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Geol. Mag. 135 (5), 1998, pp. 723–732. Printed in the United Kingdom © 1998 Cambridge University Press
B O O K REVIEWS
GAINES, R. V., SKINNER, H. C. W., FOORD, E. E., MASON,
B. & ROSENZWEIG, A. 1997. Dana’s New Mineralogy,
8th ed. xiv + 1819 pp. New York, Chichester, Weinheim,
Brisbane, Singapore, Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Price £190.00 (hard covers). ISBN 0 471 19310 0.
There are nearly 4000 recognized mineral species and the
task of providing a concise comprehensive account of all
of them within the confines of a single volume is a demand-
ing one. The authors and publishers met this challenge in
producing the current work. Dana’s New Mineralogy is the
eighth edition of J. D. Dana’s System of Mineralogy. It was
first published in 1837 and there can be few books in science,
currently in print, which have an unbroken lineage spanning
more than 150 years. Dana’s System of Mineralogy passed
through six editions in the 19th Century, the last being in
1895. The seventh edition aimed to be very comprehensive
and the first three volumes appeared between 1944 and 1963;
however, the all-important volume on the silicate minerals
was never completed.
Clearly much of the information presented in the seventh
edition would have to be condensed or omitted if the
authors were to achieve their aim of producing a single vol-
ume work. The space devoted to each species in this eighth
edition varies depending on its mineralogical significance:
six lines for a rare species found only at a single location, to
14 pages for quartz. For each species the classification num-
ber, mineral name and the formula are given as a heading.
The entry starts with a sentence on origin of the mineral
name and is followed by the crystal system, space group, cell
parameters and density. An abbreviated account of the
structure is given followed by a listing of the eight strongest
lines in the powder diffraction pattern. The principal forms,
the optical parameters and physical characteristics are sum-
marized. Locality information and associated species are
presented for the type and other important localities. The
entries conclude with a short reference either to the primary
literature or to secondary sources such as Deer, Howie and
Zussman’s Rock Forming Minerals or Anthony et al.’s
Handbook of Minerals.
A feature of the volume is the crystal chemical arrange-
ment of species which is an updated version of the classic
Dana system. The classification is primarily a chemical one
and the minerals are divided into 78 classes, which are
grouped chemically (native elements, sulphides, oxides, etc.).
The classes are subdivided into subclasses and groups. Each
species is allocated a classification number, giving class, sub-
class, group and species; this system permits the addition of
new species fairly readily. The classification scheme is logical
and although there is considerable room for debate in the
division of some groups, this is really a matter of personal
taste; I feel, for example, that some of the sulphides could
have been grouped differently. However, a classification
scheme is merely a tool to highlight relationships between
species and should not be a straight-jacket; for minerals
there is no right or wrong answer.
In condensing the huge mountain of information the
authors choose to omit nearly all synonyms and obsolete
names; these are given in considerable detail in Hey’s
Mineral Index by A. Clark. Much of the morphological
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723
information and diagrams, tables of chemical analyses and
detailed references from the previous incomplete seventh
edition have now been omitted. The largest cut, however, has
been in the sections dealing with the occurrence data and the
number of localities. The text, though written in a very con-
densed style, is clear and easy to follow and the book is well
produced, with solid, strong binding. The publishers have
chosen a high quality lightweight stock (bible paper) and are
to be congratulated for not resorting to a microscopic font; if
anything the font size is rather generous. Unfortunately there
is a liberal sprinkling of errors, more than one would have
expected even given the great length of the work; no doubt
most of these will be corrected when the book is reprinted.
This book is a must for any serious mineralogical library
and it will particularly appeal to serious amateur and profes-
sional mineralogists. The price at £190 is high, more than
twice that of Hey’s Mineral Index, but given the size of the
volume and specialist nature of the work it is fair. A copy of
the 1837 first edition of Dana’s System of Mineralogy, in
good condition, would cost between £2000 and £3000 if you
could find one!
Allan Pring
LOWRIE, W. 1997. Fundamentals of Geophysics. xiv + 354 pp.
Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne,
Sydney: Cambridge University Press. Price £55.00, US
$85.00 (hard covers), £19.95, US $34.95 (paperback).
ISBN 0 521 46164 2; 0 521 46728 4 (pb).
This is an undergraduate textbook aimed at earth sciences
students who have already learned the basics of geology. The
author writes that it is intended to be useful to students who
have varied backgrounds and interests, many of whom may
not become geophysicists, but who may continue in other
branches of earth sciences. It is therefore pitched at an inter-
mediate level above the introductory material required by
complete newcomers to earth sciences, but without the
detailed mathematical derivations necessary for those who
will subsequently specialize in geophysics.
This book covers similar material to that in two other
well-known and influential textbooks, Martin Bott’s book
entitled The Interior of the Earth and Mary Fowler’s book
The Solid Earth. Indeed, in the list of about half a dozen
books for further reading given at the end of each chapter,
both Bott’s and Fowler’s books are listed after every chapter
except for the one on geomagnetism and palaeomagnetism,
where Lowrie’s treatment is much fuller than either of the
other books (as befits his own particular research expertise
in palaeomagnetism). Lowrie’s book is, of course, more up
to date in the examples it shows than is Bott’s book, which
was last revised some years ago. Fowler’s book has more
mathematical content and covers rather broader themes
than Lowrie’s book, addressing topics more from the process
angle (e.g. with chapters on ‘The Continental Lithosphere’
and ‘The Oceanic Lithosphere’ than does Lowrie, whose
chapters are divided more by technique.
The book is well illustrated and clearly presented. I have
already found it helpful in teaching second-year geology stu-
dents and have no doubt that it will be a useful reference
IP address: 54.210.20.124
 724
book for undergraduates. It provides good coverage of the
main geophysical techniques and their application to under-
standing the Earth.
The examples and applications discussed in this book are
drawn rather more from the academic perspective of under-
standing how the Earth works than from an applied geo-
physical aspect. Thus, for example, a quarter of the book is
devoted to a chapter on ‘Seismology and the Internal
Structure of the Earth’, but you won’t find a single seismic
reflection profile figured here, even though seismic profiling
is by far the most used geophysical exploration tool in the
world. However, a full treatment is given of both earthquake
and controlled source seismology and their application to
understanding the tectonics of the Earth and the Earth’s
deep structure. There are plenty of other books covering the
techniques and uses of seismic reflection profiling so it is not
difficult to find a more applied treatment elsewhere if the
reader is interested in that.
The topics covered in this book start with the Earth as
part of the Solar System, and then go on to the large-scale
plate movements on the Earth. Subsequent chapters address
the gravitational field of the Earth and the use of gravity
anomalies in understanding the sub-surface; seismology and
earthquakes; the age, thermal and electrical properties of the
Earth; geomagnetism and palaeomagnetism; and at the end
of the book a short chapter on geodynamics, including
isostasy, rheology and plate dynamics. In my opinion, the
only important topic that is omitted from the book is the
formation of sedimentary basins: understanding how sedi-
mentary basins are formed has been one of the quantum
steps forward in understanding the Earth, with wide applica-
tions in both academic and oil industry studies, yet this topic
is not mentioned at all and does not merit a single entry in
the index. This is perhaps the only shortcoming I have
noticed in the book.
This will be a useful book for its target audience of under-
graduates in earth science who need an understanding
of how geophysics may be used to help understand the
Earth. It is particularly useful for the quality and up-to-date
nature of its diagrams and illustrations, and will serve as a
helpful text in teaching students.
