324 Tlie American Geologist. May, 189» 
them and rendered accessible to the harbors. The coal fields are favor- 
ably situated and the deposits are extensive enough to reward develop- 
ment and the structure of the coal makes it excellent for use by steam- 
ships. The most important point, however, is that in all of southern 
and eastern Asia (vide Zeit. f. prakt. Geol. 1894, pp. S7, 39 and 254; 1897, 
p. 389) there is no place where equally good stone coal occurs so near 
to a good shipping point. The great and celebrated coal fields of China 
lie far inland; Kaiping alone is near the coast, but the voyage thither 
is a long one and there is no good harbor. * The Mesozoic coals of 
Japan and Formosa are much inferior in structure to those of Shantung 
and the Tertiary coals of Indian Asia are not to be compared with them. 
The route of the railroads has been officially decided. A road to 
Wei-hsien, from there westward toward the northern boundary of the 
mountains toward Poschan-hsien and Tsi-nan-fu would make the north- 
ern coal fields of the series tributary to the harbor. The construction of 
that part which lies in this unusually populous and productive territory 
would be easy and inexpensive on account of the extremely low cost 
of labor. A further road would have to be constructed in a western 
direction toward I-tschou-fu. If the iron ores at this latter point should 
prove worthy of exploitation the place would acquire considerable im- 
portance. Connection of this place by a road past Yentschoufu to Tsi- 
nan-fu would for the present give a very favorable terminal for the 
whole system of railroads. 
Until now the coal was almost unavailable. Upon the opening of the 
harbor of Kiauchau and the building of the railroad lines mentioned 
depends the future of the rich and as yet partly unexplored coal fields of 
Shantung. . H. V. Winxhell. 
Water Resou?res of Indiana and Ohio, By Frank Leverett. 
(From the Eighteenth Annual Report, U. S. Geol. Survey, for 1896-97; 
Part IV, Hydrography, pp. 419-550, with plates xxxiii-xxxvii, and figures 
76, 77-) 
During the author's extensive explorations of the marginal moraines 
and otherdrift deposits of these states, he has collected, as another branch 
of his work, the large amount of exact and well arranged information 
which he gives in this memoir concerning the drainage systems, lakes, 
underground waters, springs, and water supplies of the cities and villag- 
es. One of his maps shows the contour of the district; another, its strat- 
ified rock formations; a third, the Pleistocene deposits; and a fourth, the 
relation of the drift to the ordinary wells. Complexly looped and inter- 
locked moraines, to the number of ten or twelve, traverse Indiana and 
Ohio, with large intervening areas of till plains. Older till, covered by 
loess, is mapped extending southwest, outside the moraine belts, nearly 
to the mouth of the Wabash, and across the Ohio river in the region of 
Cincinnati; but each state also has large areas in its southern part beyond 
the limits of the drift, excepting the water-borne modified drift of the 
river valleys which head within the glaciated area. The memoir will be 
of great interest and practical value to the people of these states. It 
raises an earnest hope tliat Mr. Leverett's detailed studies of the drift 
there will be as fully published at no distant time. w. u. 
