THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 15 



The generic group is tropical. Aletia extends into the temperate regions, 

 attracted by its food plant and urged by an inner impulse to migrate 

 northwardly during our summer, helped on its wanderings by the winds 

 from the Gulf. But the winter overtakes and extirpates it over a wide 

 territory, fortunately for the planter. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



THE BUTTERFLIES OF INDIA. 



We beheve we are doing the readers of the Canadian Entomologist 

 a service in calling attention to a work on the Butterflies of India,* which 

 has been in progress for five years, and of which two volumes are now 

 finished. It was begun by Major Marshall and Mr. de Nice'ville, of the 

 Calcutta Museum, but at the conclusion of the first volume Major Mar- 

 shall was obliged to withdraw from active participation in the work and 

 leave its completion to his coadjutor, who has just given us the second 

 volume. 



The task will be appreciated when its extent is known. " India, the 

 land of sunshine, is a land of Butterflies," says the opening passage of the 

 preface, and yet the empire includes within its limits " every cHmate, from 

 the eternal snows to the tropics." The number of known forms is vast. 

 Following the order of Kirby's Catalogue, the work has reached the 

 Lycsenidae, and scarcely half is done ; yet in these two volumes over six 

 hundred species are already described from a region less than half as large 

 as that embraced in Edwards' Catalogue of our species. The generic and 

 family descriptions are almost wholly copied from Doubleday and West- 

 wood's " Genera," but the species are freshly described, and there are 

 added keys to the genera of each family and to the species of every genus 

 or minor group of species. Geographical distribution, habits and variation 



* The Butterflies of India, Burmah and Ceylon. A descriptive handbook of all the 

 known species of Rhopalocerous Lepidoptera inhabiting that region, with notices of 

 allied species occurring in the neighboring countries along the border ; with numerous 

 illustrations. By Major G. F, L. Marshall and Lionel de Niceville, Calcutta. Vol. i; 

 8 + 327 p., 18 pi., 1882-84. Vol. 2; 8 + 332 p., 8 pi., i886. 8 =>. 



