Review of Recent Geological Literature. 259 
recent interesting account of the development of the shell in 
the brachiopod, Zyyospira recurvirostra, we meet with the 
term nepiastie, which appears to be employed for the same 
ontic growth stage as that to which Hyatt first applied the 
word silphologic, afterward discarding it for nepionic, and 
which Buckman and Bather have called brephic. Nepiastic 
is not defined, but unless our reading is at fault it is here 
used for the first time, and it is not at all evident why. with 
already three terms to express the same thing, there- i- any 
urgent demand for a fourth. If it has come to stay we hope 
it may prove better than any of its predecessors, but it seems 
a timely though trite remark that the last thing out, whether 
in science, the arts or the world of affairs, is not always the 
best. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL 
LITERATURE. 
Eleventh Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey 
to the Secretary of the Interior, 1889-90. By J. W. Powell, Director. 
— Part I. Geology, pp. xv, 757, with 6G plates, and 120 figures in the 
text. — Part II. Irrigation, pp. xiv, 395, with plates 67-96, and figures 
121-124. Washington, 1891. This report, which bears an imprint as if 
published two years ago, comes to us, and to the working geologists and 
public libraries of the country, more than three years after the end of 
the fiscal year to which it relates. The administrative reports of the 
director and the chiefs of divisions of the Survey till 185 pages, and 
these are accompanied by two papers or memoirs, the first being en- 
titled, The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa, by W J McGee, 
and the second, The Natural Gas Field of Indiana, by Arthur John 
Phinney. 
Mr. McGee's memoir, occupying 389 pages, of which the most salient 
points have been given in the Am. Geologist for last March, at page 
178, is superbly illustrated with GO plates, including five folded maps in 
the pocket of the volume, and with the entire 120 text figures. It is a 
work of great value, discussing many phases of the drift from new 
pointB of view, and bringing the history of the Ice age vividly and im- 
pressively to the imagination of the reader; but perhaps in some 
places it may be criticised for prolixity and too obvious rhetorical ef- 
fort. The doctrine of the division of the Ice age by interglacial epechs 
is very confidently maintained. 
