232 JOUENAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



BOOK REVIEWS. 



" The Face of the Earth." By Eduard Suess. Translated by Hertha 

 B. C. Sollas under the direction of Prof. W. J. Sollas. With numerous 

 maps and illustrations. 3 vols. 8vo., pp. xii + 604 ; vi + 556 ; vii + 

 400. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1904, 1906, 1908.) 25s., 25s., 18s., net. 



Science among English speaking peoples owes an enormous debt to the 

 delegates of the Oxford University Press for the admirable translations of 

 standard works in foreign tongues which are published from time to time 

 by them. That debt has been greatly increased by the publication 

 of Prof. Suess' classical work, Das Antlitz der Erde, done into English 

 by Miss Hertha B. C. Sollas under the direction of Prof. Sollas, Professor 

 of Geology in the University of Oxford. Three volumes lie before us 

 teeming with interest to all who would learn something of the structure 

 of the earth on which we live and of the manner in which it has been 

 built. Many, perhaps, bearing in mind the great amount of work done 

 by slowly or swiftly moving water acting over long periods, and of other 

 slowly acting agents gradually changing the face of the earth, have 

 neglected to consider those enormous forces which must have been at 

 work leading to the making of tremendous mountain chains with their 

 contorted and displaced strata. That deficiency the present work makes 

 good. 



The first part of the book (to p. 179) deals with the movements which 

 have taken place in the outer crust of the earth and the causes which 

 have brought them about — with deluges, those great floods of which 

 legendary history so often speaks, and which in times of great seismic 

 disturbances must frequently have reached huge proportions compared 

 with those of which we have distinct historical records — with dislocations 

 causing through various pressures, folding of strata, over-thrusting and 

 such like — with volcanos and with earthquakes. Then follows a series of 

 descriptions of the various mountain ranges of the world and their history 

 sketched by the hand of a master ; and then a long discussion of the 

 changes of form which have taken place in the surface of the sea. The 

 fourth and last part, " The Face of the Earth," summarizes the preceding 

 parts and " brings into relation the terrestrial changes which are deduced 

 from them, with the changes which have taken place among the terrestrial 

 faunas of the Northern Hemisphere since the beginning of the Tertiary 

 period." 



In such a work as this, parts of course, through the march of explora- 

 tion, get out of date, but all the great discoveries in Africa and Central 

 Asia, etc., which became available during the progress of the work are 

 incorporated in it and, except, perhaps, for extended knowledge of the 

 Antarctic Continent and the bed of the Oceans, investigations which are 

 being pushed forward rapidly, the different parts of the work are only 

 likely to need some modification in detail. 



