BOOK NOTICES. 



30I 



are separately treated. There is also a brief discussion of the 

 possibility of coal occurring under the South-east of England, in the 

 light of the information gained from deep borings. It may be 

 remarked that, under the head of each system, a section is devoted 

 to its most valuable economic and other products. 



The author classes the Permian or Dyas and the Trias as one 

 system under their original name of New Red Sandstone, and 

 remarks the universal discordance between them and the underlying 

 rocks. At the same time, the palaeontological similarity between the 

 Carboniferous and the Magnesian Limestone is pointed out. 



Next we find the Jurassic strata fuhy treated. Tables are given 

 to show the persistence of the ammonite-zones in the Lias, and the 

 variations in the character of the Lower Oolites when traced from 

 Dorset to Yorkshire. The author retains the divisions of the Upper, 

 Middle, and Lower Lias, as used by most of the older geologists and 

 by the Survey, in preference to that of Messrs. Tate and Blake. In 

 the Middle and Upper Oolites the work of ]\Iessrs. Hudleston, 

 Blake, and others is well summarised. Under the head of the 

 Lower Cretaceous rocks we find both the Northern and Southern 

 counties types of that division described in sufficient detail. Our 

 author draws attention to the abuse of the term Neocomian, and 

 indeed it would be well if this word, as well as many others, could 

 be dropped out of English geological literature. In the Chalk 

 the palceontological zones worked out by Barrois and others are 

 given in a table. IMany geologists will be of opinion that this 

 is a case in which the use of zone-fossils has been rather unduly 

 pushed. 



After the usual treatment of the Eocenes of the London and 

 Hampshire basins, and the Crags, etc., of the Eastern counties, 

 thirty pages are devoted to the glacial deposits and their attendant 

 phenomena. The interpretation of these is similar to that given by 

 Prof. James Geikie, in his Great Ice Age. 



The Pleistocene and Recent Alluvia come next, and then a 

 section on Terrestrial Phenomena, such as Springs, Swallow-holes, 

 Tufa, Caverns, Blown Sands, Soils and Beaches. The portion 

 treating of Volcanic Phenomena has some petrological notes by 

 ^Ir. P.utley, which are too brief to be of much service, and in a work 

 which does not aim at being a text-book of general geology, might 

 well have been omitted. There is also, however, a short but useful 

 account of the chief localities of igneous rocks in England and Wales. 

 It is. perhaps, vain to protest against the almost universal practice of 

 writers of manuals, who, after describing the sedimentary rocks with 

 due care in chronological order, group all the eruptive rocks together, 



Oct. 1887. 



