the south of Sweden, and carries the reader on in the most pleasing manner through the chief incidents that marked the life of Linnæus, to his final eminence. The story is told with great sim. plicity and elegance. The incidents are skilfully wrought into the narrative. The prominent excellences of this great man's character and genius are lovingly noted. There is no elaborate statement or discussion of his system to perplex young readers; enough, however, is related to excite admiration and awaken interest. The book is besides pervaded with a genuine, unaffected piety, and a true love of nature, which renders it very delightful reading for a winter's evening. To the young we would expressly recommend this Biography. It sets before them an example of perseverance in a chosen pursuit, and shows what may be done by a zealous devotion to any department of study which invites attention. The authoress concludes her pleasing task with a few words recommendatory of the study of Botany. As a mental exercise she particularly commends it, "What study," says she,

is calculated to afford more delightful instruction, at once gratifying a taste for beauty and training the youthful mind to thought and observation. Affording too the most healthful gratification and innocent enjoyment, its pleasures spring up beneath our feet, and as we pursue them, reward us with simple and pure joys.” The book is beautifully printed and carefully got up, and will both recompense cost and perusal.

Geological Survey of Canada. Report of Progress for 1857.

As a branch of literature, Geological Reports are in some respects in a pitiable position. Necessarily dry in their details, and to many readers scarcely intelligible, they are too often thrown into dusty corners of libraries, where they lie unread and uncared for. Occasionally they fall into the hands of critics more witty than wise, who can see no advantage in the expenditure of public money in the investigation of fossil remains of shellfish and such trifles; not considering that in thus despising the handiwork of their Maker, they would deprive us of an important aid to the discovery of those deposits of useful minerals in which. all men, however little scientific, are interested. In these circumstances it becomes one of the duties of Journals such as this, to point out whatever of utility there may be in these somewhat forbidding documents.

The field-work of the present report belongs to the able assistants whom the head of the Survey has gathered around him, and for the selection of whom he merits all praise. Sir William Logan himself was chiefly employed in arranging the chaotic mass of specimens that had accumulated in the apartments of the Survey, and in securing to Canadian science whatever benefits could be obtained from the meeting of the American Association in Montreal; after which he managed to spend a few weeks in unravelling the tangled skein of those old Laurentian rocks to which of late he has so much devoted himself.

We are surprised that the arrangement of the Museum occupies so small a place in this Report. It has involved an amount of labour appreciable only by those who know the difficulty of arranging large collections. In its present state, the Museum of the Survey may, in its lucid and orderly arrangement, challenge comparison with any similar collection; and affords a systematic exhibition of the geology and of the mineral resources of Canada, which will be read with pleasure by thousands who derive little benefit from printed reports. It would be well in some future Report to give a description and a plan of the Museum, which might also be printed separately as a guide to visitors.

Mr. Murray was occupied with the Huronian formation of the North shore of Georgian Bay, the equivalent of the Cambrian of English geologists, and the chief seat of copper-mining in Canada. His explorations had reference principally to the distribution of a band of limestone, which was taken as a guide mark in tracing out the relations of these crumpled and shattered formations. This limestone has accordingly been traced over a considerable extent of ground, and, with the section which Mr. Murray has made across the country, gives a view of the general arrangement of those rocks which we did not previously possess, and which will materially aid in tracing out the mineral deposits in their continuation in new localities. The writer of this review spent a day or two, two years since, in puzzling over the intricate distribution of rocks and veins at the Bruce Mines, with the aid of the previous reports on the district and would have been thankful then to have had Mr. Murray's map and section for a companion. The general section of the Huronian rocks given by Mr. Murray will be of interest to the geologist, and ought to be in the hands of every one who "prospects" for mines on Lake Huron. It is as follows in ascending order :

7. Dark blue or blackish fine grained slates, with dark grey quartzite,

8. Whitish or whitish-grey quartzite, passing into quartzose conglomerate with blood-red jasper pebbles,

9. Greenstone,.

500

1000

....

700

6850

The copper veins appear to be confined, at least in their more productive portions, to the greenstone bands. The limestone occurs at the shore near the Bruce Mine, in the rear of the same location, and in a long band extending along the Thessalon River, and thence across Echo Lake and to the north shore of Little Lake George.

