REVIEWS. 



Descriptive Catalogue of the Salisbury and South Wilts Museum. 



Salisbury: Bennett. 1864. 

 Proceedings of the Inauguration of the Salisbury and South Witts 3Iuseum. 



Salisbury: Bennett. 1864. 



The establishment of a new museum is always a matter of note, but 

 that of an important one in so remarkable a district, both archaeologically 

 and geologically, as Wiltshire, is unusually interesting. The inauguration 

 took place in January of the present year, an account of which was duly 

 sent to us, but want of space prevented our noticing it at the time. We 

 also received an illustrated descriptive catalogue of 112 pages and 14 

 plates, which is a very model of what should be done for every local 

 museum. The stone, bronze, and early iron objects have been catalogued 

 by Mr. E. T. Stevens ; the mediaeval series and the pottery, by Mr. 

 IN ightingale ; the mediaeval seals, by Mr. W. Ormond ; the mammalian 

 remains of the Pleistocene period, by our talented contributor Dr. H. P. 

 Blackmore, and the birds by Mr. Henry Blackmore. It should be dis- 

 tinctly understood that this is not a mere bare enumeration of the objects 

 deposited in the museum, but that popular and intelligible explanations of 

 the uses, objects, purposes, and nature of the objects registered, are freely 

 and fully appended. Too much praise cannot be given to those who have 

 thus striven to make the Salisbury Museum instructive to visitors of all 

 denominations and degrees of education and intelligence. 



Geological Survey of Canada. 



The Report of Progress of this most important survey, from its com- 

 mencement to 1863, illustrated with nearly five hundred woodcuts, has 

 been produced by the officers, Sir William Logan, Director, Mr. Alexander 

 Murray, Assistant Geologist, Mr. T. Sterry Hunt, Chemist and Mineralo- 

 gist, and Mr. Billings, Palaeontologist. A noble volume it is, of all but a 

 thousand pages, worthy of the clever, active, and indefatigable Director, of 

 his able staff', and creditable in production to the printer and the engraver ; 

 for Montreal, in this respect, could not be expected to rival our own me- 

 tropolis, but the typography and press-work are remarkably good for 

 colonial work. An atlas of maps is to accompany the volume, but is not 

 yet complete. The Geological Survey of Canada was instituted by the 

 Provincial Government in 1843, and since then results have from time to 

 time been submitted to the Legislature and published. The present volume 

 contains, in a perfect form, the substance of those periodical reports, with a 

 great deal of original matter ; and the work, as now presented, is a grand 

 record of the full labours of the Survey. 



Flora Belfastiensis. By Ralph Tate, F.G.S. 



As Belfast was without a complete local Flora, the little book before us 

 will supply a decided want, and emanating from a gentleman who is an ex- 

 cellent geologist as well as a botanist, those special points which give the 

 peculiar value which local Floras have to the field-geologist, will naturally 

 have received due and more than usual attention. The list of plants seems 

 to us a very full and perfect one ; but it is the introductory description 

 of the physical features of the district that geologists will find most in- 

 structive. It is well known that relations exist between the various soils 

 and the plants which grow upon them ; but as drift and other superficial 

 deposits are commonly widely spread over many areas, it follows that the 



