Life of Sedgwick.¹

Abstract

THE main results of Sedgwick's geological work, as stated in these volumes, are briefly as follows. Passing over several contributions, often of permanent value, to the geology of the crystalline rocks of Cornwall and of the Carboniferous system, especially in the north of England, we come first to his monograph on the Magnesian Limestone and lower portion of the New Red Sandstone series. Of this Prof. Hughes justly says: “It is at once broad and minute: broad in its generalizations—for it places in order a complex group of rocks, which, until it was written, were in complete confusion; and minute in working out, through the whole of the district selected, from Nottingham to the southern extremity of Northumberland, the boundaries of the different formations and their relations to each other.” We are not, however, prepared to follow Prof. Hughes, if we understand him rightly, in his objection to the name Permian as designating the lower part of this series, for the break between that formation and the so-called Trias is probably more important than at first sight appears, and New Red Sandstone is a name obviously provisional.

II. The Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Prebendary of Norwich, Woodwardian Professor of Geology, 1818–73.

By John Willis Clark Thomas McKenny Hughes Two Volumes. (Cambridge: University Press, 1890.)