REVIEWS. 



313 



like shape, — indeed, through the whole length it is only necessary to stoop at 

 one place. — Yours, &c, H. C. Salmon, Keighley. 



Fruits from the Chalk. — Sir, — Do you know if any vegetable remains 

 beyond mere fragments of wood have been found in the English Chalk ? — Ed. 

 Drake, Chatham. 



Eossil-fruits have recently been found in the chalk near Rochester ; and the 

 Editor has collected some from the Lower White Chalk of Dover. 



REVIEWS. 



Seasons with the Sea-Horses ; or, Sporting Adventures in the Northern Seas. 

 By James Lamont, Esq., E.G.S. London : Hurst and Blackett, 1861. 



It is not often that we get much geological information from the authors of 

 " Wild Sports" in the north, east, south, and west, many as they are now-a- 

 days. In this case, however, Mr. Lamont, though confessedly an amateur in 

 science, knew how to use his eyes and hands, not only in stalking, harpooning, 

 and such like, but in seeing, noting, and collecting whatever he met with of 

 interest to the zoologist and geologist. The lively narrative of sporting 

 adventures among the seals, walruses, bears, and reindeer of Spitsbergen, with 

 which Mr. Lamont here supplies us, is full of natural history information, 

 ranging from the jelly-fish to the progressive-development -theory ; but geology 

 seems to have especial charms for him — next to rifle-shooting. Without enter- 

 ing into all the details of the geological materials which our author has brought 

 together, and the results obtained both by his own observations thereon, and 

 by the exact determination of his specimens by more practised geologists, as 

 shown in the appendix to his work, and in the Journal of the Geological 

 Society for November, 1860, we may point out the following as the more 

 interesting points in the work before us, as far as relates to our favourite 

 science. 



The size and conditions of some of the great glaciers are noticed, as well as 

 the effects produced by them to some extent ; the nature and relative position 

 of the trap-rocks and carboniferous rocks (sandstone, shale, coal, and fossili- 

 ferous limestone) of the southern part of Spitzbergen; and especially the 

 occurrence of drift-wood and of bones and skeletons of the whale, walrus, &c, 

 on the dry land, at considerable elevations above the present sea-level ; some- 

 times a hundred feet above the sea, and half-a-mile inland. Mr. Lamont 

 remarks that on one of the Thousand Islands four or five miles east-south-east 

 of Black Point, besides a great deal of drift-wood lying " far above high-water- 

 mark, and in positions where it could not possibly have been driven by storms 

 in the present relative levels of land and water, numbers of whales' bones also 

 lay upon this island, from the sea-level up to the top of the rocks, which may 

 have been thirty-five to forty feet in height. Those bones lying high aboye the 

 sea-level were invariably much more decayed and moss-grown than those lower 

 down. Some were of enormous size. In one slight depression of the island, 

 about ten feet above the sea-level, I counted eleven enormous jaw-bones, all 

 lying irregularly, and mixed indiscriminately with many vertebrae, ribs, and 

 pieces of skulls. Of course it will be understood that these bones which I 

 mention in different parts of this narrative were not fossilized. We found 

 them in many parts of Spitzbergen, and at all elevations up to that of two 



VOL. IV. 2. K 



