106 Review of Recent Oeological Literature. 
But the absence of marine fossils to prove the supposed submergence, 
and the difficulty thus fully recognized by the author, seem to make it 
far more probable that the drift deposits were formed above the sea, 
and even when this district stood somewhat higher than now, which is 
the opinion of Elias Lewis, Jr., and of TJpham, based on the occur- 
rence of ancient channels of drainage, which extend southward from 
the moraine across the plain and continue beneath the present sea 
level. 
Plentiful fragments of a reddish sandstone, which contain six or 
eight well marked species of Cretaceous mollusca, are found upon 
small areas in two places, indicating the existence of Cretaceous beds 
beneath the drift at no great distance. 
The very interesting Tertiary section of Gay Head is described as 
showing a great number of thick, steeply inclined beds of sand, clay, 
and lignitic matter of extremely vivid and contrasted colors, with an 
observed total thickness of about 2,000 feet. The colors range from the 
dazzling white of the sandy beds to the nearly pure black of the car- 
bonaceous layers, with intermediate hues of brown, green, yellow and 
red. But the ordinary arrangement of the beds in the section is 
greatly marked by the continued slipping of large wedges of the depos- 
its down the steep incline of the talus. The fossils of this locality, 
indicating later Miocene or Pliocene age, are to form the subject of a 
separate memoir. From the great thickness of these beds and adja- 
cent parts of the same formation, chiefly monoclinal, dipping to the 
northeast with strike from northwest to southeast, and from the many 
enclosed lignitic layers the author suggests, wdth much probability, 
that the whole formation, denominated the Vineyard series, was the 
delta of a great river flowing eastward to this area from the Connecti- 
cut valley, or perhaps from no further distance than the Narragansett 
basin, that is, the region now occupied by the Taunton and Providence 
rivers and their tributaries. 
The Ice-age in North America. By G. Frederick Wright. (D. Ap- 
pleton& Co.,N. Y. pp. 622, Eoy. 8vo, many maps and illustrations, 
$5.00.) The author of this w'ork has been known for fifteen years as an 
active student of glacial phenomena, and as such has made extended 
observations, reaching from New England to Minnesota and the glaciers 
of Alaska. While his professorial work has been in a far different 
field,* he has industriously devoted his summer months to glacial geol- 
ogy, and has seen with his own eyes most of the important phenomena 
of the ice-age in America. While this wide observation has quali- 
fied him to use his own language in describing the drift that character- 
izes so much of North America, and for making judicious selections, 
and for framing a consistent treatment of his theme, he has preferred 
to quote largely from the published accounts of other geologists. 
The book has chapters entitled : What is a glacier? Existing gla- 
*Mr. Wright is professor of NewTestament Greek iu Oberlin Theological Seminary 
and editor of the Bibliotheca sacra. 
