172 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



literary form. The volume includes essays on extermination in the 

 nineteenth century, domesticated animals and their history, problems of 

 geographical distribution, desert faunas, protective coloration, the 

 whiteness of arctic animals, the colours of cowries, the nursing habits of 

 amphibians, scorpions and their antiquity, and on many other subjects. 

 The book deserves to be widely known and admired. 



Economic Zoology.* — E. Ray Lancaster prefixes to F. V. Theobald's 

 First Report on Economic Zoology (see Insecta) a luminous and useful 

 survey of the various sub-divisions which it is found convenient to 

 recognise in the treatment of this subject. This classification of animals 

 in their economic relation to man appears to us so important, that we 

 submit it in condensed outline. 



Group A. — Animals captured or slaughtered by man for food, or for 

 the use by him in other ways, of their skin, bone, fat, or other 

 products. Examples .- — Animals of the chase ; food-fishes ; whales ; 

 pearl-mussels. 



Group B. — Animals bred or cultivated by man for food, or for the 

 use of their products in industry, or for their services as living things. 

 Examples : — Flocks and herds ; horses ; dogs ; poultry ; gold-fish ; bees ; 

 silkworms and leeches. 



Group C. — Animals which directly promote man's operations as a 

 civilised being without being killed, captured or trained by him. 

 Examples : — Scavengers such as vultures ; carrion-feeding insects ; earth- 

 worms and flower-fertilising insects. 



Group D. — Animals which concern man as causing bodily injury, 

 sometimes death to him, and in other cases disease, often of a deadly 

 character. Examples : — Lions ; wolves ; snakes ; stinging and parasitic 

 insects ; disease germ-carriers, as flies and mosquitoes ; parasitic worms ; 

 parasitic Protozoa. 



Group E. — Animals which concern man as causing bodily injury or 

 disease (both possibly of a deadly character) to (a) his stock of domesti- 

 cated animals ; or (b) to his vegetable plantations ; or (c) to wild animals 

 in the preservation of which he is interested ; or (d) wild plants in the 

 preservation of which he is interested. Examples : — Similar to those of 

 Group D, but also insects and worms which destroy crops, fruit and forest 

 trees, and pests such as frugivorous birds, rabbits and voles. 



Group F. — Animals which concern man as being destructive to his 

 worked-up products of art and industry, such as (a) his various works, 

 buildings, larger constructions and habitations ; (b) furniture, books, 

 drapery and clothing ; (c) his food and his stores. Examples : — White 

 ants ; wood-eating larvae ; clothes' moths, weevils, acari, and marine 

 borers. 



Group G. — Animals which are known as " beneficials," on account 

 of their being destructive to or checking the increase of the injurious 

 animals classed under Groups I), E, and F. Examples ; — Certain car- 

 nivorous and insectivorous birds, reptiles, and Amphibia ; parasitic and 

 predacious insects, acari, myriopods, etc. 



* First Keport on Economic Zoology. By Fred. V.Theobald. British Museum, 

 1903, xxxiv. and !92 pp., 18 figs. 



