Review of Recent Geological Literature. 341 
Second edition. T. Allen Crosby, Boston, 1888. These tables are es- 
pecially adapted to the use of schools and private students and require 
but little chemical knowledge or apparatus. They have been designed 
to enable students to determine readily and accurately, by their more ob- 
vious physical and structural features, those minerals which they are 
most likely to meet. The method of the determinations is similar to that 
of analytical botany, and the author has aimed to show that common 
minerals can be determined with the same ease and accuracy as common 
plants. The tables are prefaced by an Introduction in which all the var- 
ious properties of minerals and the simple tests required for their deter- 
mination are fully explained. They are also accompanied by a synopsis 
of the classification of minerals, so arranged that when the student has 
determined a new mineral he may readily refer it to its proper place in 
the classification and thus learn its relations to other minerals. 
Geology: Chemical, Physical and StrntigraphicaL By Joseph Prest- 
wicH, F . 11. S., Professor of Geology in the University of Oxford. In 
two volumes. Vol. I. Chemical and Physical, 1886. pp. XXIV and 
477. Vol. II Stratigraphical and Physical, 1888, pp. XXVIII and 606. 
Royal 8 vo. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 
British geological students are to be congratulated on the possession of 
two so comprehensive and thorough treatises as Archibald Geikie's Text 
Book of Geology, revised and enlarged in 1885, and the present work, the 
plan of which is best told by Professor Prestwich's preliminary remarks 
in his second volume. 
"The subjects discussed in the Firs" Volume of this work related to the 
composition of rocks and to the changes brought about in them by the 
action of the various meteorological agencies on the surface, and by 
thermal and chemical action at depths. In it also were described the 
nature of the disturbances which the rocks have undergone by the action 
of subterranean agencies, — the deformation of the Earth's Crust which 
has resulted therefrom, — the elevation of mountain chains,— and the 
manner of volcanic action. 
"My object in this Volume is to enquire what possibly may have been 
the original condition of the Earth's Crust, — to note when Life first made 
its appearance upon it, — to determine the character of that Life, and to 
follow its development and successive modifications through all Geologi- 
cal Time. Pari passu with the Biological Evolution, the great physical 
changes of the surface, the constant alteration in the distribution of land 
and water, and the relation of these physiographical changes to the dis- 
tribution of life on the land and in the waters, are briefly noticed." 
The frontispiece of volume i is a geological map of the world, on Mer- 
cator's projection, reduced from the large map of Prof. Jules Marcou. 
This volume also contains two other maps of the world on the same scale ; 
— one showing the distribution of active and recently extinct volcanoes, 
and of the areas affected by earthquake shocks, with approximate con- 
tours of ocean depths at intervals of 1,000 fathoms;— and another showing 
the distribution of the coral islands and great coral reefs and the areas of 
elevation and subsidence within the modern period, togeilier with the 
