; 
Editorial Comment. 117 
fore the Geological Society of Washington, in which the lead- 
ing parts were taken by Messrs. Willis, Williams and Cross, 
and which were participated in by Messrs. Diller, Chamberlin, 
Van Hise, Powell, Stanton, Clarke and others. The remarks 
of Messrs. Williams and Willis upon this occasion have been 
printed recently in the Journal of Geology. The agitation of 
this matter has resulted in a call by the director of the survey 
for formal consideration of the propositions involved, by a 
committee of which Mr. G. K. Gilbert is chairman. The out- 
come of this purpose to reconsider the principles which should 
guide the geologists of the Federal survey in the field and in 
cartographic expression, will be awa:ted with interest by all 
American geologists. The condition is essentially a reaction 
against the insufficiency of the old rules for the full expression 
of all geologic data and a recognition both of the impropriety 
of terming a purely physical or lithologic map, a geologic map, 
and also of the essential importance of expressing conjointly 
or independently all possible paleontologic data. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL 
LITERATURE. 
Die Geographische Verbrettung und Entwickelung des Cambrian, von 
Fritz FReECH, Breslau, [Cougrés géologique International, St. 
Petersburg, 1899. ] . 
This is an endeavor to reconstruct the sea and land that existed in 
the Cambrian time, and is based on the observations of various 
authors who have ‘studied the rocks of the Cambrian system, and its 
faunas. 
The general principles followed are those enunciated by Neumayr in 
his studies of the Jurassic, and his reconstruction of the seas and 
continerts of thet time. For a geography which takes into account 
great regions of the earth’s crust, local changes are totally disregarded, 
and tke grand paleontological and structural features ‘alone are to 
form the basis of our conclusions. He takes exception to Walcott’s 
niinute divisions of provinces in America, several of which he thinks 
should be merged into one or two. 
Nevertheless, he bases bis remarks on the Lower Cambrian of 
America chiefly on the correlations made by Mr. Walcott, and endeavors 
