184 The American Geologist. September, 1893 
zons had also its glacier poured into it from the Cordilleras? 
This must have ploughed the valley bottom over and over 
again, and accumulated at its lower end a moraine of propor- 
tions as gigantic as its own. I have found no trace of the 
glacial inscriptions so characteristic of the ground over which 
glaciers have travelled, for the simple reason that there is not 
a natural rock surface to be found in the whole Amazonian 
valley." 
It is not a little amusing to read how these over-zealous and 
almost rabid glacialists were put to it to solve the zoological 
puzzles which their excessive " crystallomania" compelled 
them to face. But on this we cannot here enlarge. Well ma} r 
our author say that in view of generalizations like these our 
breath is taken away. 
We need not linger over the chapter on supposed glacial 
beds in earlier geologic ages nor on the review of the various 
cosmic theories of glaciation, all of which are regarded with 
more or less of suspicion or skepticism by geologists. 
The eleventh chapter possesses special interest just now be- 
cause it presents a summary of the views regarding intergla- 
cial eras. Space forbids our entering into detail, but it is 
evident that many of the sections that have been relied on to 
prove the occurrence of these relentings of climate are less 
demonstrative than has been believed. Thus of the Dilrnten 
beds in Switzerland, M. C. Grad says : "Je n' y ai pas remarque 
de stries glaciaires." And Favre says of the beds near Gene- 
va: "Nous n' avons pu decouvrir dans les environs de Geneve 
aucune preuve de l'existence de deux epoques glaciaires." 
Falsan also writes : "Nous repoussons, comme pen vraisembla- 
ble, la theorie des recurrences de periodes glaciaires distinc- 
tes." 
In England, Lamplugh says of some Yorkshire sections at 
Sewerly and Speeton, that "they underlie the basement clay 
and are, therefore, preglacial, and not interglacial as lias; been 
argued. There is no clear evidence here for a mild intergla- 
cial period." 
The author then discusses the evidence of glacial action in 
the southern hemisphere and quotes from numerous writers 
to prove that no general ice-sheet ever prevailed there, but 
that all the phenomena observed are due to local glaciers. He 
