Geology and Natural History. 537 



duced to afford information on the life of the several periods. 

 Further, Prof. Lesley has given the volume a practical value by 

 devoting many of its pages to the .mines and ores of iron con- 

 nected with the Lower Silurian and older rocks, to the limestone 

 and slate quarries, and to unsuccessful searchings in these inferior 

 formations for mineral oil and gas. 



2. Fossil Botany,' being an Introduction to Palozophytology 

 from the Standpoint of the Botanist. By H. Graf zu Solms- 

 Laubach. Authorized English translation, by Henry E. F. 

 Garnsey ; revised by Isaac Bayley Balfour. Oxford, 1891. 

 401 pp., 49 illustrations. — Owing to the fact that by far the 

 greater part of the material considered by Count Solms in the 

 present work is Paleozoic, the remainder being taken almost ex- 

 clusively from the Older Mesozoic, the student of recent plants is 

 neither conducted back along the chain of vegetable life in geo- 

 logical time from present types to their remote ancestors, nor 

 may he, after discussing the generally somewhat problematic Paleo- 

 zoic plants, proceed to view, by the light of ample illustrations, 

 the development or gradual succession of plant life up to the 

 recent forms. The entire Angiospermic era in the history is 

 wanting, and relatively little is given to show the connection of 

 the fossils discussed with the living forms. The paucity of figures, 

 without systematic descriptions, as well as its biological charac- 

 ter, render the work of but minor value to the geologist. Its 

 great use will be to the paleontologist ; not as a handbook or 

 manual — it is too abridged and we have other good handbooks 

 nearly contemporaneous with the German edition — but as em- 

 bodying the views of a justly distinguished structural botanist, 

 reasoning from the botanical standpoint, in a field of troubles 

 wherein the every-day workers are too often unfamiliar with the* 

 morphology and histology of recent plants. To the paleobotanist 

 the work is indispensable if for nothing more than the author's 

 opinions and conclusions which are expressed with fairness and 

 conservatism. Its value is further increased by his criticism and 

 verification of many originals of other workers as well as by 

 many previously unpublished observations made from new mate- 

 rial. 



It is unfortunate that, however much a review from time to 

 time of the existing knowledge of fossil floras may be needed, 

 the same rapidity of progress in paleobotany which makes a 

 resume so necessary at a given time soon leaves that resume, 

 with the writer's opinions, among the historical literature of the 

 science. There are but few fields in which discoveries more 

 strongly affecting the ideas of ancient organic life have been 

 made within a few years, and perhaps no science in which classi- 

 ficatory delimitations have shitted about more, than in Paleozoic 

 pbytology. It is, therefore, not a little disappointing to find in 

 this authorized translation, dated four years after the German 

 edition, no mention made of the wealth of valuable researches, 

 some of them fundamentally modifying our ideas of the develop- 



