130 Reviews and Notices of Books. 
of Paleontology. Even the special student may read this book 
with profit, as it presents a more vivid picture to the mind of the 
present state of geological opinion than can be obtained by the 
study of detailed works alone. Having been written for oral 
delivery, the style is clear and inviting, yet always marked by the 
same logical acumen which renders our author’s “ Handbooks” 
so useful to the beginner in the science. In the first six chapters 
of the work before us, Mr Page has, very properly, confined him- 
self to the exposition of what is firmly established in the minds of 
most advanced geologists, giving all the latest and most com- 
prehensive views, in the form of a sketch of the Fauna and Flora 
of the present epoch, followed by a summary of their distribution 
in time, often combined with admirable descriptions of the physi- 
cal circumstances of the different geological formations, as a 
specimen of which we quote the passage that brings us down to 
the current epoch. 
“This ungenial period, generally known in geology as the 
‘Glacial,’ ‘ Northern Drift, or ‘Boulder Clay’ epoch, is litho- 
logically characterised by its superficial mounds and masses 
of drift-sand and gravel, by thick tenacious clays, inter- 
spersed indiscriminately with water-worn blocks of all sizes, 
from mere pebbles to boulders many tons in weight, and by the 
polished, rounded, and striated surfaces of the subjacent rocks, as 
if they had been subjected to the long-continued friction of water 
or ice-borne materiai, and scratched and furrowed by the passage 
of the harder and heavier fragments. In Europe, Asia, and 
North America, down to the 44th or 42d parallel of latitude, and 
up to the altitude of 2000 feet, these appearances present them- 
selves, and are inexplicable, unless on the ground of the gradual 
submergence of the northern hemisphere to that extent, and its 
subjection to a boreal climate which engendered glaciers on its 
hills, and drifted, during a brief summer, icebergs laden with 
rocky debris over its waters. The glaciers smoothing, rounding, 
and grooving the rocks of the higher grounds—the icebergs 
grinding their way through firth and strait, dropping their burden 
of mud, sand, and gravel on the sea-bed, or stranding themselves 
on its shores—complete the necessary arrangements for the pro- 
duction of the geological phenomena of the period. For ages 
the pliocene lands must have slowly subsided, each step gradually 
narrowing the boundaries of vegetable and animal life, and driving 
the surviving species, under the rigours of a deteriorating climate, 
to higher and higher regions. Race after race would succumb: 
first the more limited and local, next the more cosmopolitan, and 
ultimately few of the old flora or fauna would survive, except the 
more elastic in constitution, and those that had, step by step, re- 
treated into more southern latitudes. 
—_—————— 