Robert S. White
DAVIES, J. R., FLETCHER, C. J. N., WATERS, R. A., WILSON,
D., WOODHALL, D. G. & ZALASIEWICZ, J. A. 1997.
Geology of the Country around Llanilar and Rhayader.
Memoir for 1:50 000 Geological Sheets 178 and 179
(England and Wales). xii + 267 pp. London: HMSO for
the British Geological Survey. Price £60.00 (paper-
back). ISBN 0 11 884510 1.
An era in British geological publishing is ending. This vol-
ume is one of the last conventional sheet memoirs that the
British Geological Survey (BGS) will produce. These
detailed outcrop-by-outcrop descriptions of regions have
generally served the geological community well over a
century and a half. However, in recent years, with more and
diverse data resulting from sheet mapping projects, the
balance between the memoir’s rôles as data repository and as
a marketable product has become ever harder to strike. With
the development of practical electronic means of data
storage, indexing and retrieval, the shift to shorter, more
popular, sheet descriptions has been inevitable.
If memoirs are to disappear forever, it is fortunate that the
Llanilar and Rhayader memoir should provide a parting
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BOOK REVIEWS
demonstration that the format is capable of combining rig-
orous description with exciting geological interpretation.
Admittedly, whilst map sheet boundaries usually show no
respect for the underlying geology, these two adjacent sheets
happen to provide a natural cross-strike transect, from the
shelf edge to the centre of the Early Palaeozoic Welsh Basin.
The area contains a wealth of deep-marine turbidites and
related sediments, including the splendid channels and lobes
of the Caban system. This system has achieved international
fame as one of the best ancient examples of its kind, not
least from advance publications deriving from the BGS map-
ping program.
The process-related attractions of this memoir are, of
course, set within the traditional chapter layout of the BGS
memoir: an introduction; seven chronostratigraphically
arranged chapters on Ordovician and Silurian deposits;
structure and metamorphism; geophysics; economic geol-
ogy; Quaternary deposits. The presentation is admirable
throughout; the text concise but informative, the colour-
toned figures a model of clarity, and the colour plates suit-
able for a textbook on deep-marine sediments. The fifteen
contributors to the volume, besides the six authors, reflect
the design of the mapping project as a multidisciplinary
effort. Consequently, the breadth of topics covered is
unusual, with substantial contributions on graptolite bio-
stratigraphy, low-grade metamorphism, geophysics and min-
eralization. Also notable is that the primary mapping was
completed within a five year period and that, despite the
considerable analytical follow-up to the mapping, the mem-
oir is appearing only seven years after completion of the
mapping. This performance is a considerable improvement
on the decadal delivery time-scales that dogged the produc-
tion of BGS maps and memoirs into the eighties. The faster
turn round ensures that the interpretation in the memoir is
still topical, intellectually stimulating and of international
relevance.
So, this memoir is not just for those of us with a specialist
interest in Welsh Basin geology, although it will provide us
with an indispensable source of high quality field observa-
tions for years to come. Rather it will be of value to any geol-
ogist looking for a well-documented case study of tectonic
controls on the formation and destruction of a sedimentary
basin. More particularly, it should be recommended reading
for sedimentologists interested in the behaviour and setting
of deep-marine turbidite systems.
Nigel Woodcock
BUSSON, G. & CORNÉE, A. 1996. L’Événement Océanique
Anoxique du Cénomanien Supérieur-Terminal: une revue
et une interprétation mettant en jeu une stratification des
eaux marines par le CO2 mantellique. Société
Géologique du Nord, Publication no. 23. i + 143 pp.
SGN, F-59655 Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France. Price
not stated. ISSN 0291-3062.
This memoir, written in French with an English abstract,
contains an account of the Cenomanian–Turonian oceanic
anoxic event and presents a new theory for its origin. The
bulk of the memoir comprises a review of possible causes
and consequences of the anoxic event: the relative roles of
productivity versus preservation of marine and terrestrial
organic matter are discussed, as are the effects of the great
Cenomanian transgression, the possible influence of the
‘superplume’ and the significance of climate and oceanic cir-
culation in promoting deposition of organic-rich shales.
IP address: 54.210.20.124
BOOK REVIEWS
A number of diagrams, which will be familiar to readers of
literature on these topics, are reproduced within the text.
Building upon the ‘superplume’ hypothesis, the authors
propose that extreme outgassing of CO2 produced gas-laden
bottom waters that led to density stratification, hence
enhancing preservation of organic matter. The model
derives from work on two stratified and partly anoxic lakes
(Nyos and Monoun) in the Cameroon where mantle-derived
CO2 is vented directly into the lower part of the watermass.
A link to the great transgression of the Cretaceous is
furthermore suggested, with CO2-charged anoxic waters
spreading across continents, releasing gas as they warmed –
which ultimately terminated the event on shelf and marginal
seas.
This is, of course, but one among many competing
hypotheses for the Cenomanian–Turonian Oceanic Anoxic
Event and will engender further debate. How, for example,
would such a model explain the three presently known
Pacific occurrences of black shales of this age, all on the top
of or the flanks of topographic highs? It is not easy to envis-
age water-mass stratification in an ocean the size of the late
Cretaceous palaeo-Pacific. The authors try to address this
problem, but I confess that I failed to follow their argumen-
tation. How does the common presence of radiolaria in
Cenomanian–Turonian black shales – commonly taken as
an index of productive waters – square with this model? This
question is subsumed into their earlier discussion on the rel-
ative importance of productivity versus preservation of
organic matter but again their rationale for preferring
preservation over productivity is not clear to me.
Aficionados of the Cenomanian–Turonian Oceanic
Anoxic Event will find material of interest here, but the
model proposed raises as many questions as it answers.
Definitely something for the specialist!
H. C. Jenkyns
HALLAM, A. & WIGNALL, P. B. 1997. Mass Extinctions
and their Aftermath. viii + 320 pp. Oxford, New York,
Tokyo: Oxford University Press. Price £45.00 (hard
covers), £19.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 19 854917 2;
0 19 854916 4 (pb).
Interest in mass extinctions shows no signs of flagging,
and even now almost twenty years after the momentous and
catalytic paper by the Alvarez team documenting the now-
famous iridium anomaly at the K/T boundary in central
Italy, new discoveries can still reach the front page of news-
papers. Major publications, such as the ‘Snowbird’ volumes
issued by the Geological Society of America, not only
provide regular updates but also indicate the vast range of
topics that contribute to our constantly growing understand-
ing of mass extinctions. But still such volumes fall far short
of a synthesis. Now Tony Hallam and Paul Wignall make
this bold attempt. How well have they succeeded? By and
large, especially given the wealth of data that are usually
incomplete and sometimes simply contradictory, very well
indeed. It is a pleasure to recommend a book that should be
purchased by anyone (yes, even undergraduates) interested
in geology.
The overall aim is to review our understanding of mass
extinctions, notably the ‘Big Five’ as well as a number of
minor episodes. The format they broadly adopt is to look in
turn at the associated stratigraphy, the victims and survivors
in the various taxonomic groups, the boundary sections and
their various implications, geochemistry mostly in the form
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725
of isotopic data, and the possible forcing mechanisms. This
approach gives the book a coherence and allows some sense
of comparison. Nevertheless, concerning this latter point the
authors can only emphasize the already widely appreciated
fact that no single mechanism appears to be uniquely
responsible.
