1877.] Recent Literature. 165 
geographical changes of the earth’s surface here set forth, is not 
the result of any preconceived theory, but has grown out of a 
careful study of the facts accumulated, and has led to a consider- 
able modification of the author’s previous views. It may be 
described as an application of the general theory of evolution, to 
solve the problem of the distribution of animals ; but it also fur- 
nishes some independent support to that theory, both by show- 
ing what a great variety of curious facts are explained by its 
means, and by answering some of the objections which have been 
founded on supposed difficulties in the distribution of animals in 
space and time. 
It also illustrates and supports the geological doctrine of the 
general permanence of our great continents and oceans, by show- 
ing how many facts in the distribution of animals can only be 
explained and understood on such a supposition, and it exhibits 
in a striking manner the enormous influence of the Glacial 
epoch, in determining the existing zodlogical features of the vari- 
ous continents. And lastly, it furnishes a more consistent and 
intelligible idea than has yet been reached by any other mode of 
investigation of all the more important changes of the earth’s 
surface that have probably occurred during the entire Tertiary 
period, and of the influence of these changes in bringing about 
' the general features, as well as many of the more interesting de- 
tails and puzzling anomalies of the geographical distribution of 
animals, 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
Memorrs or tHe Grotoaican Survey or Kentucky.’ — The 
first fruits of the reéstablished Geological Survey of Kentucky appear 
in a large and admirably illustrated volume of memoirs. Professor 
Shaler publishes papers on the antiquity of the caverns and on the 
fossil brachiopods of the Ohio Valley, and, in conjunction with Mr. 
Carr contributes the first of a series of papers on the prehistoric remains 
of Kentucky ; while Mr. Allen furnishes an elaborate memoir on the 
erican bisons, living and extinct. The first of Professor Shaler’s 
Papers has already appeared in the memoirs of the Boston Natural His- 
tory Society, and Mr. Allen’s monograph is published simultaneously by 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology. The latter paper forms the bulk 
of the volume (246 pp.) and is illustrated by twelve plates, half of 
them double, and bya map of North America. It is one of the most com- 
mt Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Kentucky. N.S. SHALER, Director. Vol. I. 
ambridge, 1876. 4to, pp- 360, 27 plates, 1 map. 
