250 TJic American Geologist. October, 1899 
opinion that both this process and that resulting in the forma- 
tion of zeolites and chlorites have ceased, so far as material 
available for study is concerned. They are due to conditions 
which do not exist on the inmiediate surface, except it may be 
in such sporadic and unusual occurrences as those of Plom- 
bieres, or those more recently described b}- F. Gounard* and 
by Lacroix.t This paper is, however, written more for the 
purpose of eliciting the opinions of others than of expressing 
those of the writer. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL 
LITERATURE. 
Is the White River Tertiary an jEoIian Foriiiation? By W. D. 
Matthew. (Am. Naturalist, vol. XXXIII, No. 389, May, 1899.) 
This article, which seems to have attracted less attention than it de- 
serves, is an arraignment of the theory, heretofore almost universally 
held, of the lacustrine origin of the Tertiary deposits of the western 
plains in the United States. 
The author of this pamphlet contends that the fauna ascribed to 
these Tertiaries is such as could not have been entombed in lake de- 
posit as it is essentially a land fauna, almost entirely devoid of such 
mammals as lived in and around lakes; but that it is such a fauna as 
would have dwelt on dry plains. The opposite view is crystallized in 
all the textbooks, and if it is not founded in fact, the more widely has it 
been disseminated, the greater need of a revision to bring it more in ac- 
cord with the facts. 
Richthofen's description of the enormous loess deposit of the great 
river plains of northern China first challenged the attention of the scien- 
tific world to the possibility of great aeolian deposits, and Matthews' 
observations appear to show that conditions similar to those of Tertiary 
times in China prevailed over a large area of the western United States 
at a similar period. 
Matthews' objections to the lacustrine hypothesis are the following: 
Stratigraphic : The vast extent of the postulated lake. The absence 
of any barrier to hold in its waters. The absence of beach lines or ter- 
races. The absence of fine stratification in the clays. 
Faimal : The absence of plant remains. The absence of aquatic in- 
vertebrates. The absence of fish and of aquatic reptiles; on the contrary 
land reptiles are the most common fossils. But the great point is the 
great number and variety of mammals that occur, and these almost en- 
tirely species of the land. 
*Bull. de la Societe Mineralogique de France, vol. v (1882), p. 268. 
fComptes Rendus Paris Acad. Sci., vol. xxiii (i8g6), p. 761. 