This book, therefore, represents an impressive summary
of the literature. By the occasional quip or aside, the poten-
tial aridity of such a text is largely avoided, although a little
more on the discoveries and mistakes made by the main pro-
tagonists might have made the book yet more readable. The
authors evidently try to be even-handed, and for the most
part succeed. Tony Hallam has for some time been cast as
the questioning figure standing against the mainstream
K/T catastrophist school, and together the authors have
been vigorously championing the anoxia hypothesis as an
explanation for the end-Permian event. It is perhaps, there-
fore, not so surprising that in the section on the K/T mass
extinction the opinions of Keller & MacLeod receive specific
emphasis, and arguably at the expense of other views.
Similarly, the opportunity to mention anoxia as a possible
mechanism for extinction is seized upon, and in addition to
the end-Permian exegesis the authors introduce this possibil-
ity at various other points in the book.
Inevitably there are some reservations. First is that the
approach is broadly stratigraphic and palaeontological.
Areas such as palaeo-oceanography are certainly dealt with,
but not in a way that really encourages a serious discussion.
Other topics, such as the ballistic behaviour of impact debris
or the calculations of energy released by a bolide hitting the
Earth, are simply ignored. Another weakness is that, not
withstanding the title, there is relatively little discussion of
the aftermaths. This is unfortunate because the ecological
and biological recovery of communities after disaster pre-
sent a major scientific challenge, both in terms of the often
greatly protracted recovery times and selectivity of response.
A final reservation is that perhaps the authors are sometimes
too sweeping in their opposition to other ideas: for example
referring to one scenario as ‘frankly ridiculous’ (p. 117), and
in another context one that ‘must rank as one of the least
likely contenders’ (p. 88) may alienate rather than persuade.
These reservations do not detract, however, from a valu-
able addition to the mass extinction literature, and one that
shows that the vast increase in knowledge has still not led to
an entirely convincing series of explanations for these extra-
ordinary events. That is with one important exception. This,
of course, is the mass extinction now underway and here the
answer doesn’t lie in iridium, anoxia or hypercapnia. Any
time you want to know the answer just look in a mirror.
S. Conway Morris
OTTONELLO, G. 1997. Principles of Geochemistry. xii + 894 pp.
New York: Columbia University Press. Price US $70.00.
ISBN 0 231 09984 3.
Geochemistry has come a long way since the days of Viktor
Goldschmidt. In the beginning, geochemistry was the study
of the chemical variations of rocks and minerals, fluids,
gases and melts, and the goal of the geochemist was to
understand the nature and origin of these variations and
their interrelations. Enter Ottonello. He approaches the vast
field of geochemistry from the perspective of a physical
chemist. In principle, in his view, everything can be reduced
to an elementary understanding of thermodynamics and
kinetics. He has little interest in the Earth: it is simply
IP address: 54.210.20.124
 726
another chemical system amenable to quantitative descrip-
tion and interpretation. Ottonello sees as his goal the eleva-
tion of the science of geochemistry out of the muddled
morass that is ‘natural science’ and into the ordered realm of
the ‘exact sciences’.
The result is a long and challenging text, that will never-
theless be of some use as an advanced reference source.
Without so much as a ‘by your leave’ the reader is first
thrown headlong into the depths of the atom. Wave–particle
duality and quantum effects are dispensed with in short
order, and from then on the gloves are off. Minerals, or crys-
tal phases, occupy the first half of the book that later leads
through melts and fluids before closing with a brief synopsis
of trace elemental and isotopic geochemistry. The free use of
equations (some of which are repeated, and others of which
are out of place) and the general lack of a narrative thread
results in a brutally unadorned and formal text that is
strongly biased towards theoretical concepts of the behav-
iour of the elements and their compounds that comprise
melts, rocks and minerals and gases on Earth. This impres-
sion is accentuated because, although it is generally clearly
written, the translation tends to be excessively literal and in
places bears little relation to scientific English in general use.
Another source of irritation is Ottonello’s passion for nam-
ing equations and diagrams after their originators, while at
the same time frequently omitting to explain their signifi-
cance. Captions are invariably cryptic, and rarely explain or
describe the terms used in the figures. A favourite exception
is a figure whose x-axis bears the legend ‘weight %’. In a
show of generosity the caption explains: ‘abscissa axis –
percentile weight of both components’.
To be fair, Ottonello has done an extremely thorough job.
There is an abundance of tables of fundamental data, and it
is unlikely that there is any significant part of chemical
theory that he has left untouched. While not for the faint-
hearted, this can be recommended to anyone with more than
a passing interest in the quantitative physical chemistry of
minerals and rocks.
David Pyle
STOEPPLER, M. (ed.) 1997. Sampling and Sample
Preparation. Practical Guide for Analytical Chemists.
xiv + 202 pp. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, London,
Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong: Springer-Verlag. Price
DM 148.00, Ös 1080.40. SFr 130.50, £61.00, US $109.00
(hard covers). ISBN 3 540 61975 5.
GILL, R. 1977. Modern Analytical Geochemistry. An
Introduction to Quantitative Chemical Analysis for Earth,
Environmental and Materials Scientists. xii + 329 pp.
Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman. Price £27.99
(paperback). ISBN 0 582 09944 7.
In my experience, most geochemists learn how to carry out
sampling, sample preparation and analysis (and also the
tricks of the trade) from people in the laboratory in which
they start work, by word of mouth, from training and expe-
rience, supplemented occasionally by handouts. So what use
are books explaining how to do these things? These two
books are, for the most part, very good as background to
supplement primary training, especially Gill’s book.
The Stoeppler book is translated from a German volume
which was based on a series of training courses held in Essen
over the past decade. I compared one chapter about some-
thing I do know (how to sample ocean waters) with some-
thing I am unlikely to do. The seawater chapter is quite good.
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BOOK REVIEWS
It starts with the plot of the ‘contamination history’, Pb in
seawater versus publication date, and goes on to discuss
many of the precautions that are standard among the groups
who produce acceptable oceanic trace metal data. Of course,
it would be impossible to carry out sampling and handling
based only on this manual and it seems inevitable that these
skills will continue to be passed on as I first described. This is
exemplified in the chapter on ‘Human Specimens’ which,
although it explains how to apply tourniquets and use a milk
pump, does not give me sufficient confidence to try these out.
The second part of Stoeppler’s book concerns sample
preparation. In general, the same caveat applies but these
chapters do provide very useful means to access information
on topics like microwave digestion and pressure decomposi-
tion. Overall, this is a useful adjunct to practical experience
but that is all.
The Gill book, because it is about analytical techniques
and describes the underlying principles, is likely to be very
popular indeed and contains some excellent contributions. It
is a book that students approaching these techniques for the
first time would be well advised to read. Sampling and sam-
ple preparation are covered here too and open beaker sample
preparation and safety issues are covered much more thor-
oughly and better here than in Stoeppler. All of the chapters
on individual analytical techniques are good and many are
outstanding. For example, the chapters by Nick Walsh on
ICPAES and Matthew Thirwell on TIMS are excellent.
Some of the chapters are somewhat too short to be as effec-
tive as these, but nevertheless provide insight to the tech-
nique by an expert in the field. Despite this unevenness and
my personal gripe (see below), this is one of the best books
on analytical geochemistry I have seen and is highly recom-
mended.
My gripe is over the use of units to describe dissolved con-
centrations. Analysts tend to use mass units whereas geo-
chemists use mole units. This topic is given rather cursory
treatment in Chapter 1 (it is ignored in Stoeppler). Practising
geochemists use and remember molar concentrations (moles
per kg are also used widely) so it would help immensely if the
specialist analytical community would bear this in mind
when they write papers and books. A subsidiary gripe with
which to finish is over significant figures. So often one sees
reports where element concentrations are reported to a
totally unrealistic number of (non) significant figures
(apparently, what is spewed out by a calculator or computer
is transferred to the text without intervention of the brain). I
wish that this point had been hammered strongly in both
texts but I could not find it anywhere.
