GEOGRA PHIC LITER A TURE 1 39 



1896, and 1897 by 198,000 tons, 110,000 tons, and 279,000 tons respectively. . 

 Of the vessels launched in the United Kingdom 654 of 1,131,237 tons 

 have been built under the society's inspection with a view to classifica- 

 tion in Lloyd's Register Book. 



As regards the movements of the shipbuilding industry during the 

 course of 1898, Lloyd's Register Returns show that, irrespective of war- 

 ships, the total tonnage under construction in the United Kingdom on 

 December 31, 1898, exceeded by about 387,000 tons, or over 38 per cent, 

 that under construction 12 months previously. 



GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE 



The Educational Series of Rock Specimens Collected and Distributed by the 

 United States Geological Survey. By Joseph Silas Diller. Pp. 400, with 

 65 illustrations. Bulletin No. 150. U. S. Geological Survey, Charles D. 

 Walcott, Director. Washington, 1898. 25 cents. 

 A good many years ago Major J. W. Powell, then Director of the Geolog- 

 ical Survey, conceived the happy idea of distributing among the leading 

 educational institutions of the country collections of specimens of typical 

 rocks for use in the study of certain branches of geology. The collection, 

 classification, and distribution of the material was an undertaking of no 

 small magnitude, and it is only recently that it has been completed. 

 Concurrently with such completion there has been published a treatise 

 on the study of rocks, in which the educational specimens are minutely 

 described — 69 of them by Mr J. S. Diller, who has been almost wholly 

 responsible for their selection and arrangement, and 87 by other well- 

 known geologists. While fulfilling in a way that leaves nothing to be 

 desired its primary function as a handbook to the mineral collections, 

 this work has an educational value that is entirely its own, as an attract- 

 ively written and handsomely and instructively illustrated manual to the 

 study of lithology and petrography. With a courage and good sense 

 worthy of general emulation, Mr Diller, although dealing with an exceed- 

 ingly technical subject, has not disdained to make himself intelligible to 

 the non-scientific reader, some of his definitions even recalling Huxley's 

 famous Norwich lecture "On a Piece of Chalk," that marvelous example 

 of lucid exposition which every scientific writer reaching out to a popular 

 audience may with so much advantage make his model. 



J. H. 



The Mechanical Composition of Wind Deposits. By Johan August Udden. 

 Pp. 69. Rock Island, Illinois. 1898. 

 A few years ago, Dr Johannes Walther, a distinguished German geog- 

 rapher and traveler in many lands, visited this country, and became in- 

 terested in the efficiency of our western winds in geographic develop- 

 ment. He was especially impressed with the work of the winds in 

 erosion; and, in a widely-quoted article in The National Geographic 

 M igazine, he described this agency appreciatively, designating it defla- 

 tion. Now comes Professor Udden, of Augustana College, with a still 

 more elaborate memoir dealing with the work of the wind as an agent of 



