334 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



for the entomological students to whom the volume is of 

 priceless value. 



An "Insect Book," by L. O. Howard, l\ S. Government 

 Entomologist, with full quota of coloured plates, was published 

 to include all orders except Lepidoptera and beetles. It is no 

 reflection upon Dr. Howard to say that this work is unsatisfactory, 

 since it had to be made uniform with others for the publishers, 

 and so had to cover in the single volume a field requiring at least 

 ten volumes to be essential to even a four-foot book shelf of working 

 library of a Nature lo\er. However, it is well worth owning. 

 As it covers a field in which many hundred thousand species 

 exist, it is not a guide to identification even to the genera. 



Uniform is the Spider Book, b\- J. H. Comstock, combining 

 exact science and popular readability. Its illustrations are equal 

 to the others of the series, and it serves well for identifications 

 of species. A number of spider books by J. H. Emerton have 

 mostly wood cuts, but well made, and with clearly written text. 

 They are inexpensive. A work of highest scholarship ard popular 

 interest is the Ant Book, by Wm. Morton Wheeler. No work 

 on the subject compares with it for completeness or offer of correct 

 identifications. On the Diptera (the true Hies) theie is one good 

 book, by S. A. Williston. In this^normous field final identifications 

 are impracticable. A Catalogue of Described Diptera, by J. M. 

 Aldrich, was a Smithsonian publication, remarkable for its accuracy 

 in a little known field, but it suffered the same fate as Dyar's 

 catalogue of Lepidoptera and second-hand copies command a 

 large price. 



There is no good work on the Hemiptera, or true bugs. The 

 manuals of entomology give good chapters. An excellent check- 

 list of the Hemiptera, by E. P. Van Duzee, has just been published 

 by the New York Entomological Society, but, of course, a list 

 does not contain facilities for identifying species. A definitive 

 and popular work on the Hymenoptera is also impracticable 

 since they are not easily pictured, and since the number of species 

 is enormous, a large fraction of the smaller parasitic forms not yet 

 being known. 



Thus far there has been no mention of beetles, although that 



