86 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Feb., '14 



that the various authors [cited in the bibliographies] strive to make 

 the points to which attention is here called ; they may or may not do 

 so. My aim is to call attention to the utility of the publications from the 

 standpoint advocated throughout the book" (p. 84). The entomologist 

 will note, from the preceding list of chapter headings, the utility to 

 him of the references in chapter VI, but he should not fail to look 

 through the other chapters as well. 



Dr. Adams considers that there are three branches of ecology, indi- 

 vidual, aggregate, and associational. The first deals with the ecology 

 of a given individual or kind of animal, the second with the ecology 

 of "hereditary or taxonomic units, as in a family community, or in 

 genera, families, orders," etc. The third is devoted to "animals which 

 are grouped or associated in the same habitats and environments. In 

 this case the associates in a given association and habitat are consid- 

 ered as a unit, whose activities and interrelations and responses are 

 investigated in the same manner as if it were a single animal" (pp. 3-5). 

 It is associational ecology which Dr. Adams is anxious to advance and 

 with which Dr. Shelford's book is concerned. "Applied or economic 

 zoology and entomology are fundamentally more closely related to as- 

 sociational ecology than to any other phase of zoology, and * * * 

 it would be to the great advantage of the students of such problems if 

 they clearly understood this relation" (Adams, p. 29). 



We heartily commend the same author when, in chapter II he says 

 of non-ecological surveys, "The environment is considered as static, 

 and not as a changing medium ; it has no past or future, it has merely 

 horizontal extension. The problem as to its dynamic status, whether 

 in a condition of stress, in the process of adjustment, or in relative 

 equilibrium, is not raised, or if it should be, it could not be handled. 

 The student eager for new and little known species is not the one to 

 study such relations, at least, as a rule, this has not been his practice. 

 So long as the success of a day's work is measured by the length of 

 the list of novelties secured, rather than by the quality and quantity 

 of ecological relations discovered, such students and surveys will not 

 contribute greatly to our knowledge of the economy of nature in the 

 regions surveyed" (p. 31). And again, in the chapter on Field Study: 

 "Early in field work one should learn that the collection of specimens 

 is not the primary aim of excursions, that specimens are only one kind 

 of facts, but that field study should be devoted to the accumulation of 

 specimens, and to observations on the habits, activities, interrelations, 

 and responses of animals, as well as to all facts, inferences, and 

 suggestions, which are likely to be of use in the interpretation of the 

 problems studied" (p. 41). 



The book concludes with two very full indexes of subjects and of 

 authors' names. (Advertisement.) 



P. P. C. 



