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 fkom 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 colled ed 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., F.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- 
dajs. 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 Spitzbergen, 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 tliereon, 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 mQes 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 abov^e 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 
Ijring 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 
