in the wholesome air of individual liberty of opinion, free from the 
stifling restrictions of party or office, it will be theirs to solve them 
as did their fathers in the past. In the earlier pages of Dr. Geikie’s 
charmingly written volume they will find the means of doing this 