Harry Elderfield
BRITISH GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 1996. Regional Geochemistry
of North-East England. viii + 100 pp. + map in pocket.
Keyworth: British Geological Survey. Price £50.00
(hard covers). ISBN 0 85272 255 9.
This is the eleventh volume in this ground-breaking series
and the second to deal with a part of northern England,
Scotland having been completed in 1993. The area is a
potentially interesting one covering the eastern part of the
Northern Pennine lead–zinc–barytes–fluorite orefield, the
Durham Coalfield, low-grade ironstone workings in the
Coal Measures and Jurassic strata, and the urban industrial
centres of Tyneside, Sunderland and Teeside.
The geochemical mapping is mostly based on stream sedi-
ment sampling, with a minor amount of soil geochemistry
due to the poor distribution of streams over the Chalk in the
IP address: 54.210.20.124
BOOK REVIEWS
southeast of the area. Sampling and analytical techniques
with details of error control, data and image processing, sta-
tistics and data interpretation are given in the Introduction
which is followed by sections on the Landsat Imagery,
Geology, Mineralization and Mining, and Geochemistry
with the images and systematic interpretation of five para-
meters for stream waters and 31 element maps of stream
sediments and soils. Finally, eight three-component images
are given for various elements. A map of the solid geology on
a scale of 1:250 000 is included in the back but the amount of
Quaternary cover of the area would probably justify a solid
with drift sheet in addition to the simplified 1:625 000
Quaternary geology map.
Trace elements in this area have been subjected to a range
of dispersal mechanisms: some natural such as fluvio-glacial
concentration; some which may be a combination of natural
and anthropogenic such as river and atmospheric transport;
and others which are largely anthropogenic in nature such as
mining activity, metallurgical processing, rail and road net-
works, waste disposal and industrial pollution. Of particular
interest are anomalies such as the U anomaly in the Vale of
Pickering, coincident with Y, Zr, TiO2, Cr and La and attrib-
uted to hydraulic sorting of fluvio-glacial material. In the
Swale valley there are concentrations of Zn, Pb, Ba and Cd
in floodplain tributaries, particularly just to the west of
Thirsk, which are attributed to past mining activity in the
Pennines, but which could also be interpreted as sorting of
locally derived glacial material. The highest Cr concentra-
tion of 16473 ppm is recorded around a chromite processing
plant between Teeside and Darlington and anthropogenic
contamination is given as the reason for Sn being highest
around towns or close to rail and road networks. On the
whole one might have expected rather more in terms of
anthropogenic potentially toxic element anomalies than
actually occur in this area.
This whole series will form an excellent reference work for
baseline geochemical data and be of use to geologists, geo-
chemists, soil scientists, surveyors and planners and other
industry professionals. A couple of minor points. Why
bother to sample the heavy mineral fraction if this is then,
apparently, not examined in detail or discussed and inter-
preted? It would have been useful to tabulate background
stream sediment values over the various bedrock strata and
superficial deposit types.
C. J. Stanley
ELLENBERGER, F. 1996. History of Geology, Volume I. From
Ancient Times to the First Half of the XVII Century.
First published 1988 as Histoire de la Géologie by
Technique et Documentation – Lavoisier, Paris.
Translated by R. K. Kaula. vii + 299 pp. Rotterdam,
Brookfield: A. A. Balkema. Price Dfl. 150.00 (hard
covers). ISBN 90 5410 283 7.
OLDROYD, D. 1996. Thinking About the Earth. A History of
Ideas in Geology. Studies in the History and Philosophy
of the Earth Sciences Series. xxx + 410 pp. London:
Athlone Press. Price £50.00 (hard covers). ISBN 0 485
11432 1.
At the heart of these two books is a question which to some
degree remains unanswered. In what ways is a science of
geology to be distinguished from some other form of under-
standing of the Earth’s physical nature? According to
Ellenberger, it is possible to generate a coherent history of
geology in which the types of enquiries pursued by modern-
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727
day geologists can be traced back into the past. How then to
explain the comment, in 1794, by one individual who
regarded himself as a practitioner of physical geography,
that he ‘did not really know what was referred to by the
new name Geology’? (p. 264). Such statements should serve
to alert historians and students alike to the fact that a form
of enquiry called ‘geology’ was by no means a taken-
for-granted way of understanding the Earth even by the late
eighteenth century; to the fact that the emergence and con-
tent of the new field were highly contested at the time at
which the term first began to be employed; and, last but not
least, to the fact that there were in the past many different
and often competing ways of accounting for the physical
structure of the Earth, practised by individuals in very dif-
ferent social and scientific settings and for very different
ends. Histories such as these, written in large part for a non-
specialist audience, need to take such distinctions into
account.
Ellenberger targets his work specifically at geology stu-
dents, taking the interests of his readership so much for
granted that he does not supply a definition of geology. The
reader can infer, however, that his version of ‘geology’ in the
past possesses a broad-ranging chronological and theoreti-
cal span, including explanations of fossil formation and cos-
mogonical accounts as well as physical geography. Oldroyd
acknowledges the existence of a distinct and chronologically
bounded form of knowledge which we term ‘geology’, and
his book is, accordingly, of greater value for historians. For
Oldroyd, geology ‘endeavours to work out the history of the
earth (or at least its crust) by examination of the strata and
the objects contained therein’ (p. 59). He seeks to distinguish
geology as a discipline from other sciences of the Earth, and
also from other ways of understanding the Earth generated
by cosmologists, agriculturalists, or poets, or by ‘mythopoeic
cultures’. Oldroyd begins his book with an account of a per-
sonal experience of an active volcano. We are implicitly
invited to compare the (undescribed) geological explanation
for the volcano’s origins with the account of the ‘mythopoeic’
explanation given by the local inhabitants. The history of the
origins of geology is similarly structured as a history which
classifies explanations of the Earth’s physical structure as
mythopoeic or scientific. Oldroyd, laudably, takes mytholog-
ical accounts of the Earth seriously, and as coherent
explanatory systems. His interpretations of such accounts,
however, often refer to phenomena which derive meaning
from geological theories dating from the nineteenth century
or later (erosion, sedimentation, seismic movements). The
unacknowledged presence of a retrospective interpretative
framework is a problem which runs through both books
Why should it matter to geologists or to historians of geol-
ogy? Precisely because those terms came into being at some
point – because they possess a history, and because the prac-
tices, status and even existence of geologists are historical
products. This is surely a question of considerable interest to
geologists and historians alike.
Much of the early part of Oldroyd’s book is devoted to
determining which accounts of the Earth’s past were prop-
erly geological. In a sense geology is the real agent in this
book, leading Oldroyd to ask whether, for example, Steno
should be counted as a geologist since ‘he was trained in
medicine and ultimately devoted his life to the Catholic
Church’ (p. 63). One might wonder whether a search for
early modern geologists conducted on these terms would
yield fruitful results. If Oldroyd had decided to include indi-
viduals such as Thomas Burnet in his study, the common
ground of Biblical interpretation occupied by the writings of
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 728
Burnet, Hooke and Newton would probably have been more
evident than their distinctions. But just one of these Fellows
of the Royal Society – Hooke – appears here as the author of
a ‘physico-mythological’ account of the Earth’s history by
virtue of combing two interests which now seem to belong,
in our eyes, to separate categories: an interest in strata
(the physical) and an interest in Scripture and the classics
(the mythological). As the work of Shapin and Schaffer has
revealed, it was precisely in these years that the relative value
of Scripture and experiment as sources for truth was being
so bitterly debated. Had things gone otherwise, we might
now see strata as myths. It is that moment of uncertainty
which is perhaps lacking in Oldroyd’s account.
