can only say that they are equally deserving of praise with the literary part 
of the book. As a whole this fasciculus is a piece of palseontographical 
work of the very highest character, and we trust that the authors may he 
encouraged, by the reception it meets with from their confreres and the 
public, to complete it in the same style. 
WEST YORKSHIRE.* 
F OR the geologist the great county of Yorkshire must be looked upon as 
classical ground. In 1829 John Phillips, in the first part of his 
“ Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire,” which treated of the Yorkshire 
coast, gave the earliest practical illustration on an extended scale of the 
application of the principle of determining strata by their organic remains, 
which had just been promulgated by his uncle, William Smith ; and the 
county has ever since been noted for the great amount of attention which 
has been devoted to its exceedingly interesting geological structure. In 
1836 Phillips completed his work on the geology of his adopted county by 
the publication of a second and much larger part, in which those portions of 
Yorkshire lying to the west of the great vale of York were most elaborately 
described ; and at that early date no other county in England could boast 
of having its geology so thoroughly worked out. 
This pre-eminence has doubtless been considerably diminished in the lapse 
of more than forty years, partly by the progress of individual research, and 
partly by the action of the Geological Survey in other counties ; and unques- 
tionably by both these agencies some modifications have been introduced in 
the geological idea of Yorkshire as originally drawn by Phillips. That 
geologist had, indeed, nearly prepared for publication a new edition of his 
first part (subsequently brought out under the care of Mr. Etheridge), 
embodying the results of investigations which had been made by others 
upon the eastern part of Yorkshire. The work of Messrs. Blake and Tate 
upon the Yorkshire Lias is one of great importance ; and the number of 
memoirs published in various periodicals upon the secondary strata of the 
county is very great. 
By its geological construction Yorkshire is naturally divided into two very 
distinct parts. Right down the middle of the county runs the wide vale of 
York, with its 'Triassic beds, separating the secondary rocks of the North and 
East Ridings from the palaeozoic formations of the west of Yorkshire, as 
effectually as if the former constituted an island cut off by an arm of the 
sea. Since the completion of Phillips’ “ Illustrations ” the western division 
has received no small share of attention from geologists ; in fact, the authors 
of the book before us give a list of nearly 500 separate works and scattered 
memoirs relating to the geology and physical geography of the region of 
which they treat, and which includes not only some of the most interesting 
scenery in England, but also extensive deposits of coal, and many great 
* u West Yorkshire : an Account of its Geology, Physical Geography, 
Climatology, and Botany.” By James W. Davis and F. Arnold Lees. 8vo. 
London : L. Reeve & Co., 1878. 
