136 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
The PnrLeck beds are left out in Section No. 1, on one side of tlie curve at its 
rise at tlic foot of the Downs, near Watliutcton. Lundy Island, too, is nearly all 
granite, if we mistake not, and is tiiercfore wrongly coloured, althontih it appears 
to have the correct indication-letter. The reference muuber 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 Upi)er Eocene and of the Alluvium (24 and 2(j), that the reference number 
there is of great value. 
We have long oltserved a great looseness of diction and of phraseology in 
numerous geologiail works. We have noticed it with regret, in more thiin 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 i)ass either without comment in his remarks upon 
any really good or popular work. The strongest censure of Mr. Toulmin Smith's 
condenuiation of geologic jargon may be far more justly ai)plied 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 comiptions of i)ersonal 
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 official 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 " lime," 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 disfigiu'ed 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 occuning in the flowing passages of a description 
are often susceptible of a ridiculous inteipretation. In reading, some time since, 
a book by another author, we came upon the following passage : — " I well 
remember, many years ago, being struck; when attemjjting to walk under the 
cliffs from Scarborough to Filey Bay, with the cnornious slices or square pilasters of 
clitf, that, having been undermined by the action of the breakers at high-water, 
had fallen forwards," &c. We could not, at first, help sympathising with the 
unfortunate author, and had half ejaculated an expression of hojie 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, but that he had been merely 
mentally stnick 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 weU- 
inerited praise it deserves^ we would add, that we have observed the more correct 
dehneations of the geological features of particular districts, beyond even what has 
been accomplished in the Government Survey sheets themselves, issued, it is trae, 
some time since. We can, however, but be gi'ateful for the communication of the 
new information which Professor Ramsay's personal knowledge of the labours of 
the official staff' subsequent to the publication of those docimients has enabled 
him to give us ; and while cautioning the inexperienced that the admirable 
sections attached to the present Map are constructed chiefly from tlie measure- 
ment of the angles of the di]i of the strata at their outcrops, and that consequently 
they are often highly hyjiothetical, as far as the undergi-ound contiruiation 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. 
