The Founders of American Geology and their Work

MR. MERRILL has spared no trouble in collecting material for this history. The imaginings of the earliest speculators on the history of the earth, and sketches of their lives and characters, are presented almost too liberally, so far as regards the first eight chapters of the book. I trust that I shall not appear ungrateful if I say that these chapters leave me with a feeling of bewilderment. The geological paragraphs, in themselves disconnected, are mixed up with biographical matter, while the biographical information, scattered here, there, and anywhere, fails to convey a clear idea of what any one man was thinking at any one time. Obviously a strictly chronological arrangement was impossible, for episodes in the development of geology overlap indefinitely, nor did one geologist wait for the death of another before beginning to publish. Nevertheless, if the author, in developing his theme, had concentrated either on the growth of geology, or on the biographies, his work would have had less the appearance of having been made up of extracts from a notebook. The First One Hundred Years of American Geology. By George P. Merrill. Pp. xxi + 773 + 36 plates. (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1924.) 27s. 6d. net.