336 Review of Recent Geological Literature. 
•eacli square rod of the swamp botli gave to and received from 
the surrounding areas a portion of their accumulations. 
Sluggish currents within the swamp may sometimes have 
aided in the distribution of the vegetable matter. But the 
moment such currents became extensive and powerful enough 
to justify the term driftage, then silt would accompany the 
organic matter, and bone coal, bituminous shales, or sandstone 
with coaly streaks and rolled fragments, would be deposited. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 
Die carhone Eiszeit. Prof. Dr. W. Waagen. Jarhbuch d. k. k. geol. 
Eeichsmistalt. Vol. xxxvii, Wft 2, pp. 143-192. Wien, 18S8. 
The question of a glacial epoch in Paleozoic tioie is one involving some 
of the most interesting and puzzling problems that have been under the 
consideration of geologists and paleontologists during the last two decades. 
The scene of the most active scientific dispute is laid in the southern part 
of the eastern hemisphere where the coal-fields of India, Australia, and 
Africa present a rich conservation of organic remains indicating an age 
that is almost directly at variance with its purely geologic probabilities. 
In India we have the well-known conflict between a stratigraphy that is 
Carboniferous, a fauna that is Lower Mesozoic, and a flora that is chiefly 
Middle Jurassic in its affinities. Dr. Waagen in this interesting contribu- 
tion, employs chiefly the evidence furnished by the two extremes of the 
controversy, stratigraphy and paleobotany. Beginning with the strati- 
graphy, he refers to the results obtained by Blanford, Thomas Oldham, 
and Fedden, showing, in the presence of striations, furrows and conglom- 
erates, indications of glaciation in the lower strata of the Godavery valley 
and the Talchir group; he points out similar phenomena as made known 
by Sutherland and Griesbach in southern Africa, and the admitted glacial 
agency attending the formation of the Baccus Marsh sandstone, as proba- 
bly also that of the Hawksbury terrane in Australia. In these continents 
the glacial formations occur among beds of coal or sandstone containing 
a rich flora. 
The widest variation of species occurs in the coal strata of India, the 
lower horizons of which contain well recognized species, such as those of 
Merianopteris, characteristic of the upper Carboniferous; or, in higher 
strata, the Voltzia heterophylla, and Triassic species of Neuropteris and 
Sebertia, and so passing upward through a flora of higher aflinities, such as 
Glossopteris, Phyllotheca, Vertebraria, and Schizoneura, until the greater 
number of species have their nearest relations in the Rhetic, Lias, and 
Oolite of the more northern countries. It will be remembered that the 
Indian flora, especially that of the Damuda group, is very similar to that 
