REVIEWS, 



zealous labours of Erichson and Schauni have, long since, given our 

 Continental brethren the benefit of similar compilations year by year. 

 Nor need this Annual in the least interfere with the utility of the 

 "Zoologist" and kindred monthly publications; to their pages a paper is 

 hardly admissible if not original, whereas to the Annual information will 

 be all the more valuable after it has stood the test of public scrutiny un- 

 scathed. According to the editor 



" The idea of the present work is to supply these two main desiderata to give, 

 systematically, notices of all the new species found in this country in the past year, 

 and, at the same time, to intimate which once rare species had been taken in any 

 plenty. In the present volume, so much space bcin^ occupied by notices of the 

 novelties since the last standard work on the subject, there was not room left for 

 notices of the rare species which have become common, without swelling the book 

 to a size wbich, by enhancing its cost, would have diminished its usefulness by 

 limiting its circulation." 



We must, however, tell our readers, that there is to the latter statement 

 a pleasing exception, and that the notices of the Tineina (the recent publi- 

 cation of his complete work on which, has given Mr. Staiiitou an advantage 

 over his brother writers, by reducing the addenda to a very small number), 

 are as completely worked out as, we trust, those of the other insects will 

 be hereafter. 



The present number contains but three orders Lepidoptera, by the 

 Editor ; Hymenoptera, by Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum ; and Co- 

 leoptera, by Mr. E. W. Janson, who is new to us as an author, though 

 well-known to the members of the Entomological Society as curator of 

 their museum and library. 



The new Microlepidopterd and Tortrices are enumerated from the pub- 

 lication of Stephens's " Illustrations," in 1835, and number 153 species. 

 The year 1854 has produced nine more, along with eleven of the Tineina 

 the latter of which thus form a supplement even to the recent standard 

 work on that group. But there is here an omission the Crambina seem 

 to have been thought unworthy of notice, and the Pterophoridae totally 

 forgotten. Now, we are not conscious of any particular predilection for 

 the unfortunate " snouts," as they are wont to be termed ; yet, as lovers of 

 impartiality, we must assert their claims to admission, and, likewise, those 

 of the elegant-plumed moths which, surely, are an interesting group. 



In the Hymenoptera, the new bees (numbering fifty-nine species) date 

 from Kirby's " Monographia," in 1802, and the new fossorial Hyme- 

 noptera, from Shuckard's "Essay," in 1836. These are followed by 

 " Notes on the Myrmicidse and Formicidae," and " Notes in explanation 

 of the New Species of Aculeate Hymenoptera, in Stephens's Systematic 

 Catalogue." 



