30 REVIEWS. 



the first time, when he thought of setting about to teach others ; views 

 which — however original and just they might be — the concise and popular 

 treatment of the subject, imposed on him by the form of his work, would 

 not allow him to prop up with that copious array of exposition, illustration, 

 and definition, which is requisite for the introduction of new aphorisms, — 

 a writer, we say, in such a case, would be too apt only to embarrass that 

 class of readers on whom he calculates, and would certainly do much less to 

 promote the study of the science, than if he had contented himself with 

 adopting some approved arrangement of the European Coleoptera, and giving 

 so much of the distinctive characters, in the analytic form, — or any other that 

 he might consider more suitable, — as would give a clue to the received 

 names of the species and their position in a more general system. If, on 

 the other hand, the intending author of a Manual of British Beetles should 

 conscientiously purpose to acquire — if he do not possess it already — that 

 thorough knowledge of the classification and specific distinctions, of which 

 he has to give the practical results in a brief and familiar form, suitable to 

 the wants of the numerous body of collectors, who have little time for 

 study, and little mastery of the minuter technicalities of Zoological science,— 

 it may be questionable whether the time is indeed yet come for attempting 

 a work of such large scientific exigency, on the basis of a limited Fauna 

 like that of Britain, while important new works, destined to do a like ser- 

 vice for the more copious Fauna of Continental Europe, are in progress, 

 and yet far from their completion. For our own part, as mere amateurs 

 in the matter of the native Coleoptera, we are disposed, for the time being, 

 to rest content with Stephens' Manual, and that gradual revision of it, 

 which the families are undergoing in succession, at the hands of Messrs. 

 Walton, Dawson, and Clark, Waterhouse and Jansen, Murray, Wollaston, 

 and others. 



To those who desire a more comprehensive book of reference — if they 

 can read German with any degree of facility, we would recommend Redten- 

 bacher's Fauna Austriaca, as a very useful guide ; the intrinsic scientific 

 merits and originality of which have perhaps hardly received their due 

 meed of acknowledgment, in consequence of the professedly popular purpose 

 for which it was composed, and which it has so well answered. We are 

 happy to hear that a New edition is about to appear, in which, besides 

 numerous additions to the list of the proper Austrian species, those of the 

 rest of Germany — which in the first edition were huddled apart into an 

 Appendix — will be embodied in the general analytical tables of the text. 



A work which promises to become still more useful to the British Cole- 



