Abstract
IT might at first sight seem a piece of presumption in one whose palæontological attainments are of the slenderest, and who knows no more of the Yorkshire Lias than has been picked up during a few days ramble along the coast, to attempt a criticism of a work conspicuous for elaborate palaeontological research and rich in descriptive detail of the most minute and local character. But in forming an estimate of the work of a specialist the absence of minute special knowledge is in many cases far from being a disadvantage; the specialist always runs some risk of becoming engrossed with details, of looking upon them as the end and not as a means to something higher, of being “unable to see the wood for the trees,” and, as long as this risk exists, there is always a fair prospect that the remarks of an outsider, however inferior he may be in special attainments to the man whose work he is reviewing, may add something in breadth of view, and may suggest questions that have been overlooked in the task of collecting minute particulars. It is with this feeling that we attempt to give an account of the work before us, and to discuss some problems which its perusal has suggested to us; and we make the attempt all the more readily, because the authors have by no means in the multiplicity of their details lost sight of the broad questions which underlie and spring from them.
The Yorkshire Lias.
By Ralph Tate J. F. Blake. (London: Van Voorst, 1876.)
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G., A. The Yorkshire Lias . Nature 15, 113–115 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/015113a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/015113a0
