Review of Recent Geological Liternture. 417 
According to the view presented in the present paper, all 
the continental moraines were probably amassed during a few 
thousand years, terminating the Glacial period, while the ice- 
sheets were being melted fast (as geologists reckon time) be- 
cause of the Champlain depression of the ice-enveloped lands 
of both North America and Europe. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL 
LITERATURE. 
The Occurrence of Copper Minerahin Heiiiaiite Ore, Montana Mine, 
Soudan, Minnesota. Deacription of the Occurrence, by J. H. Eby. 
Study of the Minerals, by C. P. Berkey. (Trans. Lake Superior Min- 
ing Inst.. 1896, vol. iv, pp. 69-79.) The Montana mine is in a body of 
hard bessenier hematite, on the Vermihon iron range. Copper mineials 
were here first noted in a nearly horizontal seam, one-fourth to one-half 
inch in thickness, in the hematite, and 265 feet below the surface. The 
minerals are native copper, cuprite, malachite and azurite, occurring in 
the seam and also below it, and all are later than the hematite. The 
original mineral was the native copper from which the others have been 
derived by alteration. No other occurrence of copper minerals in the 
mines of the Vermilion iron range is known. u. s. g. 
Summary Report of the Geological Survey Department [of Canada^ 
for the year 1896. By George M. Dawson, Director. 144 pages: Ot- 
towa, 1897. Price, ten cents. Fifteen field parties were employed as 
follows: in the Northwest Territories, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, each 
three: partly in Ontario and partly in Quebec, two; in British Colum- 
bia, two: and in Quebec and Labrador, each one. Concise statements 
of these various explorations fill the principal part of this report, with 
additional notes of the laboratory and office work in (chemistry, miner- 
alogy, and lithology, mining statistics, paleontology, zoology, and 
Vjotany, and in mapping. Especial attention is everywhere directed to 
the discovery and development of the mineral resources of the country. 
The boring for petroleum at Athabasca Landing, in northern Alberta, 
has been abandoned, on account of the difficulty and impoFsibility of 
going lower, at the depth of 1,770 feet. It is hoped to provide better 
means for drilling and to ascertain the depth of the oil-bearing lowest 
formation of the Cretaceous series, which in its outcrops farther north, 
where its petroleum has chiefly evaporated, is called the "tar sands." 
Very interesting observations on the glacial geology of pouthern Que- 
bec are presented by Mr. R. Chalmers, who reports an early stage of 
glaciation when icefields moved northward from the Notre Dame moim- 
tains into the St. Lawrence valley, succeeded by a time when a general 
ice-sheet moved from the Laurentide highlands southward and south- 
