268 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [XXXI, *2O 



is made up of eighteen major sections, all of interest, very well presented 

 and taken as a whole the best presentation of the subjects there treated 

 we have ever seen in a work of this character. We feel called upon to 

 comment upon certain of these sections, largely to direct the inquiring 

 student to their contents. The "History of New England Orthopter- 

 ology" is well and concisely presented, the author, however being too 

 modest to give his own most valuable published work its proper empha- 

 sis. Under "Classification" there is reviewed that published by 

 Brues and Melander, and a modified form of the classic arrangement of 

 the order, as influenced by the work of Brues and Melander, is followed 

 in the Manual. Under "Anatomy," the external structure is clearly dis- 

 cussed and explained, with the aid of numerous figures, and the basic 

 internal structure is briefly summarized. Under "Habits" we find egg- 

 laying, situations for egg placing, hatching, moults, maturity, food and 

 migration discussed; while under "Songs" we find a careful exposition of 

 the three methods of sound production in the Orthoptera. Under the 

 third method it might have been well to have considered the possibility 

 of the thickened radiate veins of the wings of certain Oedipodinae pro- 

 ducing sound in display flight or direct flight by rubbing one over the 

 other, as their surfaces possess accessory modifications in certain species. 



"Coloration of Orthoptera" is treated in a very careful summary, in 

 which there are discussed the types of colors in insects, relative predom- 

 inence of "sympathetic and protective" coloration in the Orthoptera, 

 the principles of "counter-shading," display coloration, "contrast-mim- 

 icry" or "signal coloration" as it has been variously called, the seasonal 

 deepening of color in certain locusts, the rare albinistic and melanistic 

 conditions, pink katydids, dichromatism, and the uncertainty and unre- 

 liability of color shade and markings in general as diagnostic features in 

 New England Orthoptera. The author's suggestion as to the signal value 

 of the conspicuous wing colors in the Oedipodinae is clearly logical and 

 fits in with our own field experience. Dr. Phineas Whiting has con- 

 tributed a section giving a summary of his experimental work on color 

 determination in the green-striped locust (Chortophaga viridifasciata), 

 from which it appears that temperature rather than light or humidity 

 is the important factor in color determination in that species, and that 

 certain "so-called color varieties . . . are but color phases dependent 

 to a large extent at least upon environmental conditions." This is an 

 interesting piece of evidence, making less secure the position of those 

 workers who would name all such probably purely physiological forms. 



Under "Geographical Distribution of New England Orthoptera" we 

 find a discussion of the New England life zones, analyses of the more 

 typical species of the three zones, i. e. Boreal, Transition and [Upper] 

 Austral, with a classification of the remainder of the Orthopterous fauna 

 into such .categories as "Domiciliary all introduced" and "Adventive 

 or introduced." The Orthopterous "Colonization of New England" and 



