228 Revieics — Dr. George J. Hinde — On Challx Sponges. 



Statistics of gold-production in the second half of the 19th 

 century in Hungary, in Eussia, in California and elsewhere in the 

 United States, in British Columbia, in Victoria, and in New South 

 Wales, are shown in careful tables. The several kinds of gold, 

 with specific gravity, per-centage of impurities, and other particulars 

 and authorities, from forty world-wide localities, are given in 

 another table. The numerous recorded nuggets of gold found in 

 Eussia, the United States, Victoria, and New South Wales, with 

 their dates, localities, depth from the surface, weight, and carat- 

 value, fill a large table of twelve pages. Another large table, 

 with lithographed scales and graduated lines, exhibits the relative 

 production of gold, from 1848 to 1880, both inclusive, in California, 

 Australia, Eussia, Siberia, British Columbia, and other countries. 



From the Fall of the Eoman Empire we find in history little 

 about gold and gold-mining down to the time of Marco Polo's 

 travels. Japan then comes into notice ; and not long afterwards 

 America and her gold-fields were visited by Europeans. In the 

 preceding interval, gold was very scarce in Western Europe. The 

 17th century brought forward the Uralian and Siberian gold- 

 deposits ; and in the current half of the present century California 

 and Australia displayed their vast gold-fields. Thus the order 

 adopted by Chev. Jervis in the practical and economical history of 

 gold is well considered and correct. 



How far the possession of gold-mines may or may not benefit a 

 state is briefly considered in a short chapter. 



The author has added a polyglot vocabulary of the words used 

 for gold by a hundred different tribes and nations. This has been 

 enlarged from Christopher Keferstein's " Mineralogia Polygottica." 

 A full index completes this small, but very useful and trustworthy 

 Monograph on Gold. T. E. J. 



n. — Fossil Sponge Spicules from the Upper Chalk. Found 



IN THE INTERIOR OF A SINGLE FLINT-STONE FROM HoRSTEAD IN 



Norfolk. By George Jennings Hinde, Ph.D., F.G.S. 8vo. 

 pp. 83 ; Five Plates. (Munich, 1880.) 



EVEEY student of geology will be familiar with the sketch of the 

 Chalk-pit at Horstead, drawn many years ago by the late 

 Mrs. John Gunn, and of which a wood-engraving was published by 

 Lyell, in his " Elements of Geology," and " Student's Elements." 

 At that time the Chalk displayed a considerable number of the huge 

 and remarkable flints called potstones or " Paramoudras," but 

 during the progress of the working the number shown has de- 

 creased, and latterly but few have been obtained. Now the working 

 of the Chalk at this old pit has been given up, but many " large 

 variously shaped nodules of flint " remain, " strewn over the floor 

 of the pit, after the removal of the soft chalk in which they had 

 been imbedded." One of these, " about a foot in diameter, and 

 more spheroidal than the generality of the potstones," attracted the 

 attention of Dr. Hinde during a visit he paid to the pit a little time 

 ago; it exhibited "a central cavity, which contained a quantity of 



