518 GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 



without the strong hereditary character of civilized and enlightened 

 men — i. e., in the words of an observing priest, they are "big children 

 who must be treated like little ones " (page 482). The book is 



rather sumptuous, printed on thick paper in large type (composed in 

 England, judging from the laboured orthography), supplied with a good 

 map, and illustrated with excellent halftone reproductions of the author's 

 photographs. 



W J M. 



Volcanoes of North America : A Reading Lesson for Students of Geography 

 and Geology. By Israel C. Russell, Professor of Geology in the Uni- 

 versity of Michigan, etc. Pp. xrv 4- 346, with maps and illustra- 

 tions. New York : The Macmillan Company. 1897. $4.00. 

 It is gratifying to note that after many years of ultra-specialization a 

 geologist and geographer has undertaken the task of summing up the 

 knowledge of the broader features of our continent. In this work Pro- 

 fessor Russell has presented a summary of the distribution of the volca- 

 noes, living and extinct, of the North American continent, and has suc- 

 ceeded in producing a readable and admirable volume. The first quarter 

 of the book is devoted to a discussion of the characteristics of volcanoes 

 in general, dealing with the types of volcanic eruptions, the nature of 

 the ejecta, the life history of eruptions, the geomorphology of volcanic 

 forms, subterranean intrusions of igneous rocks, and classification of 

 igneous rocks based upon mineral characters. While these subjects are 

 ably treated by Professor Russell and would well become a text book of 

 geology, we cannot but begrudge the valuable space they occupy, which 

 later necessitated a condensation of his descriptions of the volcanoes 

 themselves. It is also regrettable that the author, in illustrating the 

 character of volcanic action, should have used so many foreign examples, 

 when abundant material could be found at home. He need not have 

 gone outside of North America and the adjacent Hawaiian and West India 

 islands to have found illustrations of every known type of volcanic activ-' 

 ity and productivity. We doubt if even the explosion of Krakatoa 

 itself, which the author so freely cites, much exceeded in wide-reaching 

 effect the tremendous catastrophe of Morne Garon, St Vincent, in 1812, 

 which affected American geography from Chili to New Madrid, destroy- 

 ing many cities, notably Caracas. In the mud craterlets of the Sonoran 

 coastal deserts, the frequently active Colima of southern Mexico, the 

 numerous active volcanoes of Central America, and the volcanoes of the 

 Aleutian and Hawaiian islands, .the author could have found abundant 

 illustrations of all known volcanic phenomena. 



Following the geological introduction is a compendium of the distribu- 

 tion of volcanoes of North America, active and recent, which is the best 

 that has ever been presented. This is most instructive reading and will 

 be exceedingly useful to the future student who will take up this subject 

 and pursue it more extensively, for there is no more tempting or more 

 profitable field for research on the part of some one who has means and 

 opportunity than a systematic exploration and description of the North 

 American volcanoes, especially those of Mexico and Central America 

 and the Caribbee islands. 



