April, '02] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 123 



Lists of species are sometimes of great value and sometimes do not tell 

 very much. This observation is apropos of the list of species taken in 

 Georgia while jarring peach trees to capture plum curculio. The list, .by 

 Messrs. W. M. Scott and W. F. Fiske, is a very careful and conscientious 

 one ; yet no Coleopterist can look it over without the feeling that a large 

 percentage of the captures are casuals that might have been found in beat- 

 ing almost any kind of tree or shrub. As a contribution to the fauna of 

 the peach the list must be carefully scrutinized, for many of the species if 

 they found food there at all found it on the fungi on dead wood or in de- 

 caying conditions, or in the dead wood itself. 



It would have added materially to the list had there been some indica- 

 tion as to what was and what was not a peach insect. 

 ********** 



Prof. E. Dwight Sanderson of the Delaware College and Experiment 

 Station has given us a book on " Insects Injurious to Staple Crops," pub- 

 lished by John Wiley and Sons, New York. The "staple crops" are 

 grains and grasses, Indian corn, clover, cotton, tobacco, potato, sugar 

 beet, and hop. Under each heading the principal injurious species are 

 grouped, somewhat on the plan of Saunders' Fruit Insects, and in each 

 case, after a brief description, the most practical remedial measures are 

 given. There is a short general discussion of the injury done by insects, 

 some notes are given on the structure, principally of the mouth parts, and 

 a discussion is presented concerning beneficial insects and the effect of 

 fa/m practice on the injurious species. 



No originality is claimed for the contents of the book and it is, in reality, 

 merely a compilation of well known facts and methods in convenient form. 

 The discussion of insecticides is all too brief from the farmer's standpoint 

 and, if it was deemed desirable to give any instruction concerning mouth 

 structures, surely better pictures could have been obtained than the obscure 

 half tones on pp. 12, 13 and 14. So, for all the practical information it con- 

 veys, figure 10, on p. 18, might just as well have been omitted. 



But the book is a handy one and it fills a place heretofore not occupied. 

 ****** * 



A new book on Invertebrate Zoology comes from Henry S. Pratt, Ph.D., 

 of Haverford, in which the insects receive an unusual amount of recogni- 

 tion. Quite unlike many other "Courses," Dr. Pratt begins with the 

 highest type, a wasp or other Hymenopterous insect, but confines it to 

 external characters until he reaches the grasshopper, when the internal 

 structure is taken up and the mouth parts are described. 



There is nothing especially new in either the method or the facts brought 

 out; but it is encouraging to find in a general "Course" of iiiv< rtfln.itr 

 zoology a fair share of time devoted to a study of the leading insert onK-rs. 

 The book is published by Ginn & Co., and is unusually well made and 

 printed. 



