294 SOME NEW BOOKS [october 



and on the last plate, in each successive part. The object may be otherwise 

 attained by supplying a continuous list of such pages and plates, to go with 

 the preface or the index. Such a continuous list is in any case desirable, and 

 might still be given for each of the volumes already published. The oppor- 

 tunity of distributing this small boon will be easily provided in company with 

 a far greater one, the promised volume on the Cumacea of Norway, the appear- 

 ance of which will be for its own sake eagerly welcomed. 



Thomas R. R. Stebbing. 



BUTTERFLIES' WINGS. 



Specialisations of the Lepidopterous Wing : The Parnassi - Papilionidae. 

 Parts I. and II. By A. Radcliffe Grote. Proc. American Philosophical 

 Soc. XXXVIII., 1899. Pp. 25-48, 3 plates. 



The author's theory of the movement of the veins of the wings in 

 specialisation suggests a guide for determining the systematic position of the 

 genera with greater exactness, and a clue to their phyletic descent. The correct- 

 ness of this theory of Grote's has recently received support through Dr. Rebel's 

 discovery of an ancestral form of Parnassius from the Miocene of Gabbro, Italy. 

 This extinct species, Doritites bosniaski, shows a neuration as yet in the 

 zerynthian stage, and distinctly comparable with that of Archon apollimis, while 

 the markings and facies are Parnassian. In this communication to the 

 American Philosophical Society, the author reviews the genera of the 

 Papilionides, showing the Parnassians to be the more advanced forms of the 

 group, the test being the gradual disappearance, through absorption, of the 

 cubital cross vein, as seen by an examination of the generic types from 

 Ornithoptera up to Parnassius. He is led to the conclusion that the former 

 genus shows generalised characters which bring it nearer to the presumed 

 primitive Papilionid, and necessitate an alteration in the present systematic 

 position of the genus. As opposed to the views of Spuler, the author repudiates 

 any affinity between the Pieridae and Papilionides, and shows that the neurational 

 analogies of the latter group lie with the brush- footed butterflies. The common 

 white colour of the Pierids and Parnassians is ascribed to convergence, and 

 reference is made to the author's earlier statements in Natural Science, that an 

 increase of white pigment runs roughly parallel with the specialisation of the 

 neuration. The author further considers and urges the probable diphyletism of 

 the diurnals, as he has previously suggested, and recommends the retention of 

 the Papilionides at the commencement of the series. The plates, in addition to 

 the figures of Papilionides, give corrected figures of Heliconius, and for the first 

 time of Dione. 



COLOMBIAN ORE. 



The Ores of Colombia, from Mines in Operation in 1892. By H. W. 

 Nichols, S.B. Field Columbian Museum, Publication 33. Geo- 

 logical Series, vol. i., No. 3, pp. 125-177, with Map. 



This publication is a praiseworthy endeavour to utilise part of a collection 

 made by Sehor F. Pereira Gamba, a mining engineer of Bogota. The collection 

 consists of specimens of the ores and associated rocks met with in those mines 

 of the Republic of Colombia which were being worked in 1892. It was first 

 exhibited in the World's Columbian Exposition, and about a quarter of it 

 was subsequently handed over to the Field Columbian Museum, the remainder 

 having apparently been lost. After an introduction, in which proper stress is 

 laid on the circumstance that all of the specimens of ores are average samples, 

 and after a couple of pages devoted to the physical features and general geology 

 of Colombia, the serious business of recording, and in many cases describing, 



