126 The American Geologist. Augu«t,i905 
Pleistocene ice sheets, Sir Henry refuses its most important evi- 
dence and support by his denial that the fjords are valleys of river 
erosion. To his mind the great depths of the fjords beneath the 
sea level are not a proof of former high land elevation, because he 
regards these very deep meandering and branching valleys as fis- 
sures produced by rock fracture! But geologists can not give cred- 
ence to this view of the origin of fjords, nor can they go back a 
century to the diluvial theory of the origin of till, moraines, and 
glacial striation. W. U. 
The Rocks of Tristan d' Acunha, brought back by H. M. S. 'Odin 1 
1904, with their Bearing on the Question of the Permanence 
of Ocean Basins. By Prof. Ernest H. L Schwarz, Rhodes Uni- 
versity College, Grahamstown, South Africa. Transactions of 
the South African Philosophical Society, vol. xvi, pp. 9-51, with 
two maps and a section; May, 1905. 
It is held by this author, following Judd and Suess, that the 
interior of the earth is composed of a heavy metallic center and is 
covered by an envelope of siliceous slag. Where volcanic action 
reaches up from very great depths, it would therefore be expected 
to bring great masses of metallic substances, like the nickeliferous 
iron ofOvifak in Greenland. But in no instance has an oceanic 
island of volcanic rocks yielded a mine of any metal. Nearly every- 
where the seat of volcanic upflow appears to be of relatively small 
depth, where the motion and friction of bending and shearing along 
great fissure lines have melted parts of the sedimentary or older 
-crystalline rocks of the earth crust. 
On the lofty island of Tristan d' Acunha, and on numerous other 
lone volcanic islands of the South Atlantic, fragments of granite, 
gneiss, or other rocks of continental types, have been found, lead- 
ing to the hypothesis that formerly a continental land mass occu- 
pied that area, which is now enveloped by profound oceanic waters. 
The ancient land is supposed to have reached from Cape San Roque 
to Sierra Leone, on the north, and from southern Brazil through 
Tristan d' Acunha, to the Cape of Good Hope, on the south; and 
it is conjectured to have existed from Devonian to Late Tertiary 
times. w. u. 
<Geological Survey of New Jersey, Annual Report for the Year 1904. 
Henry B. Kummel. State Geologist. Pages ix, 317; with 19 
plates and 18 figures in the text. Trenton, N. J., 1905. 
Besides his administrative report, the state geologist writes of 
the molding sands and the mining industry. The production of 
iron ore from the New Jersey mines in 1904 was nearly half a 
million tons, being greater than in any former year since 1891; and 
the zinc ore production was 250,025 tons. 
Dr. Charles R. Eastman presents a report on the Triassic 
fishes of New Jersey, noting sixteen species. 
Stuart Weller describes the fauna of the Cliffwood clays in the 
Raritan formation, and classifies the Upper Cretaceous formations 
and faunas of the state. 
