Review of Recent Geological Literature. 331 
Charles Whittlesey, I. A. Lapham, and later geologists, are shown to 
have given very important guidance toward the establishment of the 
present great mining industries of that region. A portion of this sub- 
ject was presented to the readers of the Am. GEOLOGIST by Mr. Winchell 
in the last March number. The present memoir includes, in an appen- 
dix of eight pages, a useful bibliography of the history of mining on 
lake Superior. W. r. 
Alaska: its Physical Geography. By Israel C. Russell. (Scottish Geo- 
graphical Magazine, vol. x, pp. 393-413, with map; August, 1894.) 
Within the compass of twenty pages, Prof. Russell gives a bird's-eye 
view, as we may call it, of this extensive country, in which he explored 
the course of the Yukon river in 1889, and the district of Mt. St. Elias 
and the very instructive Malaspina glacier or ice-sheet during the sum- 
mers of 1890 and 1891. The river systems, mountain ranges, volcanoes 
and hot springs, tundras, islands and ocean currents, glaciers, subsoil 
ice, the forests, the fauna, and the Eskimo and Indian tribes, are themes 
of successive portions of this essay. The finely colored map, on a scale 
of about 175 miles to an inch, shows the approximate area of forests, 
mostly below the altitude of 1,000 feet; of the tundras below the same 
1,000 feet level; of the barren uplands; and of known glaciers, which 
occur along the southern coastal mountain ranges for a distance of 1,400 
miles, from Sitka northwest to St. Elias, west to the Kenai peninsula, 
and southwest to Unimak island. 
Describing the mountains, Prof. Russell writes: "The vast cordilleran 
system which follows the west coast of both South and North America 
traverses southern Alaska, and. bending westward, follows the coast to 
the end of the Alaskan peninsula. The partially submerged continua- 
tion of the same system forms the Aleutian islands, more than a. thou- 
sand miles in length. The culminating points of this great system in 
North America are two rival peaks, Mt. Logan, 19,500 feet high, [*] and 
Mt. St. Elias. 18.010 fret high In the neighbourhood of Mt. St. 
Elias the ranges are monoclinal, and agree in general structure with the 
Great Basin system more closely than with any oilier mountain type 
now known. In common with all lofty mountains, St. Elias is young. 
The foot-hills near the ocean have been elevated at least 5,000 feel dur- 
ing tin' existence of species of marine molluscs now living in the adja- 
cent waters, and it is probable that the main uplift received an imporl 
ant increment at the time the foot-hills were raised at>0\ e t he sea. Since 
the mountains were uplifted, ordinary stream erosion set 'ins to have had 
but little to do with their sculpturing; glaciers took possession of the 
depressions as soon as thej were raised above the ocean, and the subse- 
quent modifications of their forms have been largely due to ice-action." 
W.I. 
Paleontology of Missouri, far/ I. \\\ Chakles Koi.i.in Kkyks. state 
Geologist. (.Missouri Geological Survey, vol. iv. 340 pp.. '■>'■> plates. 1 map 
[*The discovery and naming of Mt. Logan, with the determination of its altitude as the 
highest on this continent, were noted in the Am, Geologist for last April, p. 202. Eds.] 
