Abstract
THERE are few living authors who take so wide a view of the phenomena and problems of geology as Prof. Cole, and none who is more capable of making the subject of interest to the student. He stands out, too1, among his contemporaries in his appreciation of the work of the pioneers of the science, and in particular of the French petrologists of the first half of the nineteenth century, especially of Cordier and Delesse. He gives an interesting record of the latter's procedure in determining the volumetric mineral composition of a rock by the measurement of areas on a polished slab, and explains how it may be applied to sections under the microscope. Prof. Cole does not, however, refer to the linear method in which the same result is obtained by the measurement of the mineral intercepts on lines drawn over the surface. This method, which has largely superseded the area method in microscopic work, was described by Delesse in the same paper, though the credit for it is usually given to Rosiwal, who published an account of it just fifty years later in 1898.
Aids in Practical Geology.
By Prof. Grenville A. J. Cole. Seventh edition, revised. Pp. xvi + 431. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., Ltd., 1918.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
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EVANS, J. Aids in Practical Geology . Nature 103, 263 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/103263c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/103263c0
