Stanford's Geological Atlas of Great Britain (based on Reynolds's Geological Atlas)

Abstract

THIS work is a re-written and revised edition of the well known atlas, which was long a familiar object to the students of shop-windows near Temple Bar, associated as it was with geological diagrams of a highly venerable aspect. It was always attractive by its very neatness and compactness, and has gained further in these respects under Mr. Stanford's care. The maps are printed in colours, and the concluding plates of fossils, reproducing for the most part Mr. Lowry's refined workmanship, are almost as delicate as the engraved originals, which were published in 1853. These plates, by the by, are not now arranged so consecutively as could be desired. Mr. H. B. Woodward has brought the text up to a modern standpoint, and we note references to the Pendleside series, to the Mesozoic rocks in a volcanic vent in Arran, and to the occurrence of Pliocene mammalian remains in a fissure in Derbyshire—all matters of very recent history. The Upper Greensand and Gault are described and mapped together as Selbornian, a combination of great stratigraphical convenience, however much it departs from the petrological and geognostic mapping of early days. Here we see at once how the philosophic view of “organised fossils,” introduced by William Smith, has made two types of geological maps necessary, one for the students of the earth's history, and one for the engineers, landowners, and agriculturists, to whom Smith made his first appeal. Luckily, in our British Isles, our “drift” maps, on a reasonable scale, go far to satisfy both requirements.

Stanford's Geological Atlas of Great Britain (based on Reynolds's Geological Atlas).

By Horace B. Woodward Pp. x + 140; with 34 coloured maps and 16 plates of fossils. (London: E. Stanford, 1904.) Price 12s. 6d. net.