﻿THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE II. VOL. IV. 



No. XL— NOVEMBER, 1877. 



I. — AmEKIOAN " SUKFACE GeOLOGY," AND ITS EeLATION TO BeITISH. 



With some Kemarks on the Glacial Conditions in Britain, 

 especially in Eeference to the " Great Joe Age " oe Mr. 

 James Geikie. 



(PART I.) 



By Seahles V. Wood, Jun., F.G.S., 



Illustrated by Two Maps and several Sections.^- 



(PLATE XV.) 



FEOM no part of the world have we of late years derived more 

 additions to the Geological Eecord than from North America. 

 Besides important additions to the earliest pages of that record, the 

 rich collections made by the United States Surveyors, both of fauna 

 and flora, from the Cretaceous, Eocene, and Miocene deposits, have 

 thrown much light upon the life history of the Earth ; and it is even 

 contended that they have bridged over the interval which, notwith- 

 standing the Maestricht beds, the Pisolitic, and the Faxoe Limestones, 

 still remains sharply marked between the Cretaceous and Tertiary 

 formations of Europe so far as they have yet been examined. 



As regards those latest deposits, which, by adoption from the 

 Frenchmen, as other fashions are from the Frenchwomen, it has 

 become the fashion to call " Quaternary," ^ and which have received 

 of late years so large a share of attention from geologists, Americans 

 have not been behind their European brethren in devoting to it 

 abundant investigation. Memoirs and notices by Principal Dawson 

 and others relative to the newer Geology of Canada have made us 

 familiar with the general features of the Glacial and post-Glacial 

 formations of the lower basin of the St. Lawrence, as have those of 

 Professors Dana, Winchell, and others, with similar features in 

 the United States, while recently ^ there has appeared, in the Eeport 

 of the Geological Survey of Ohio, a comprehensive memoir by Prof. 



1 The map of Yorkshire with sections will appear with Part III. 



- Considering that the term " Primary" had long become obsolete, and that the 

 term " Secondary " was fast becoming so, we might have been spared tbe absurdity 

 of " Quaternary." However, as Crinoline has done so, I suppose, it will go out of 

 fashion in time. The separation of Geology into " solid " and " superficial " officially 

 made by the late Director of the Geological Survey of England, and on the basis of 

 which the maps of the National Survey are to be delineated, is, to my mind, also an 

 absurdity; but in deference to the leaders of fashion, I have adopted the term of 

 " Surface Geology" in the title of this paper. 



3 The Surface Geology of Ohio, by J. S. Newberry (Columbus, 1874). 



DECADE II. VOL. IT.— NO. XI. 31 



