278 Reviews — Geikie's Old Red Sandstone. 



Elie de Beaumont, Godwin-Austen, and others, well began, in ap- 

 plying definite geological observation to the discovery of the old 

 shoals, shore-lines, and margins of the several great formations of 

 strata. This is a subject of considerable interest in botli practical 

 and hypothetical aspects ; and we trust that the life-long studies of 

 Mr. Godwin- Austen will yet result in the atlas of pakeogeography, 

 towards the completion of which he had already done so much in 

 1862, when the Geological Society awarded him their Gold Medal 

 in recognition of his sound and useful labours, particularly in work- 

 ing out the history of the geologic changes of land and sea in 

 Western Europe. 



This new edition of the Physical Geography and Geology of 

 Britain is enriched with many new woodcuts, both of characteristic 

 scenery, and of fossils belonging to the several formations. Furnished 

 with these latter-, and the description of the successive groups of 

 strata, the new edition is now entitled " A Manual of British 

 Geology," and will be found useful to many general readers as well 

 as to schools and classes. T.B.J. 



III. — On the Old Bed Sandstone of Western Europe. By 

 Archibald Geikie, LL.D., F.B.S., etc. (Part I.) 

 [From the Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxviii. 1878.] 



THE recent papers in the Geological Magazine on the Devonian 

 question, and on the relations of the Old Bed Sandstone to the 

 Silurian and Carboniferous rocks, especially those by Mr. Kinahan, 

 Professor Hull, and Mr. Champernowne, have suggested new inter- 

 pretations of these great rock-masses and some important revisions 

 in their classification. 



There is a tendency to split up and almost annihilate the Old Bed 

 Sandstone. Thus Mr. Kinahan has grouped the Irish representative 

 as Carboniferous, placing the Dingle or Glengariff grits as Silurian ; 

 while both Professor Hull and Mr. Champernowne are inclined to 

 regard portions of the Devonian rocks also as Silurian. 



Professor Geikie's memoir on the Old Bed Sandstone of Western 

 Europe will therefore be read with particular interest by those who 

 have paid any attention to the varieties of opinion on its equivalent 

 deposits, and all geologists will hail its appearance as giving not 

 merely a summary of what is known on the subject, but a large 

 amount of original observation. 



Commencing with an historical introduction, Brofessor Geikie 

 tells of the first application of the term Old Bed Sandstone, and how 

 it came to be regarded as the lacustrine equivalent of the marine 

 Devonian rocks, although, as he observes, " the alleged contempo- 

 raneity of these two groups of strata had, in England at least, been 

 assumed rather than proved." Into this question, however, he does not 

 enter, his object being to examine into the distribution and history of 

 the deposits which admittedly belong to the Old Bed Sandstone. 



Discussing the value of the threefold division of Murchison, Pro- 

 fessor Geikie says, "My own work in the centre and south of Scot- 



