136 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



The Purbeck beds are left out in Section No. 1, on one side of the curve at its 

 rise at the foot of the Downs, near Watlington. Lundy Island, too, is nearly all 

 granite, if we mistake not, and is therefore wrongly coloured, although it appears 

 to have' the correct indication-letter. The reference number 23 is left out on the 

 outliers of typical Bagshot-sands, and this is of moment, as the tint is so like those 

 of the Upper Eocene and of the Alluvium (24 and 26), that the reference number 

 there is of great value. 



We have long observed a great looseness of diction and of phraseology in 

 numerous geological works. We have noticed it with regret, in more than one 

 writer, even amongst the really talented staff at the Jermyn Street Museum. 

 The yielding to such looseness of language, and, still worse, the actual adoption 

 of a particular geological slang, has crept into vogue far too generally amongst 

 geologists, for the reviewer to pass either without comment in his remarks upon 

 any really good or popular work. The strongest censure of Mr. Toulmin Smith's 

 condemnation of geologic jargon may be far more justly applied to such instances 

 of carelessness than to the generally useful although sometimes barbarous com- 

 bination of Greek and Latin words, or to a few facetious corruptions of personal 

 names as generic or specific designations. 



It is, however, only to a very modified form of such looseness of expression, or 

 rather perhaps it is to merely an ofiicial disregard of the true meaning of words, 

 that we allude in the present case. It is to the use of the word " lime " for 

 limestone, in diagram No. 6. Again, in Lower Lias clay and " lime," in section 

 No. 2 ; Wenlock " hme," in No. 5, &c. Now, limestone is not lime, and lime 

 does not exist in nature as such, but only in combination with some other 

 substance, such as carbonic acid gas, when it is a carbonate of lime or a limestone ; 

 or with sulphuric acid, when it is sulphate of lime or gypsum. In no case what- 

 ever on this map ought there to be written " lime." 



We have a high respect for Professor Ramsay, and we have the pleasure, more- 

 over, of enjoying his friendship ; our stronger remarks^ therefore, are not intended 

 to apply to him individually, but to attack the outgrowth of a vile system, which 

 has already disfigured some of our best geological books and works, and the 

 tendency of which is to reduce to worse than newspaper style that which ought to 

 be of strictly classical composition. 



? Some contracted expressions occurring in the flowing passages of a description 

 are often susceptible of a ridiculous interpretation. In reading, some time since, 

 a book by another author, we came upon the following passage :— " I well 

 remember, many years ago, being strucTc, when attempting to walk under the 

 cliffs from Scarborough to Filey Bay, loith the enormous slices or square pilasters of 

 cliff, that, having been undermined by the action of the breakers at high-water, 

 had fallen forwards," &c. We could not, at fii'st, help sympathising with the 

 unfortunate author, and had half ejaculated an expression of hope that he had not 

 been seriously hurt in his dangerous journey, when we perceived from the context 

 that he had not really been injured or even hit, bat that he had been merely 

 mentally struck with the appearance of those singular masses referred to. 



To return again to Professor Ramsay's excellent Map, for we would not 

 willingly conclude our notice of it with any other expression than that of the well- 

 nicritcd ])raise it deserves, we would add, that we have observed the more correct 

 delineations of the geological features of particular districts, beyond even what has 

 been accomplished in the Government Survey sheets themselves, issued, it is true, 

 some time since. We can, however, but be grateful for the communication of the 

 new information which Professor Ramsay's personal knowledge of the labours of 

 the ofiicial staft' subsequent to the publication of those documents has enabled 

 liini to give us ; and while cautioning the inexperienced that the admirable 

 sections attached to the present Map are constructed chiefly from the measure- 

 ment of the angles of the diji of the strata at their outcrops, and that consequently 

 they are often higldy hyiiothotical, as far as the underground continuation of the 

 beds is concerned, we would praise this successful effort to teach, by means of the 

 eye, some highly important passages in the geological history of our island. 



