230 Reviews — The Geology of the Fenland. 



two causes in operation, plant-growth is a more rapid agent in 

 filling up lakes than the washing down of sediments. Or perhaps 

 it would be more correct to say that every deep mountain lake 

 is being slowly but surely shallowed by the yearly accumulation 

 of sediments, and that having at last reached a moderate depth, 

 at which aquatic plants thrive and grow most freely, the final filling 

 up of the lake is accomplished in a comparatively brief period of 

 time by the more rapid production of peat, and the fixing of iron. 



Mr. Lee alludes (in a foot-note, on p. 495) to Mr. A. Tylor's 

 " pluvial period," which he thinks " many of the lake-dwelling 

 facts, as far as they go, seem rather to favour ; " but we are not dis- 

 posed attach any special or peculiar meteorological import to the 

 growth of peat save that it proves the climate to have been humid, 

 the temperature probably equivalent to that of Ireland, the country 

 no doubt being everywhere clothed with forests which even spread 

 high up the mountain sides. 



If we venture to make any general remark on this new edition of 

 Keller's Lake-Dwellings, it is in reference to the scrupulous fidelity 

 of the translator (whether in dealing with the Eeports of Dr. Keller 

 himself, or, the thousand and one separate papers by other authors, 

 which he has so laboriously brought together in this volume) in 

 always adhering to the original text, when a departure from it would, 

 we think, have been not unfrequently an improvement, and have in 

 many instances avoided a too-frequent recurrence, in different woids, 

 of the same general ideas, which, having been once enunciated, 

 need not be again reiterated. Whether as the faithful historian or 

 the patient translator, we would crave none better than Dr. Keller 

 and Mr. John Edward Lee. 



III. — Memoiks of the Geological Survey or England and Wales. 

 The Geology of the Fenland. By Sydney B. J. Skertohly, 

 F.G.S. 8vo. pp. 335, with a map and 23 plates. (London.) 



THERE is no tract in the British Isles which could be expected 

 to offer less temptation to the geologist than that large area, 

 including the Bedford Level, which is known as the Fenland. 

 Forming portions of six counties,' it occupies about 1300 square 

 miles, for the most part consisting of a monotonous plain from five 

 to twenty feet above the mean tide-level, and only diversified by 

 slight elevations which, like islands, stand out here and there from 

 the apparently dead-level of the fens. Much of this land, we are 

 told, is below the high- water mark of ordinary tides, and would be 

 overflowed almost daily, but for the erection of great banks along 

 the sea-board. 



Happily the geologist is not confined to the scenes of the present 

 day, for however uninviting these may be, he can usually excite 

 within himself some enthusiasm by directing his mental vision to 

 those changes which have taken place in past times, in restoring to 

 his mind's eye pictures of the ancient scenery, and in reading those 



1 Lincoln, Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Suffolk, and Korfolk. 



