Reviews — Prof. JVichoison's British Graptolites. 229 



In the present unsatisfactory state of our knowledge regarding 

 the Australian Tertiary series, it would perhaps be well if Yictorian 

 geologists would adopt a suggestion of Prof. Martin Duncan's (On 

 the Fossil Corals of the Australian Tertiary Deposits, Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, vol. xxvi., p. 288), that instead of subdividing their Tertiary 

 series, whilst so little is known about them, into Pliocene, Miocene, 

 and Eocene, or Oligocene, as the case may be, they should content 

 themselves for the present with merely calling them all Cainozoic. 



The artistic portion of Mr. Smyth's Sketch Map is everything 

 that could be desired ; the type is clear and good, and the colours 

 evenly and correctly laid on. We shall be glad to see further geo- 

 logical efforts on the part of the Victorian Mining Department, but 

 should advise them to pay a little more attention to paleeontological 

 nomenclature than is evinced in the few names of fossils given in 

 the letter-press description of the Map in the Essay attached to the 

 Exhibition Catalogue. K. E. 



IV. — A MoNOGEAPH OF THE Bkitish Gkaptolitidje. By Prof. H. 

 A. Nicholson, M.D., D.Sc, M.A., etc. Part I. (Edinburgh: 

 Blackwood & Sons. 1872.) 



WITHIN the last few years much has been added to our know- 

 ledge of the peculiar group of fossils which form the subject 

 of the present Monograph. Since 1866, when Prof. Nicholson 

 commenced his labours on the group, the British Graptolites have 

 been treated of in five-and-twenty memoirs, and the number of 

 species known to Britain has been at least doubled. This result is 

 mainly due to the researches of Prof. Nicholson in the Skiddaw . 

 Slates and Coniston Flags of the English Lake-district, and in the 

 Moffat group of the south of Scotland, and it is upon the extensive 

 collection which he has made from these richly graptoliferous xocks 

 that the present work is chiefly based. 



The first and only part as yet published " is intended to serve as 

 an Introduction to the study of the Graptolitidse generally." 



The first chapter is devoted to the bibliography of the group, and 

 comprises a chronological history from 1727, when Bromel, in 

 describing the fossils of Sweden, evidently mistakes graptolites for 

 leaves of grasses, to 1871, when the discovery of a British specimen 

 with gonothecse finally settled the much-debated question of the 

 zoological position of these interesting fossils, showing that they 

 were truly referable to the Hydrozoa, and nearly related to the 

 Sertularians and Plumularians, as first suggested by Portlock in 

 1843. 



In chapter ii. the "general form of Graptolites," their mode of 

 preservation, and the sediments in which they occur, are successively 

 treated of. Under the first heading the terminology employed is 

 explained. It is to be regretted that the author still adheres to the 

 terms "frond" and "stij^e." The former is certainly not a suitable 

 term for the entire exo-skeleton of an animal, nor is the latter for 

 its component parts, or as it is here expressed, "the separate 

 simple elements which make up the complex species." 



