18709. ] Recent Literature, 251 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
MACFARLANE'S GEOLOGISTS’ TRAVELING Hanp-Book.—The 
design of this small octavo of two hundred and sixteen pages, 
which is well expressed in the title, is certainly novel. This is a 
distinctly new departure in geological literature; and it is sur- 
prising that it is so, since there has long been room for such a 
work. It supplies a want long experienced, for every geologi- 
cally-minded traveler must have felt the need of a key or guide 
to the geology of the districts traversed. But the book is de- 
signed for the unscientific observer as well as for the professional 
geologist. In this connection the author says: “One object of 
the work is to teach persons not versed in geology something of 
this science during the tedious and unprofitable hours of travel- 
ing, without study, not as in a text book, but by pointing to the . 
things themselves as seen at railway stations and through the 
windows of a railway car;” and it is not improbable that the 
chief value of the “Guide,” as regards the interests of the science, 
- will consist in the wider diffusion by right means of geological 
knowledge and interest which it will effect. 
Forty pages in the first part of the book are devoted to brief 
but comprehensive descriptions, especially designed for unscien- 
tific travelers, of the different geological formations, beginning 
with the Eozoic, the divisions of which are those proposed by 
Dr. T. Sterry Hunt and the Canadian Geological Survey. The 
descriptions of these are from the pen of Dr. Hunt and are nota- 
ble as constituting the first general account that has appeared in a 
popular work of those grand fragments of the material record of 
the earth’s history which, whether we consider their volume 
or the length of time required for their formation, appear vastly 
more important than’ the corresponding divisions of the Palaeozoic 
and later eras. From an economic point of view, too, the most 
of these primary Eozoic divisions are outranked by none of the 
more recent formations, except the Carboniferous. Following 
these descriptions are two tables of the geological formations, one 
by Prof. J. D. Dana similar to that in the second edition of his 
Manual, and the other by Dr. Hunt, which differs from Dana's 
chiefly in the divisions of the Eozoic and Cambrian. The former 
is principally followed in the subsequent portion of the work, 
which consists of one hundred and fifty-six pages of tables of 
railway stations, the railways being grouped according to States, 
while Opposite the name of each station is the name of the for- 
mation occurring there, and in some cases the altitude above 
sea level. The nomenclature of the formations necessarily varies 
| The Geologists’ Traveling Hand-Book.—An American Geological Railway 
Guide, giving the geological formation at every railway station, with notes on inter- 
€sting places on the routes, and a description of each of the formations. By JAMEs 
MACFARLANE, Ph.D., with the coöperation of the State Geologists, and other scien- — 
tific gentlemen. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879. 
9 