Oldroyd’s skilfully crafted narrative does much to com-
pensate for these problems, although it cannot overcome
them. Four chapters are devoted to the question of the ‘ori-
gins of geology’. The remaining nine are predominantly
devoted to different aspects of the nineteenth- and twenti-
eth-century science of geology. Here Oldroyd covers a vari-
ety of geological subdisciplines – glaciation and climate,
seismology, plate tectonics, and finally, the Gaia theory –
and shows how these have been bolstered by appeals to
Darwinian evolution, oceanography and geophysics. Many
of these branches of enquiry, as he notes, have received little
attention in histories of geology. However, he also covers
some better-trodden terrain, with chapters devoted to the
problems of geological mapping and the geological
timescale. His engaging and readable style will appeal to
readers, and geology students will not be alienated from a
past which seems so accessible. Those who wonder about
other possible interpretations of the history of their disci-
pline will find guidelines in the excellent bibliography.
The quality of accessibility is lacking in Ellenberger’s
work, first published in a French series devoted to the expo-
sition of primary and principal secondary texts in particular
fields. Ellenberger sets out to fill a ‘void’ in the history of
geology, covering the Classical period, the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and the seventeenth century in four long chap-
ters. There is indeed a shortage of introductory studies of
the history of the Earth for these early periods. But the value
of Ellenberger’s work is lessened by poor presentation and
problems of methodology. The translation is uneven in qual-
ity, and sometimes lapses into ambiguity at crucial points.
Although Ellenberger draws upon a wide range of primary
sources, there is no primary bibliography, an impediment to
students interested in exploring the texts cited in more detail.
Long indented passages convey the impression of being
quotes; in fact, they are often carefully selected fragments of
primary materials interspersed with commentary by the
author whose purpose is to transform the text into some-
thing more closely resembling the familiar terms and con-
cepts of geology. Unlike Oldroyd, Ellenberger sets himself
up as a policeman of other cultures’ accounts of the Earth:
were they right or wrong? In general, such present-centred
approaches to the history of science have been open to ques-
tion in Anglophone history of science for numerous decades,
and Oldroyd takes pains to acknowledge the possible falsifi-
ability of current theories about the Earth’s physical nature.
Both works, then, have their possible roles to play, but also
suffer from the shortcomings of a ‘history of ideas’
approach. A different approach would have been to take as
the centre of enquiry the problem of how past inquirers into
the physical nature of the Earth came to agree upon the
types of accounts that were to be judged plausible within a
scientific study of the Earth, and how they settled on
the conventions of behaviour which would distinguish the
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BOOK REVIEWS
‘scientific’ from the ‘non-scientific’ practitioner. Although
Ellenberger insists upon the desirability of ‘an examination
of data on the terrain’, he is silent concerning the highly his-
toricized, culturally specific nature of practices which count
as ‘proper examination’ and which makes for ‘proper data’
acceptable to all geologists worldwide. Yet recent publica-
tions have made a very promising start in generating a
history of field practices and of the self-fashioning of geolo-
gists, as well as arguing that geological mapping and illustra-
tion are not transparent forms of representation. Whilst one
could not expect any publication designed to include uniniti-
ated readers amongst its audience to cover such issues in
detail for extended time periods, none the less such avenues
of enquiry might have received more substantial attention.
E. C. Spary
ZIJLSTRA, H. 1995. The Sedimentology of Chalk. Lecture
Notes in Earth Sciences Series, Volume 54. ix + 194 pp.
Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Barcelona, Budapest,
Hong Kong, London, Milan, Paris, Tokyo: Springer-
Verlag. Price DM 98.00, Ös 764.40, SFr 94.50 (soft
covers). ISBN 3 540 58948 1.
This book deals with the sedimentology of the Chalk of
northwest Europe, and in particular the Tuffaceous Chalk
(Maastrichtian–Danian) of Maestrich, Netherlands. There
is an introduction, nine chapters, an epilogue, a reference list
and a subject index. Chapter 1 summarizes the work of van
den Binkhorst (1859) on the geology of the South Limburg,
the area between Maestricht and Aachen where the
Tuffaceous Chalks are preserved. Present-day views on the
nature and sedimentology of the northwest European Chalk
are summarized in Chapter 2. Early diagenesis is dealt with
in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 covers the origin and growth of flint
nodules, and the genesis of flint nodule layers is discussed in
Chapter 5. Tempestite cycles and their genesis is the topic of
Chapter 6, and hardground genesis is discussed in Chapter 7.
Chapter 8 is a discussion of the K/T section at Stevns Klint,
Denmark. Chapter 9 describes a self-organizing model for
the development of the wavy bedform which is
frequently observed by the author in the Tuffaceous Chalks.
Numerical models are provided for many of the sedimentary
processes discussed.
The text is often poorly organized and difficult to follow.
It would have benefited from much firmer refereeing and
editing. Many diagrams and figures are poor in quality. The
price of the volume is high. This is not a book I would
recommend for my departmental library to buy.
C. V. Jeans
KITANIDIS, P. K. 1997. Introduction to Geostatistics.
Applications in Hydrogeology. xx + 249 pp. Cambridge,
New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge
University Press. Price £55.00, US $74.95 (hard covers),
£19.95, US $29.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 521 58312 8;
0 521 58747 6 (pb).
This book is aimed at graduate-level courses in hydrogeology,
environmental engineering and related subjects. It provides a
sound mathematical basis for understanding the principles
involved in the estimation of unknown values (of, for exam-
ple, porosity, water table depth or concentration of a pollu-
tant) by interpolation from known values at scattered
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BOOK REVIEWS
locations. The reference to hydrogeology in the title is only
an indication of the applications exemplified in the book: I
believe that there are no methods described which cannot be
applied to spatially-distributed data in any context. The
author uses the term ‘geostatistics’ in the correct, restricted
sense, to include kriging and related techniques, so the book
isn’t a comprehensive overview of all relevant statistical
methods.
It is very typical of this type of book that it implies
suitability for graduate hydrogeologists and environmental
scientists, whilst in fact being replete with mathematical
explanations that will probably be beyond the level of maths
training that can be expected of such graduates. In the first
page of the preface, it is said that it ‘presumes no back-
ground in statistics’; this is probably true, but if we read on to
the second page we find ‘the student is expected to have had
a calculus-based course in probability theory’, which proba-
bly rules out all but maths and physics graduates, at least in
the UK. Hence, there are pages full of mathematical expla-
nations and proofs, and many of the examples and exercises
seem designed to satisfy mathematical curiosity, rather than
illustrating applications. Having said that, the book does
include some good written and graphical explanations and
starts at a fairly elementary level. The non-mathematician
can use the book, and perseverance will yield some important
insights.
The book includes introductory sections on exploratory
data analysis and the principles of kriging. After a key chap-
ter on variogram modelling (of which more later), there are
accounts of anisotropy, drift, multiple variables (cokriging),
plus various special cases. This amounts to a fairly compre-
hensive account of geostatistics, so that the ‘Introduction to’
part of the title seems modest!
