244 The American Geologist. April, i9co 
of the Royal Belgian Academy, 112 Rue de Louvain, 
Brussels. p. f. 
The Geology of New Hampshire, by C. H. Hitchcock. 
This article published in separate form is very interest- 
ing both as regards the histor}' of geological exploration 
and in the incidental comments from 1839, the date of the 
first, principally mineralogical, survey of Jackson. The 
second surv^ey began in 1868 under the direction of the au- 
thor and lasted ten years. He modestly deprecates any 
comparison of the methods of a survey conducted at that 
epoch with one carried on in the nineties "with the multi- 
tudinous facilities of the latter period" though he has no 
reason to do so, for many departments of that survey have 
never been excelled in thoroughness and accurac3\ 
His succinct statement of the supplemental information 
gained since the publication of the last official report is ad- 
mirable for its frankness and clearness. It shows among 
other things how likely are the strongly defended theories 
of strong minds to dominate and influencegeological reason- 
ing, and often to retard a just conception of the phenomena. 
p. F. 
Traquair on Silurian Fish. 
Prof. R. H. Traquair has described in the Transactions of 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Vol. XXXIX, part III) an 
important collection of fish remains from the uppermost 
Silurian rocks of the Lesmahagon district in Scotland. Our 
knowledge of the earth's primaeval vertebrate fauna is slowly 
increasing by the discovery of new forms from this horizon, 
Init the passage of every year renders it more and more un- 
likely that we shall ever trace the vertebrates to strata of much 
greater age. 
"These fishes occur in special bands in the horizons des- 
ignated as Ludlow and Downton, the latter forming the up- 
permost part of the Silurian System." 
We may remark that though difference of opinion has ex- 
isted on the subject, yet the Downton sandstone has been 
generally regarded as a passage-bed from the Ludlow (Si- 
lurian), to the (31d Red sandstone (Devonian), immediately 
overlving it. 
