270 NATURAL SCIENCE, April. 



In conclusion, we may express the hope that, having made so 

 admirable a beginning, the Columbia University will continue the 

 elementary treatment of the Vertebrata in the same style in four other 

 volumes. A series of handbooks on the plan adopted by Dr. Dean 

 could not fail to attract more students to the subject, and lead to even 

 more rapid progress than now characterises this branch of research. 



A. S. W. 



Butterflies and Moths. 



A Handbook of British Lepidoptera. By Edward Mey rick, B.A., F.Z.S., F.E.S. 

 Pp. vi., 843. London : INIacmillan & Co., Ltd., 1895. Price los. nett. 



HaNDBUCH DER PAL.iARKTISCHEN GrOSS-ScHMETTERLINGE FUR FORSCHER UND 



Sammler. By Dr. M. Standfuss. Pp. xii., 392. 8 pis. Jena: Fischer, 1896. 

 Price M. 14. 



Die Artbildung und Verwandtschaft bei den Schmetterlingen. II. Theil. 

 Eine systematische Darstellung der Abanderungen, Abarten und Arten der 

 Schwalbenschwanz-ahnlichen Formen der Gattung Papilio. Von Dr. G. H. T. 

 Eimer, unter Mitwirkung von Dr. K. Fickert. Text, 8vo. Pp. viii., 153. 

 Tafeln 4, 410. Jena: G. Fischer, 1895. Price M. 14. 



In Mr. Barrett's work on the British Lepidoptera, the second volume 

 of which was noticed in these pages some months since, we have a 

 treatise from the standpoint of a conservative entomologist, who would 

 retain a system of classification which modern research shows us 

 should be abandoned for one more natural. Mr. Meyrick's volume, 

 on the other hand, is the work of an extreme radical. Consternation 

 will surely be felt by many an old lover of the scale-winged insects 

 who may open Mr. Meyrick's book to see what the author has written 

 about the Swallowtail butterfly. Such a reader will naturally turn to 

 the beginning of the systematic portion, but he will find there no 

 account of Papilio machaon, or of any other butterfly. The honour of 

 first place in the series is bestowed on the tiger moths (Arctiadae), and 

 page 325 has to be reached before the " Papilionina " are found, 

 inserted between the Lasiocampidae and the Pyrales. Aghast at such 

 an innovation, our would-be student, it is to be feared, will refuse to 

 have anything more to do with so revolutionary a book, and will not 

 stop to consider Mr. Meyrick's suggestion that the butterflies are an 

 offshoot of a primitive pyralid stock. Seriously, it might have been 

 better if Mr. Meyrick, in a work intended for British lepidopterists, 

 had shown a little more consideration for the deeply-ingrained 

 conservatism of the class for whose benefit he was writing. Though 

 there is a very high probability that the butterflies and the higher 

 moths have been independently developed from the more primitive 

 Lepidoptera, the first-named group has attained so marked and 

 isolated a standard that its retention at the head of the Lepidoptera 

 would be fully justified. But it is to be hoped that most students 

 will not be hindered by Mr. Meyrick's revolutionary classification 

 from a careful study of a book that will suggest many fruitful ideas 

 and give much matter for thought. 



In the seventeen pages of introduction, the structure and 

 life-history of lepidopterous insects, their variation, principles of 

 classification, phylogeny, and nomenclature, are dealt with in as 

 satisfactory a way as such extreme condensation allows. With much 

 reason, Mr. Meyrick defends the use of wing-neuration for systematic 

 purposes, on the ground that it is a non-adaptive character. While 

 similarity in the preparatory stages is doubtless often of value in 