Possibly the most important contribution of this work is
the fresh approach to model optimization. The author’s
methodology differs from the traditional approach (which
he calls ‘mining geostatistics’) in the importance of the
experimental variogram. The experimental variogram is
based on empirical data, and conveys the degree and type of
‘smoothness’ in the spatial variation of a variable: this infor-
mation is used in obtaining kriged interpolations. In the tra-
ditional method, the scatter of points in the experimental
variogram is modelled by a fitting a curve, as in linear regres-
sion, but it has been frequently observed that, counter-
intuitively, the experimental variogram model does not seem
to be the best representation of the true properties of the
variable. The approach in this book is to optimize the vari-
ogram model not by its fit to the experimental variogram
scatter, but so that it yields the least error in the kriging esti-
mation. The error is assessed by testing predictions against
the known data values, where these are iteratively introduced
into the procedure. The method looks good to me, and is
valid for any data (including mining applications) but it
needs specialist software that is not readily available. This is
not what the reader might expect from a book that claims to
be introductory!
This is an essential book for geostatisticians (not just in
the hydrogeology area), but is only suitable as an introduc-
tion for those with a sound mathematical background.
Andy Swan
HALL, R. & BLUNDELL, D. J. (eds) 1996. Tectonic Evolution
of Southeast Asia. Geological Society Special
Publication no. 106. xiii + 566 pp. London, Bath:
Geological Society of London. Price £79.00, US
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729
$132.00 (members’ prices £39.00, US $65.00); hard
covers. ISBN 1 897799 52 7.
In one of those grand-sounding remarks that on reflection
means nothing very much, the editors declare in the opening
sentence of their preface to this volume that ‘SE Asia is
probably the finest natural geological laboratory in the
world’. Certainly, of all the currently deforming regions on
the Earth’s surface it is one of the least understood, even at
the level of knowing the rates and directions of relative
movement between different parts of the region. There is
uncertainty over the identification of microplates and their
boundaries, and whether plate boundaries sensu stricto are
meaningful concepts at all in some regions where the defor-
mation is distributed over wide regions and resembles more
the diffuse boundary zones of the Alpine–Himalayan belt
than the narrow localized boundaries in the oceans. What is
clear is that the current motions are geometrically complex,
vary rapidly over the whole region, and evolve rapidly with
time. In the sense that the region probably involves most
conceivable combinations of continent–arc–ocean interac-
tions, the editors’ opening sound-bite is fair enough, but
if the present-day motions are so complicated and rapid,
what hope is there of sorting out the longer-term geological
evolution?
The editors have sensibly split this compilation of 35
papers into those (7) that address the present-day tectonics
and those (28) that concern the longer-term tectonic devel-
opment. The former set is primarily concerned with earth-
quake data (by far the most important to date) and seismic
reflection profiling. In the next few years the impact of
current GPS programs in this region will be profound, and
we really are likely to have some idea of what is going on
now. The larger set of papers to do with the tectonic devel-
opment is more varied, containing attempts at regional
palaeogeographic syntheses as well as more focussed local
studies of palaeomagnetic, structural, petrological, radio-
metric and thermochronological aspects of the whole region
from southwest China to Papua New Guinea.
This is a long book, dense with information, but well pre-
sented. In particular the editors and authors deserve praise
for producing seismic reflection profiles and maps that are
clear and informative. There is no doubt that this is an
important contribution to the literature of this region. My
own opinion is that the longer-term tectonic evolution will
only be tractable when the present-day motions are sorted
out. Whether or not I am right in this, the editors have done
a service by recognizing and separating the more limited
(but, because of GPS, attainable) goals of the studies of
active tectonics from the more general (and difficult) goals of
those concerned with geological evolution.
James Jackson
WIDDOWSON, M. (ed.) 1997. Palaeosurfaces: Recognition,
Reconstruction and Palaeoenvironmental Interpretation.
Geological Society Special Publication no. 120. vi + 330
pp. London, Bath, Geological Society of London. Price
£64.00 (hard covers). ISBN 1 897799 57 8.
This compilation of 19 papers arose from a meeting held in
April 1994 at the University of Sheffield, part of the UK
contribution to IGCP 317, Palaeoweathering Records and
Palaeosurfaces. It is a timely contribution and reflects the
growing awareness that reconstructing past environments
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 730
should not only include palaeontological and sedimentary
data, but also information from the direct remnants of those
landscapes, palaeosurfaces; after all, landscapes are com-
posed of surfaces not sediments. A wide range of techniques
is employed by the authors of these papers to decipher previ-
ous landscape development, from traditional field mapping
and mineralogy to remote sensing.
After a useful summary by the editor, the research papers
are grouped on a geographical basis. Surprisingly, the only
Australian contribution is a short paper by Twidale, surpris-
ing in the sense that the Australian landscape has some of
the best researched and oldest palaeosurfaces in the world.
In fact 12 of the 19 chapters are on European palaeosur-
faces, presumably reflecting the origins of the conference
attendees.
Ringrose and Migoń use digital elevation data to identify
pre-Quaternary surfaces in the Scottish Highlands, and fur-
ther identify tectonic events in the region. Coxon and Coxon
describe pre-Pliocene surfaces in County Galway, followed
by a geochemical study of weathering products from lateritic
weathering profiles in Tertiary basalts in Northern Ireland,
by McAlister and Smith. Other Tertiary lava palaeosurfaces
are described by Jolley from Skye. Jolley uses palynology to
reconstruct the floras and landscapes and notes evidence
that thermal doming of the Cuillin centre may have created
elevations of 1200 m.
Lidmar-Bergström, Olsson and Olvmo describe sub-
Cambrian, sub-Jurassic and sub-Cretaceous saprolites from
Sweden which have influenced present landscape develop-
ment despite glaciation, Battiau-Queney provides another
example of old surfaces (pre-Triassic) in glacial regions,
from the French Western Alps, and discusses the reasons for
their preservation. Relic saprolites in cold climates are also
discussed by Whalley et al. who interpret blockfields in north
Norway as in part the products of earlier warm climate
weathering.
There follows a set of papers on Spanish palaeosurfaces.
The first, by Gutiérrez-Elorza and Gracia, documents
Neogene surfaces in the Iberian Range and integrates their
development into the tectonic history of the area. Borger
describes an area to the west, around the Montes de Toledo,
and identifies Palaeogene, Miocene and Pliocene events. A
shift to the northwest takes the reader to the early Tertiary
surfaces on Hercynian basement along the margins of the
Duero Basin, in a paper by Ballesteros, García Talegón and
Vicente Hernández, providing this reviewer with explana-
tions for the distinctive saprolite he photographed as a
tourist to the walled city of Avila.
Migoń documents Tertiary weathering features of the
Sudetes Mountains in southwest Poland, remnants of much
more widespread etch surfaces in central and northern
Europe. The final European paper is by Lacika, on Neogene
palaeosurfaces in volcanic terrains in central Slovakia.
The set of Indian papers commences with one by
Widdowson on the southwest Deccan, and uses the palaeo-
surfaces as records of uplift in the region. He interprets them
as reflecting denudational isostasy and not post rift-related
uplift. Gunnell discusses the Karnataka uplands of southern
India where three sets of palaeosurfaces can be recognized.
The geochemistry of boles from intra-volcanic palaeosols
in the Deccan is described by Widdowson, Walsh and
Sabbarao. The boles contain weathered pyroclastic material,
implying a greater contribution from eruptions than had
previously been suspected.
