A Text-Book of Geology: for Use in Universities, Colleges, Schools of Science, etc, and for the General Reader

Abstract

ORIGINALLY published nine years ago, Pirsson and Schuchert's Text-book has become the most popular introduction to geology among American students, and its well-merited supremacy is now likely to be still more firmly established by the issue of a second edition in which it has been thoroughly revised and brought up-to-date. The first volume, by the late Prof. Pirsson, deals with physical geology and is naturally of wider interest than the second part-now under review-in which Prof. Schuchert lucidly sets forth the principles of stratigraphy and palaeontology,: and the broader features of the geological history of the United States. Compared with its first edition, the second volume is now increased by about eighty pages, a series of palaeogeographical maps have been introduced, and the Ozarkian has disappeared as a system, the formations known by that name being now regarded as the closing epoch of the more familiar Cambrian. Eozoon is still thought to represent the earliest known evidence of calcareous algse. As in the first edition, there are no detailed references, but this defect is met by appending to each chapter a list of suggestions for further reading. It is worthy of notice that British work has not been neglected as it so often is in American books. Moreover, the Period names are retained for the most part in their original forms, and such terms as “Permic “are happily given no support.

A Text-Book of Geology: for Use in Universities, Colleges, Schools of Science, etc., and for the General Reader.

By Prof. Louis V. Pirsson Prof. Charles Schuchert. Part 2: Historical Geology. By Prof. Charles Schuchert. Second, revised edition. Pp. ix + 724. (New York: J. Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1924.) 22s. 6d. net.