Review of Recent Geological Literature. 187 
publish the statistics of mining in the United States from 
year to year, and its annual reports on statistics have fur- 
nished a record of a mass of information which is valuable 
and must be preserved for future use, but they have been 
published so late that they have been cheated out of their 
chief value, which centers in the present use that can be made 
of such information. They are like the reports of the Smith- 
sonian Institution, coming after the information which the}" 
convey has become old, and has been seen and used by the 
need of the times long before. The tortuous and time-taking 
"red tape" of the government is in this volume cut into frag- 
ments and a result is reached before the government fairly 
begins its task. ''Belated statistics are ancient history, of 
little practical value in the active affairs of an industry, or as 
a guide for legislation affecting it." Private interests were 
therefore the first to feel this defect and the first to remedy it. 
The result is sufficient testimony to the need of such earlier 
publication, and a sufficient warrant for the U. S. Geological 
Survey to withdraw entirely from this field unless it be in 
terms ordered b} T law to continue. The decennial census would 
supplement this publication sufficient^, and would correct 
such errors as may be found incident to hasty work. 
The volume, however, is not made up of statistics. It is a 
first class treatise on economic geology. Its writers are ex- 
perts in the lines in which they have contributed information, 
and have treated fully of the ores, as to mode of occurrence, 
means of extraction, geographic distribution, metallurgical 
processes, values at the markets, exports and imports, uses, 
and total production. The various mining schools of the Uni- 
ted States are described and the value of geological survey* 
is indicated briefly. The work emanates from New York, 
that throbbing heart of the continent's commerce, n. ii. w. 
REVIEW OF RECENT GEOLOGICAL 
LITERATURE. 
Illustrations cf the Fauna of the St. John group, \". .VIII. <;. F. 
Matthew. (Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, 1893, sec. rv, pp. 85-129, 2 plates.) 
The long and highly interesting and successful researches of Mr. Mai 
knew into the fauna of the St. John group are in this paper brought to 
