Abstract
WE cannot call this a successful book. A mixture of condensed statistical information and of popular descriptive writing is not much better than a stirabout of Liebig's extract and of trifle-whip. Fixity of purpose on the author's part is also wanting. Doubtless the French Alps cannot be separated from the rest of the chain, but for a book of only 286 pages all told, this contains too much about the Central, Pennine, and Eastern Alps. The geological part is sketchy, and not always very accurate. The author repeats the old mistake about the “variolite of the Durance forming a fringe to the eupholide,” though the question was settled by the elaborate paper of Messrs. Cole and Gregory, published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for 1890. The illustrations are numerous; few, however, of them are good, and several very bad. There is no index. The work, in short, is a piece of book-making, characteristically French in style, and is not a valuable addition to the library either of the mountain-climber or of the man of sciences.
Les Alpes Françaises.
Par Albert Falsan (Bibliothèque Scientifique Contemporaine. (Paris: J. B. Baillièreet Fils, 1893.)
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Les Alpes Françaises. Nature 47, 76 (1892). https://doi.org/10.1038/047076c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047076c0