﻿30 RevieiDS — Greens. Geology for Students and General Readers. 



one department of the science, and to be content with a less perfect 

 grasp of the rest. If in the second part of this publication we 

 should find as broad and comprehensive views of the stratigraphical 

 and palasontological sides of geology, as we have here presented to us 

 of the physical, then we think Mr. Green will be entitled to rank among 

 the select few who may claim an approach to geological omniscience. 



The style of this book reminds us somewhat of De La Beche's 

 writings. The reasoning is logical, and the language simple and 

 forcible ; but occasionally marred by a certain roughness which jars 

 against the reader's taste. We would in particular instance the con- 

 stant recurrence, especially in the earlier chapters, of the word 

 "latter," which, even when correctly used, breaks the current of 

 the thoughts, and obliges one to hark back to catch an author's 

 meaning. But when there is no "former" to answer to it, then 

 the phrase is distressing. Thus where (p. 56) we are told that quartz 

 occurs " usually as glassy lumps, which fill up the spaces between 

 other minerals, and are sometimes seen to have moulded themselves 

 on the latter," we are irresistibly led to ask, what the lumps would 

 have been like if they had moulded themselves upon the former ? 



Throughout the book everything is made subsidiary to pure 

 geology. The petrological part is treated from a geological point 

 of view, and rocks, which the petrol ogist would separate in his 

 museum, are classed together as merely modifications of the same 

 original deposit under different aspects and degrees of meta- 

 morphism. Indeed, upon this subject of metamorphism, the author 

 appears to hold stronger opinions than are usual regarding the 

 extent to which it may be carried ; and attributes to that agency 

 many granites and Plutonic rocks, which are commonly looked upon 

 as never at any former time having been deposited by water. The 

 sections which relate to contortions, and to the special characteristics 

 of mountainous districts, are particularly clear and decisive ; as is 

 likewise the treatment of Denudation. In reading the first ten chapters 

 the ready-made geologist, though he may not learn much that is 

 new, will nevertheless receive pleasure from feeling his knowledge 

 so lucidly classified, and happily illustrated ; while the learner, 

 without being burthened with long lists of stratified deposits and of 

 names of fossils, will gain a general view of the physical principles 

 upon which the science rests. 



But when we come to the two concluding chapters, the eleventh 

 and twelfth, which treat of the more speculative parts of the science, 

 the case is altered. We believe that very many of our best-informed 

 geologists would receive instruction from a careful study of these 

 chapters. Yet we must confess that we think Prof, Green has, to 

 use a cant phrase, " scamped " some parts of this division of the 

 work. He has, from his early training, capabilities for grappling 

 with the harder problems of Physical Geology which few, even of 

 our very best geologists, are fortunate enough to possess. We there- 

 fore look to him to give no uncertain sound upon questions of this 

 nature. To take an instance: We are disappointed where, on p. 517, 

 he tells us, that " the data in geological questions are too scanty to 



