274 Hevieics — Waagen' s Palceogeography of India. 



The author closes his work by summing up the seven elements 

 into which the past and present French flora may be divided. The 

 indigenous plants being those, like the Vine, that have never quitted 

 France. Others, though fully developed in the Tertiaries, are now 

 only tropical ; others are cosmopolitan ; some now live in foreign 

 warm temperate regions, though extinct in France ; others inhabit 

 Madagascar and Africa : a small number have American affinities 

 (Sabal Palms, etc.); whilst the Greenland and Arctic flora is well 

 represented by Sequoias and Glyptostrobus of the French Tertiary. 



C. E. De Eance. 



B E V I E W S. 



I. — " Dr. W. Waagen On Geographical Distribution of Fossil 

 Organisms in India." (Read at the Imperial Academy of 

 Science, Vienna, December, 1877. Translated in Records Geol. 

 Surv. India, vol. xi. p. 267.) 



THIS paper, from the scope of its subject and the largeness of the 

 conclusions put forward, may be called both important and ambi- 

 tious. Important because, independently of the author's speculations, 

 it contains a well-condensed summary of the geology of India as now 

 known ; and ambitious, in that it seeks to present somewhat of the 

 changing scene of the ancient physical geography of this great 

 portion of the earth's surface since early Palaeozoic times. It speaks 

 well for the progress of geological knowledge regarding India, that 

 data of so tangible a nature exist to aid the impulse towards specula- 

 tive inquiry. 



No "fear to fall" would seem to prevent our author from climbing, 

 and if we cannot quite go with him to heights within the region of 

 pure conjecture, it must be admitted that his " bold " theoretical 

 sketch wears an aspect of consistency so far as he adduces evidence, 

 and, despite one's doubts of large assumptions, leaves the impression 

 of being, at least to some extent, founded on fact. 



The former existence of a continent of which India formed a part 

 ever since Palaeozoic times, is not by any means a new idea ; this 

 has been suggested or mentioned by many writers; * but the definition 

 of its form at various geological periods, as indicated by the distribu- 

 tion of marine fossils, is the special object of the paper under notice; 

 the author dissenting strongly from the supposition of Mr. H. F. 

 Blanford, that this continent was connected with Africa or Australia. 



After noticing all the formations of Peninsular- India, the Himalaya, 

 Burmah, the Garrow hills, on the east, and the Suliman ranges to the 

 west, and referring to his neat geological sketch-map, Dr. Waagen 

 concludes from the distribution of " slaty " and sandstone Palaeo- 

 zoic rocks (the word ' slaty ' being evidently used as synonymous 

 with ' marine ') that there was in Palaeozoic times an Indian con- 

 tinent whose northern limits coincided with the foot of the Himalayan 

 chain, and which included the whole of British India to the south. 



1 Hfeckel, Hist. Creation. H. F. Blanford, Physical Geography of India, 1873. 

 W. T. Blanford, J. A. Soc. Bengal, 1876. Geol. Mag. Decade II. Vol. III. etc. 