White, Drake and Walden use remote sensing techniques
to identify the surficial chemistry of the Quaternary covers
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BOOK REVIEWS
on alluvial surfaces in Tunisia. The only other African paper
is by Bowden, on lateritized footslopes from Sierra Leone.
The final paper is by Kennan, Lamb and Hoke, on high alti-
tude palaeosurfaces in the Bolivian Andes, and these are
related to the uplift history of the Andes.
This varied set of papers well illustrates the controls on
the formation, and uses of, palaeosurfaces. Does it ‘work’ as
a coherent compilation? I think so, and it should be available
in all earth science libraries, geographical and geological, to
illustrate the importance of integrating research on weather-
ing, geomorphology, palaeontology and tectonics, in order
to improve our understanding of past events and present
landscapes. The need for integration like this makes a mock-
ery of the continuing separation of ‘rock-geology’ from geo-
morphology and pedology which still takes place in many
universities’ teaching programmes. Books like this can only
help to break down restrictive and unwarranted divisions.
Paul Wright
HARLOW, G. E. (ed.) 1997. The Nature of Diamonds. x + 278
pp. Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne,
Sydney: Cambridge University Press. Price £55.00, US
$74.95 (hard covers); £19.95, US $29.95 (paperback).
ISBN 0 521 62083 X; 0 521 62935 7 (pb).
This lavishly illustrated book is the result of a collaboration
between the American Museum of Natural History and
Cambridge University Press. In scope the book is very remi-
niscent of the companion volumes which often accompany
major art exhibitions; in fact it was produced to coincide
with a major diamond exhibition at the American Museum
of Natural History in New York. The book is aimed at the
general reader and covers, to quote the introduction, ‘the
rich tapestry of stories found in diamond and provided by
diamond and diamonds’. The Nature of Diamonds is orga-
nized into three sections. The first covers scientific aspects of
diamond: its mineralogy, physical and chemical properties,
origin of colour in diamond, the geology of diamond
deposits and the distribution of major diamond deposits.
The first section is separated from the second by a collection
of photographs of famous diamonds (no book of this type
would be complete without such a photo gallery). The sec-
ond section contains a series of chapters on the role of dia-
monds in history, and includes chapters on the value of
diamonds in English literature and on the histories of dia-
monds in jewellery and of diamond cutting. The last section
deals with the uses of diamonds, both in jewellery and in
industry, and the production of synthetic diamonds.
Overall the book is very well written and produced and
presents a comprehensive overview of all topics related to
diamond. It would be an interesting addition to any geologi-
cal library. The paperback edition is well priced just under
£20 but the hardback edition is expensive at £55.
Allan Pring
RUDWICK, M. J. S. 1997. Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and
Geological Catastrophes. New Translations &
Interpretations of the Primary Texts. xvi + 301 pp.
Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Price
£27.95; US $39.95 (hard covers). ISBN 0 226 73106 5.
Four times the face of Georges Cuvier gazes at us from the
pages of this fascinating book. From a boy, still vulnerable
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BOOK REVIEWS
as he stands on the threshold of manhood, to uncertain aspi-
rant of scientific patronage in a world where the ancien
régime is disintegrating to the sound of guillotines and mob
tyranny (a.k.a. populism), this in turn yields ten years later
to intelligent wariness, and finally in 1826 to the apotheosis
of success as almost effeminate Cuvier stands encased in
brocade and decorations, yet despite his legendary confi-
dence and even arrogance still strangely vulnerable. So we
trace out the life of a scientist whose greatness is still under-
estimated, at least by the majority.
His relative neglect is easy to understand. Cuvier was on
the losing side in two ways. First, as an anti-transformation-
ist (and anti-Lamarckian) whose world-picture apparently
lost all relevance with the Darwinian revolution. Second, as
a citizen of France whose scientific momentum faltered
against the renaissance of English research led by Buckland,
Lyell, Sedgwick and Darwin. Yet for all this Cuvier cannot
be dismissed as an anchronism. In this book Cuvier largely
speaks for himself, by the medium of a series of key texts
ably translated into idiomatic English, which are inter-
spersed by Rudwick’s judicious summaries and analyses.
What we now see is a man who lived on the threshold of
modern Europe and modern science. In one of his earliest
reports, written as a letter to 1791, on the geology of
Normandy, he alludes to streams each one of which has ‘no
name of its own … Sometimes [it has] ten names along its
course, from the different villages built beside it’. Yet within
a few years that which was still effectively medieval had been
destroyed by the French Revolution, the Terror and the
hatching of Europe’s first (but by no means last: four at the
last count and the next one well on schedule) totalitarian
states. Cuvier himself seems to have steered a course of
pragmatism and guarded consent to the various upheavals,
taking as a fixed objective the prevention of any resurgence
of the earlier moral and political anarchy. So too with his
science. In contrast to the ever-popular stream of books
entitled A Theory of the Earth and the near-mystical medita-
tions of the organic transformationists, Cuvier insisted on
the primacy of observable fact and constrained conjecture.
Beyond his heroic analysis of vertebrate anatomy, including
his celebrated preparation of a fossil marsupial to reveal
diagnostic bones hidden within the rock, his attempts at
wider conjecture were confined to the evidence of recurrent
catastrophic extinction and towards the end of his life the
identification of what today we would call metazoan phy-
logeny (embranchements). Concerning the former he felt
that the most recent catastrophe may have occurred only a
few thousand years ago, and might in itself be an echo of the
ancient tradition (Noah, Gilgamesh, Deucalion) of a terri-
ble inundation. As Rudwick is at pains to point out, however,
Cuvier was no biblical literalist, and rather took particular
interest in the textural interpretation of ancient records.
Here too it was with the eye of a scientist rather than of a
believer, but Cuvier was still prepared to accept that not all
the distant past of human history was fable. Thus Cuvier
spans, perhaps in a unique manner, the ways of ancient
knowledge and the emerging scientific method. Almost
alone of his generation, he grasped that science could only
proceed by virtue of careful observation and restrained con-
jecture. For this reason, his less well known works deserve re-
reading by all of us. Dying only shortly after the Beagle had
departed from England, Cuvier had no inkling that the sci-
ence he had so assiduously promoted would, in the hands of
others, lead to a revolution at least as dramatic as the one
through which he himself had lived.
Simon Conway Morris
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MARTINI, I. P. (ed.) 1997. Late Glacial and Postglacial
Environmental Changes. Quaternary, Carboniferous–
Permian, and Proterozoic. xii + 343 pp. New York,
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Price £49.50 (hard
covers). ISBN 0 19 508541 8.
A comparison of the closing stages of glaciation, and the
resulting post-glacial environments, from widely differing
geological time periods, is an interesting topic. It is also a
very ambitious one, given the differences in tectonic setting
and biotas, and the diverse depositional settings of different
glacials. Also there are the severe problems in precise corre-
lations of the older deposits which tend to make students of
Quaternary glaciations ask different questions and apply
dissimilar approaches to workers on older glaciations. This
becomes clear in the editor’s introduction in which he sum-
marizes the chapters of this multi-author review compilation
and struggles to connect the contributions. He offers an off-
beat query as to whether the ‘the future will bring a return to
glaciation or will introduce a return to permanent warm,
arid conditions’. At the end of the final paragraph of this
introduction, ominously headed ‘What can be learned from
all this?’, it becomes clear that the warm arid conditions
to which the author refers are those of the Late Permian,
following Permo-Carboniferous glaciation. As contributor
Grant Young states, however, ‘Because the Pleistocene
glaciation has probably not yet run its course, attempts to
explain its postglacial stratigraphy are probably premature’.
