38 Beports and Proceedings — 



soils, etc., is suggestive. The soil of drift districts is contrasted 

 with those formed by degradation of rock in situ, the latter being 

 less thick is more rapidly exhausted by farming operations. From 

 the grey or blue colour of glacial mud, as compared with river 

 detritus, a hint is thrown out that many of the clays forming the 

 lifeless blue shales of former periods may have come from glacial 

 streams. 



Many other points in the volume we have to leave unnoticed. It 

 will be seen, however, that though designed for the use of students, 

 and containing, in condensed form, just the information they require, 

 it is far more than a mere text-book. It abounds with original 

 suggestions resulting from a wide survey of facts. A bibliography 

 is also a useful feature. The volume is the first of a series ; we are 

 promised companion volumes on Mountains, Volcanos and Earth- 

 quakes, Lakes and Plains, Rivers and Valleys, the Sea and its 

 Shores, Structure of Rocks, and Effects of Life. As Director of the 

 Kentucky Survey, the author has had much opportunity of studying 

 a wide and varied country, while from the treatment of the subject 

 of glaciers we may look forward to many pungent views and always 

 a suggestive line of thought. We hope that author and publisher 

 may be able to bring out the series with as little delay as possible. 

 Continued on the same plan, they will certainly form a mass of 

 gorgeous illusti-ation of geological phenomena in a very accessible 

 shape. 



We should add that the senior author is responsible for the letter- 

 press, while Mr. Davis has selected and written the explanation of 

 the Plates. T. 



lasiPOs-Ts ji^isriD i^DBOGiBiEiDinsra-s, 



Geological Society of London. 



I— November IQ, 1881.— R. Etheridge, Esq., E.R.S., President, 

 in the Chair. 



Prof. Hughes made a brief statement in reference to the Bologna 

 Congress, which will be found more fully expressed in the Decem- 

 ber, 1881, Number of the Geological Magazine by Mr. Wm. 

 Topley, F.G.S., Secretary to the British Section of the Congress. 



Dr. T. Sterry Hunt gave some account of the pre-Cambrian or 

 Eozoic rocks of Europe as compared with those of North America. 

 He had on several occasions studied them, both on the continent and 

 in the British Isles, especially with Dr. Hicks in Wales in 1878. 

 In North America the recognized base is a highly granitoid gneiss, 

 without observed limestones, which he has called the Ottawa gneiss, 

 overlain, probably unconformably, by the Grenville series of Logan, 

 consisting chiefly of granitoid gneisses, with crystalline limestones 

 and quartzites. These two divisions made up the Laurentian of 

 Canada, and correspond respectively to the Lewisian and the Dime- 

 tian of Hicks. Resting in discordance on the Laurentian, we find 

 areas of the Norian or Labrador series (Upper Laurentian of Logan), 