Mr. Richardson's work lay in the Peninsula of Gaspé, and had for its object the ascertaining of the precise boundaries of the Lower and Upper Silurian and Devonian rocks, with the view of accurately delineating these in the forthcoming geological map. The details of the coast sections on most parts of this peninsula were very carefully worked out many years ago by Sir William Logan, as we have had occasion to know by following his footsteps, bed by bed, over some parts of the coast. Mr. Richardson had to run lines of section across the country, and trace out the extension inland of the beds seen on the shore. His sections and map accordingly give a very clear idea of the general structure. of the fossiliferous rocks of Gaspé. The Gaspé sandstones of Devonian age, which contain the remarkable fossil plants referred to in another page of this number, form a long trough extending through Gaspé Bay, and reaching, with few interruptions, nearly as far as the valley of the Magdalen, a distance of fifty miles. They rest on the great limestone of Cape Gaspé, probably Upper Silurian, and this again is placed unconformably on the edges of sandstones, conglomerate, limestone, and shale, belonging to the Middle and Lower Silurian, which form the long ranges of cliffs extending westward from Cape Rosier. The plant-bearing Gaspé sandstones thus rest on the limestone, exactly

Tike coal measures on the carboniferous or mountain limestone, and, were it not for the fossils and the relations of the sandstones to the southward, they might easily be mistaken for coal measures. Another portion of Mr. Richardson's Report is occupied with the record of a short reconnaissance of the Silurian limestone which appears at Lake St. John at the head of the Saguenay, accompanied as usual by fertile soil. The occurrence of these rocks here is interesting, as an indication of the recurrence of the fossiliferous formations in an outlying basin in the midst of the great area of Laurentian metamorphic rocks which bound cultiwable Canada on the north.

The Paleontology of the Report is wrought out by Mr. Billings and Professor Hall of Albany. As we have already published in this Journal the greater part of both reports, it is unnecessary to refer to them here, except by way of general remark. Prof. Hall's paper on Graptolites is a valuable contribution to palæontology. These curious fossils are very characteristic of certain portions of the Lower Silurian series, and therefore important to geologists in classifying these rocks; but their true nature has been very obscure. The unusually perfect specimens obtained by Sir W. E. Logan have enabled Prof. Hall to represent for the first time their general forms and the arrangement of their parts, though he still expresses a doubt as to their affinities. It seems however almost certain that they were intended to float freely in the sea, bearing along the numerous little animals inhabiting the cells on the sides of their branches, and which were very probably allied to the Bryozoa.

Mr. Billings gives us an elaborate comparison of the fossils of the Black River limestone in Canada with those of the same formation in New York, confirming and extending the fact ascertained by Sir William Logan some time since,-that the fossils of this formation in Canada graduate into those of the Trenton limestone. Mr. Billings has also commenced the study and publication of the fossils of the Devonian series in Western Canada, and describes in this report a number of new species and some new genera of corals and mollusks from these and the Silurian rocks.

We are glad to see so much of the Report occupied with palæontology, and trust that this will be continued and increased. Until the engagement of Mr. Billings, this was the weak point of the Canadian Survey; and as our geological readers very well know, no reliable work can be done in geology without attention to fossils. Obvious though this is, however, we are inclined to

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insist on it here; because, while every person knows the value of economical geology, comparatively few are aware of the intimate relation which paleontology bears even to this more utilitarian department. Fossils are in truth the readiest means for identifying rock formations, and are indispensable to any satisfactory comparison of Canadian geology with that of other countries. Does some speculator insist that the Gaspé or the Trenton limestone is the equivalent of the English mountain limestones, and the overlying sandstones and shales coal-measures, a comparison of the fossils at once convicts him of his error. Is a vein of lead-ore discovered in a Canadian formation, and is it important to ascertain if the bed containing it corresponds geologically with those of the lead regions of Missouri or Wisconsin, it may be quite impossible for the geological surveyor to trace its line of outcrop into those regions, but a few fossil shells may settle the point. Does a foreign geologist wish to compare the geology of Canada with that of his own country, he can have confidence in the identification of formations only if their fossils have been carefully and accurately examined. Independently of all this, there is the duty which lies on Canada as a civilized country to contribute her share to the elucidation of the records of creation, in so far as these have been inscribed on her own rocks. She is not asked to pay for explorations to discover a north-west passage or explore the Antarctic seas; but it will be a lasting disgrace if she cannot work out the natural history and physical geography of her own territory. Nor must the knowledge of fossils be confined to the officers of the survey and die with them. It must be published and illustrated by good figures, so that, once done, it may remain for future reference, and thus become a permanent addition to the scientific literature of the country. Times may change, and editorials and acts of Parliament may become waste paper; but rocks and fossils are permanent things, and work once well done in reference to them is sure to retain its value. Additions may be made to it, but the substratum will remain good. Nay, it will increase in value; for as a native Canadian literature arises, popular writers will take hold of it; and here, as in England, we shall have pleasant and instructive popular books growing out of what are now dry descriptions and lists of fossils. may be said that the palæontology of the country would in time be explored and published by amateurs; but this would be an affair of centuries; and in the mean time even the industrial

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