I can’t help wondering if the editor added that word ‘proba-
bly’ (and he certainly ought to have changed Pleistocene to
Quaternary). The editor is left to conclude weakly that ‘the
Carboniferous–Permian postglacial settings are more like
present ones than any other’. In summary, the concept
sounds great, but in practice virtually no new insights from
the comparative elements seem to emerge. Instead of a new
comparative understanding, we are offered a number of
more specific reviews, none of which claims to be compre-
hensive, but a number of which should be useful, particu-
larly for students.
The book is arranged in five sections. Part I is entitled
‘The Quaternary: the last glaciation and deglaciation’, with
chapters on Laurentide, Scandinavian, Siberian and South
American examples which are sound summaries. The chap-
ter by Andrews, which succinctly reviews some of the wealth
of new evidence of the complexities of Laurentide deglacia-
tion, is particularly worthwhile. The cautionary remarks
about the need for care in attempting to correlate regional
glacial histories and the ice volume record are also worth
bearing in mind by workers on ancient successions. The
other chapters in this section make half-hearted and uncon-
vincing attempts to find lessons for workers on ancient
glaciations.
Part II ‘The Quaternary: macro-processes’ has two chap-
ters by Peter Clark and Victor Baker which respectively sum-
marize (Laurentide) sediment deformation and megafloods.
Their brevity and clear writing should endear them to stu-
dents of Quaternary glaciation.
Part III contains seven reviews under the heading ‘The
Carboniferous–Permian: A Paleogeographic Reconstruction’
including regional reviews of South America, Africa, Afro-
Arabia and India, Australia, and Antarctica. The section
starts with an important overview on Permian climates by
Ziegler et al. accompanied by an insert with four global
reconstructions in colour. The strength is in their detailed
account of Permian world topography in relation to sedi-
mentary and palaeontological data, and previous computer
IP address: 54.210.20.124
 732
simulations of climate. Even so, I was disappointed at the
banality of the sedimentological data. Having said that coal
could have formed in any one of four biomes, representing a
huge range of temperature conditions, there was no clear
justification for distinguishing these in the remaining text.
The same lack of critical palaeoclimatic data applies also
to the other contributions, but which do their job of palaeo-
geographic reconstruction well. An exception regarding
palaeoclimatic data is the careful reference to Australian
palaeontological information by Lindsay. Wopfner and
Casshyap by contrast use dubious criteria for interpretation
of temperature, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2 levels.
Part IV contains a paper by Grant Young in which he
extends some of his other recent review papers by compari-
son of one Palaeoproterozoic and two Neoproterozoic
glacial sedimentary successions, interpreting them in terms
of timing within a hypothesized rift–drift evolution.
Part V contains four diverse papers on sedimentary
petrology, Quaternary palaeosols, and two articles compar-
ing Permian coals with modern cool-climate peats. Of these,
Bustin clearly draws attention to the differing climatic signif-
icance of the Gondwanan floras found in vertical succes-
sions, but also the limitations of coal petrology as a
palaeoclimatic indicator.
In summary, there are some interesting individual contri-
butions to this book which are well worth consulting. On the
other hand, virtually all the information is available else-
where both in detailed and review formats. The editing is
uneven and many minor typographic errors have slipped
through. Apart from Young, the book suffers from a lack of
authors who have researched on glacial deposits of different
ages. Greater insights from such authors can be found for
example in the review by Eyles (1993), the Deynoux et al.
(1994) compilation, and the textbook by Hambrey (1994). A
definitive comparison of ice ages, making use of palaeogeo-
graphic, sedimentological, palaeontological, geochemical
and other palaeoclimatic information, is still awaited.
Ian J. Fairchild
References
DEYNOUX, M., MILLER, J., DOMACK, E., EYLES, N., FAIRCHILD, I. J.
& YOUNG, G. M. (eds) 1994. Earth’s Glacial Record.
Cambridge University Press, 266 pp.
EYLES, N. 1993. Earth’s glacial record and its tectonic setting. Earth-
Science Reviews 35, 1–248.
HAMBREY, M. J. 1994. Glacial Environments. UCL Press,
296 pp.
JIN, J. & CHATTERTON, B. D. E. 1997. Latest Ordovician–
Silurian articulate brachiopods and biostratigraphy of
the Avalanche Lake area, southwestern District of
Mackenzie, Canada. Palaeontographica Canadiana no.
13. vi + 167 pp. Canadian Society of Petroleum
Geologists/Geological Association of Canada. Price
CDN $51.50, US $51.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 920230
59 8; ISSN 0821-7556.
The first issue of Palaeontographica Canadiana came out in
1983, and since then our Canadian colleagues are to be con-
gratulated on maintaining this important series for the pub-
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BOOK REVIEWS
lication of the many diverse and largely undescribed fossils
of Canada. All respectable libraries should support this
series by subscription. Out of the 13 volumes so far pub-
lished, ten deal with Lower Palaeozoic faunas, and the cur-
rent volume on Late Ordovician and early Silurian
brachiopods from northwest Canada is a substantial addi-
tion to the series. In the publication Jin & Chatterton
describe 62 genera and 86 species, but it is noteworthy that
only one genus and 17 species are new. These faunas, which
range from Ashgill to late Wenlock or early Ludlow in age,
are very representative of the successive cosmopolitan fau-
nas of those times and, since northwest Canada was very
close to the then equator, their diversity is substantial. All
the described faunas are silicified, which has enabled the
authors to illustrate exquisite details of their internal and
external morphology, and the quality of illustrations in the
volume is very good. The most noteworthy occurrence is the
earliest representative of the terebratuloids, which is a very
small brachiopod whose average length is only 1.6 mm, but
which nevertheless preserves the centronelliform loop so
characteristic of that Order. A highly professional and useful
publication of international significance.
L. R. M. Cocks
PICKERING, K. T. & OWEN, L. A. 1997. An Introduction to
Global Environmental Issues, 2nd ed. xxx + 512 pp.
London, New York: Routledge. Price £17.99 (paper-
back). ISBN 0 415 14099 4.
The first edition of Global Environmental Issues (1994) was a
best-selling addition to the already large library of textbooks
on environmental matters. Its popularity was due to a
successful blend of hard scientific principles with informed
discussion of policy issues. Pickering & Owen therefore suc-
ceeded in bridging the gap between the environmental
approaches of natural and social scientists. The authors’
geological provenance ensured that, unlike some environ-
mental texts, earth science aspects were reliably covered. The
book was also scrupulously up-to-date, copiously illustrated,
and furnished with a wealth of tables, boxes, appendices and
glossaries. At about £16 for 400 pages, the paperback was
also exceptional value.
It is an understatement to say that the successful formula
is repeated in the second edition. Not only has the whole
book been fully updated, but there is more of everything that
readers liked about the first edition. There is an increased
number of colour and monochrome plates, double the quan-
tity of tables and figures, and a greatly expanded range of
text boxes. There is a new appendix of national economic
and population statistics. The bibliography has nearly dou-
bled in length. The whole book now totals over 500 pages,
and the paperback price of around £18 makes it even better
value than the first edition.
In summary, the second edition of Global Environmental
Issues will keep it in the lists of recommended reading for
university environmental studies courses for some years to
come. My only concern is that, if the third edition increases
in weight by yet another 30%, I shall, in the year 2000, no
longer be strong enough to lift it on and off my bookshelves.
Nigel Woodcock
IP address: 54.210.20.124