Review of Recent Geological Literature. 337 
tion to the sea level during any part of the Glacial period or afterward, 
is left an unsettled question. 
The shore lines, deltas, outlet, and bed of the glacial lake Passaic, 
which was provisionally mapped and named by Cook in 1880, have been 
carefully explored. This lake filled a portion of the Passaic river basin 
which must have been dammed by the ice-sheet during its greatest ad- 
vance and the early stages of its recession, having an outlet 331 feet 
above the present sea level, amaximumarea of nearly 200 square miles, 
and a depth exceeding 100 feet. The shore features and other evidences 
of lacustrine action, however, arc mostly inconspicuous, implying that 
lake Passaic existed during only a brief time. 
Intimately associated with the history of the Glacial period and dep- 
osition of the drift, was the erosion of the preglacial Yellow gravel, 
which had been spread as a plain with its surface 200 to 400 feet above 
the present level of the sea, where it is now found capping the highest 
hills, 150 to 200 feet or more above the lowlands. Upon and within the 
lower and secondary portion of this gravel, redeposited during late 
stages of its erosion, are strown abundant and large boulders, occasion- 
ally glaciated, which are referred by Prof. Salisbury to an early part of 
the Ice age. The Yellow gravel appears originally to have extended 
northward upon the now drift-covered area, and southward it is proba- 
bly continuous as the Lafayette formation along the coastal plain of the 
Atlantic and Gulf states, while its lower redeposited portion seems to 
have been contemporaneous and correlative with the Columbia forma- 
tion. 
Iotva Geological Survey. Volume 1. First annual report for 1892, 
with accompanying pajiers. 4to, pp. 472. Des Moines, 1893. Plates, 
map and figures. 
This report embraces the following: Report of the State Geologist 
(Calvin); Report of the Assistant State Geologist (Keyes); Geological 
Formations of Iowa (Keyes); Cretaceous deposits of Woodbury and 
Plymouth counties with observations on their economic uses (Calvin); 
Ancient Lava Mows in the strata of Iowa (S. W. Beyer): Distribution 
and relations of the St. Louis limestone in Mahaska county, Iowa (H. 
F. Bain); Annotated catalogue of minerals (Keyes i; Some Niagara lime- 
burning dolomites and dolomitic building stones of Iowa(G.L. Houser); 
Bibliography of Iowa < Jeology ( Keyes). 
These chapters are put together in a handsomely printed and well- 
bound volume, making a book, which, regardless of the value of its 
contents, presents an appearance and promise of thorough, careful and 
energetic work on the part of its managers and authors. Its size and 
style are uniform with the final reports of the late survey of Iowa con- 
ducted by Dr. C. A. White, issued in 1870. 
In the general review of the geologic formations Mr. Keyes puts the 
Sioux quartzyte of Dr. C. A. White, found in Lyon county, in the ex- 
treme northwestern corner of the state, amongst the "Crystalline rocks," 
ijuoting Irving's description, which, however, does not make it to be 
