No. 377.) REVIEWS OF RECENT LITERATURE. 375 
GEOLOGY. 
A New Edition of Dana’ used Text- Book 
of Geology’ has recently appeared in a dress that is much more 
attractive than that so familiar in earlier editions. Professor Dana 
had begun a revision of the work a short time before his death. The 
completion of the revision has been undertaken by Prof. W. N. Rice, 
of Wesleyan, and with great success. The distinctive characteristics 
of earlier editions have been retained in the new edition, but the 
volume has been modernized by the replacement of the old zoologi- 
cal and botanical classifications by those adopted in recent manuals, 
by a fuller recognition of the theory of evolution as a working 
hypothesis in paleontology, and by a modification of earlier state- 
ments concerning metamorphism. The ending y¢e for rock names 
has also been abandoned for the more usual #¢e. 
In his preface to the new edition the editor declares that he under- 
took the revision with the understanding that the book “was to be 
brought down to the present time as regards its facts, but it was 
still to express the well-known opinions of its author.” That he was 
the right man for the delicate task of “ editing ” this, the most popu- 
lar of Dana’s works, is abundantly proven by the excellence of the 
new book. It still presents all of its author’s well-known views on 
debatable questions, and yet is, in the main, a splendid compendium 
of the truths of geology as now accepted by conservative students 
of the science. 
-In one or two points only can ultra conservatism be charged. The 
Archean remains undivided, no distinction having been made 
between the typical clastic pre-Cambrian rocks and the series of 
crystalline schists that lie unconformably beneath these, — a distinc- 
tion that is now made by nearly every geologist who has worked in 
undoubted pre-Cambrian regions. 
With respect to the treatment of the topic metamorphism the same 
fault may be found. The editor leaves the impression on the 
reader’s mind that nearly all the gneisses, mica-schists, etc., are 
recrystallized sedimentary rocks, though, it is true, he declares that 
in some cases they may be produced from plutonic rocks. He 
also suggests that granite itself may be of metamorphic origin, in 
Spite of the fact that no specialist in the study of rocks has ever 
1 Dana, James D. Revised Text-Book of Geology. Fifth edition. Revised 
and saad Edited by William North Rice. American Book Company, 1897. 
ix + 482 pp., 464 ills. 
