9298 Reviews—Prof. Hull’s Physical History of the British Isles. 
Fell Beds collectively—oversteps the older rocks there from the 
Skiddaw Slate up to the Coniston Grit. In like manner, describing 
the Pre-Carboniferous rocks themselves—whose dips and strikes, be 
it remembered, bear no necessary relation to those of the beds that 
lie unconformably upon their upturned edges—TI have used the cor- 
relative term Understep, and have spoken of the older rocks forming 
an ascending, or a descending series in this or that direction as the 
case may be, understepping the beds that lie unconformably above. 
The convenience of having some such addition to our descriptive 
terminology will, I feel sure, be fully recognized by others who, like 
myself, have had various instances of similar phenomena before their 
eyes for many years. Whether the terms here suggested be ulti- 
mately adopted or not, is a matter of indifference, provided that, as 
soon as the desirability of increasing our stock of words in this 
direction is once admitted, the terms proposed, whatever they may 
be, are such as shall enable us clearly to distinguish between the 
essentially-different ideas that have been confounded under the one 
term Overlap. 
Re Wale Wve Se 
— $~—_—_ 
T.—Contrisutions To THE Puysican History oF THE BririsH Isies. 
With a Dissertation on the Origin of Western Europe, and of the 
Atlantic Ocean. By Professor Epwarp Hutt, M.A., LL.D., F.B.S. 
pp. xvi. 148. (London: Stanford, 1882.) 
ile his efforts to picture the physical geography of past epochs, the 
geologist finds three principal features to restore: (1) those of land 
and water, (2) those of life, and (3) those of climate. In the present 
work the author has attempted to delineate the outlines of land and 
water during the principal geological periods, over the area now 
occupied by the British Islands. This is naturally one of the most 
attractive of geological subjects, leading us away from the details, to 
contemplate the grand series of changes our area has undergone: and, 
so far as we are aware, in no country has it ever before received such 
full, careful, and, we may add, sumptuous treatment. Among the 
earliest and best attempts to sketch the history of past periods were 
those of De la Beche in 1834 (Researches in Theoretical Geology), 
while his disciples R. A. C. Godwin-Austen and A. C. Ramsay have 
devoted their lives in great measure to the questions affecting the 
physical geography of the past. To the former of these two ceologists 
Prof. Hull pays a graceful tribute in his preface, observing that his 
elaborate essay on the Possible Extension of the Coal-Measures beneath 
the South-Eastern Part of England, will ever be considered a master- 
piece of geological induction. Other geologists have dealt with 
particular periods, as Prof. Prestwich has with the Kocene strata, 
Dr. Hicks with the Paleozoic strata (Gror. Mac. 1876), and so on. 
The only general attempt to show by map the successive changes in 
the British Area we call to mind, was that of the late J. C. Ward, in 
a Dream on Skiddaw, reprinted in his Elementary Geology (1872). 
Of ideal pictures of different scenes in the past, we have had many 
