Review of Recent Geological Literature. 261 
pottery, $80,000; salt 6162,700; petroleum, §1,400,435; and natural gas, 
8160,000. 
Geology of Colorado and Western Ore Deposits. By Arthur 
Lakes, Professor of Geology at the State School of Mines, Golden, 
Colo. pp. 314, 12mo, with 28 plates (maps, sections, and fossils), and 
several figures in the text. Denver, Colo. The Chain & Hardy Co., 
1893. Miners and prospectors will find this a very convenient and use- 
ful handbook of geology, chiefly descriptive of metalliferous rock for- 
mations and of the modes of occurrence of the ores of the Rocky Moun- 
tain or Cordilleran belt. It treats most in detail the mining districts 
of Colorado, presenting in concise form the results of the U. S. Geo- 
ogical Surveys by Hayden and Emmons; and beyond the limits of this 
state it comprises brief descriptions of the chief mining districts of 
each of the states and territories of the Great Baein and Pacific slope 
of British Columbia, and of Alaska. 
Ueber angebliche Spongien aus dem Archaicum. By Hermann 
Rauff. (Neues Jahrbuch fiir Mineralogie, etc., Jahrg. 1893, ii Bnd., ltes 
Heft, pp. 56-67.) 
In the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, 
No. ix, pp. 42-45, 1890, Mr. G. F. Matthew claims to have discovered 
sponge remains in the upper Laurentian of New Brunswick at not less 
than 25,000 feet below the base of the Cambrian. Two different spe- 
cies are indicated occurring at distinct horizons, one termed Halichon- 
drites graphitiferus, the other Cyathospongia (?) eozoica. The former 
occurs in graphitic slates and consists of masses of long, thin, needle- 
like "acerate spicules'' usually in parallel sets; the latter is to all ap- 
pearances a hexactinellid from the quartzites beneath the graphitic 
slates. Rauff holds both species up to doubt. He finds that the "spic- 
ules" of Halichondrites graphitiferus, as represented by Matthew, 
cross one another in the mass at a pretty constant angle, from 55-67°, 
thus forming a series of triangular and equiangular meshes. Attention 
is called to the similar triangular striation of the surface of plates of 
graphite, the angle made by the striae being about 60° or varying 
therefrom within narrow limits, and it is suggested that the so-called 
Halichondrites may be of similar crystallic origin. The objections 
raised to the spongioid nature of Cyathospongia ? eozoica are less de- 
pendable. Matthew described this body as composed of rectangularly 
intersecting spicular bands of the first order, with interstitial cruciate 
spicules of small size, and the figure given by him might well serve as a 
representation of the structureof someof the reticulate sponges from the 
slates of Little Metis or Holland Patent, though its enlargement (x80) 
shows that the texture must be much finer than in any of these. Rauff 
estimates from this enlargement that the actual diameter of the cruciate 
spicules is only about .025 mm., which, he says, is a"verdachtige Klein- 
heit," as the smallest spicule given by Schulze, in his Hexactinallida 
of the Challenger P^xpedition has nearly twice this size. Some weightier 
ground than this, or even than the inherent improbability of a silicious 
