62 



HARDWICKE'S SC I EN CE-GOS SIP. 



"facts" which every day are crowding before our 

 notice. 



Mr. Wood is not one of these ignorant pseudo- 

 critics : his books always strike one as thoroughly 

 genuine. Their tone is quietly earnest, and the 

 literary style of them all is most admirable. In his 

 " Insects at Home." Mr. Wood compiled a large and 

 most useful volume of entomological reference, well 

 written, and equally well and copiously illustrated. 

 But the shelves of most natural history students 

 contain works on British entomology, whereas 

 exotic entomology has been, in England, but feebly 

 represented. Our museums often contain magnifi- 



Fig. 36. Walking-stick Insect (Eurycnntha horrida). 



cent specimens of tropical lepidoptera ; but how 

 rarely do we find even a few of them properly 

 named. Then as regards many other kinds of 

 insects, the foreign beetles, fireflies, mantids, ants, 

 &c, the only information we have is sparsely scat- 

 tered through books of travel, or meagrely given in 

 brief sketches. 



We hail Mr. Wood's book on foreign insects, 

 therefore, with much pleasure, believing that a 

 popular well-written work of this kind was much 

 wanted by the intelligent reader ; and that Mr. 

 Wood was just the man to write it. It is a com- 

 panion volume to "Insects at Home," containing 

 nearly 800 pages, with six hundred illustrations and 

 full-sized plates. The letter-press is clear and plea- 

 sant to the eyes, whilst the style of wood-cutting 



may be best judged of by the few blocks which 

 have been kindly lent us for that purpose by the 

 publishers. The larger illustration shows a group 

 of homopterous insects, chiefly Cicadas; whilst the 

 figures of the Eurytrachelus Titan, a beetle more 

 than four inches in length ; and the still larger 

 "Elephant Beetle," Megalosoma, elephas—n splendid 

 insect, black, covered with chestnut and yellow fir 

 — will give the reader fair examples of the average 

 merits of the wood-cuts. In fig. 3(5 we have a speci- 

 men of the curious order oiAmbulatoria, or walkhg- 

 insects, about which so much interest hangs, frnn 

 the strongly marked mimetic features they dispay. 



The illustration is thai of 

 the Eurycantha horrido — a 

 name well deserved, fo - the 

 insect is thrice the length 

 of its portrait as here given. 

 It is a native of New 

 Guinea, and its eggs are 

 said to be as large ai those 

 of the small humming-birds. 

 A peculiar fact marks the 

 larval stage of this insect. 

 If one of the limbs happen 

 to be lost, it is immediately 

 replaced by another. 



In fig. 37 we have the 

 magnificent and well-known 

 black and green butterfly, 

 Papilio palinums, whose 

 under surface presents such 

 a marked contrast to its 

 upper. Eig. 3S gives us an 

 instance of strongly-marked 

 mimicry, not unlike that 

 which exists in our own 

 male " Orange-tip," or still 

 more, in some of the tropi- 

 cal " Leaf-insects." This 

 object is Kallima paralekta. 

 The illustration wants some 

 little explanation, for the 

 artist has represented the butterfly with closed wings, 

 at rest on a twig, one of whose leaves is mimicked 

 by the reposing insect. This butterfly has been 

 already described in Wallace's " Malayan Archipe- 

 lago." It occurs in dry woods and thickets, and so 

 wonderfully do its markings protect it, that even 

 Mr. Wallace, trained and skilled entomologist 

 though he is, could not find this insect when he was 

 pursuing it, and it happened to alight even near him ! 

 The general reader will peruse this volume with 

 much interest and pleasure ; and the young natural- 

 ist will often turn to il for information that he can 

 with difficulty procure elsewhere. Of course the 

 author does not pretend to do other than delineate 

 the best representatives of each order. To do more, 

 especially in exotic entomology, would prove a task 



