ii SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



Entomology must not be treated as a stepchild and Cinderella, to be neglected by her proud 

 sister, but must work shoulder to shoulder with her as a faithful and equal comrade, carrying 

 stones for the building which inquirers are endeavouring by honest work, upon a true knowledge 

 of nature, to raise up as a harmonious whole." 



A Handbook of British Lepidoptera. By Edward Meyrick, B.A., F.Z.S., F.E.S., Assistant 

 Master at Marlborough College. London and New York : Macmillan & Co. , 1895. 

 8vo, pp. vi., 843. 



In this compact and closely-printed volume Mr. Meyrick has given us a convenient 

 Students' Manual of British Butterflies and Moths, which was greatly wanted by all collectors 

 who had outgrown the numerous popular books, which, as a rule, include only the butterflies 

 and larger moths, the far more numerous " Micro-Lepidoptera " being omitted. Mr. 

 Meyrick's work, however, includes all these in a single volume, not, of course, giving com- 

 plete information on every point, but short descriptions and tables of genera and species, and 

 notices of larvae, times of appearance, and localities. We have many similar handbooks of 

 botany and ornithology, and it is rather surprising that this is almost the first of its kind as 

 regards Lepidoptera. There are no illustrations except woodcuts of neuration, a character to 

 which Mr, Meyrick attaches a perhaps somewhat exaggerated importance. Enough has been 

 and will be written elsewhere on the new classification of the Lepidoptera proposed by Mr. 

 Meyrick, and we need only here allude to the fact of its being totally dissimilar to that adopted 

 by any other entomologist. 



Catalogue of the Mesozoic Plants in the Department of Geology, British Museum (Natural 

 History). The Wealden Flora. Part II., " Gymnospermas ". With twenty Plates 

 and nine Figures in the Text. By A. C. Seward, M.A. , F.G.S. London : 1895. 



Mr. Seward, of Cambridge, has for some time past been engaged on an examination of 

 the fossil plants from the Wealden beds, contained in the collections of the British Museum. 

 The material on which the investigation is based was for the most part collected by Mr. 

 Rufford, whose valuable specimens have been acquired by the Museum. Mr. Seward's first 

 volume, containing the "Cryptogams," appeared in 1894; the part now published completes 

 the work, for, unfortunately, the English Wealden has not yet yielded any Angiospermous 

 remains, although both Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons have been found in beds of similar 

 horizon abroad. 



The present volume is concerned with the two orders Cycadacese and Coniferae. The 

 author, however, points out that we are still to a large extent in the dark as to the exact nature 

 and structure of extinct Cycadean plants. Beautiful as many of the specimens are, and 

 striking as is the similarity of their organs to those of existing Cycads, we can seldom be 

 certain that we have to do with Cycadaceas, in the sense of recent Botany. There is nearly 

 always the possibility that the remains may rather belong to the extinct family Bennettiteae, 

 allied to the Cycads, but deviating widely from them in the structure of the reproductive 

 organs. Mr. Seward appears to recognise one species only (among those recorded in this 

 book) as representing a truly Cycadean flower. This is his Androstrobus Nathorstii, which 

 seems to be beyond doubt a male cone of the true Cycadean type. The other fructifications 

 described are regarded as " incertce sedis," or transferred to the Coniferae, or else they belong 

 unmistakably to the Bennettites type. This latter fructification, so thoroughly known from the 

 researches of Carruthers, Solms-Laubach, and Lignier, is proved by the author to be well re- 

 presented in the Wealden strata. He founds a new species — Bennettites Carruthersi — for some 

 very fine specimens, which exhibit in great perfection all the more external characters of this 

 extraordinary fructification. Mr. Seward identifies Bennettites with the famous Williamsonia, 

 and inclines to the view that all the specimens which have been satisfactorily determined repre- 

 sent female inflorescences. Another species of Bennettites illustrates very finely the way in 

 which the inflorescences were borne on the stem. 



Certain Wealden stems had been referred by previous writers to Draccena. The author 

 rejects this determination, and shows that they bear a much greater likeness to certain 

 Cycadean stems, especially those of some species of Zamia. 



A most anomalous fossil, of uncertain affinities, is placed by Mr. Seward in a new genus — 

 Withamia. It consists of a woody axis, bearing very large recurved spines, in the axils of 

 which leaf-like organs, somewhat suggestive of a GiwfAo, are seated. Nothing like this is 

 known among living plants, though Phyllocladus presents certain analogies. 



