236 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



themselves upon the notice of young people as flowers and insects, and of 

 these none have been so useful as a first stepping-stone or allurement to the 

 realms of Natural History as butterflies, — " those winged creatures of 

 beauty which add such a charm to the summer landscape." 



There was not, however, until now any work which could be placed 

 in the hands of boys or girls who had caught a common butterfly, by 

 means of which they could identify and find out something of the life- 

 history of their newly-found treasure. This want Mr. Scudder has filled 

 with his Brief Guide, in which he treats chiefly of " those butterflies — less 

 than a hundred of them — which would almost surely be met with by any in- 

 dustrious collector in the course of a year's or two years' work in the 

 more populous Northern States and in Canada." Should a young 

 collector, therefore, be lucky enough to capture a butterfly not mentioned 

 in the book, he may be sure that he has taken a rarity, which, as the 

 author remarks, is " a discovery not always distressing to the amateur." 

 The introductory chapters, upon some of the points which will at once 

 present themselves to a beginner, are excellent — concise, clearly expressed 

 and accurate, and treat of such subjects as : — What are butterflies? thei r 

 structure, habits, variations, and life-histories. There are three keys for 

 identification, based on the perfect insect, the caterpillar and the egg, and 

 pages 63 to 174 are taken up with short accounts, systematically arranged, 

 of the insects treated of. There is a short glossary and an appendix 

 giving instructions for collecting, rearing and studying butterflies. 



On the whole this is a very useful little work, well prepared, con- 

 venient in size, well printed and well got up. It is, of course, arranged 

 after the same system as Mr. Scudder's great work, " The Butterflies of 

 the Eastern United States and Canada," and many of the views there ex- 

 pressed are repeated here. The nomenclature is also the same, but the 

 names more frequently used by other authors are also given. A good 

 feature of the work is that the proper pronunciation of every name 

 is shown by accents, and a popular English name is given for each 

 species. The author's observations on dimorphism of some species, as 

 of Colias Eurytheme and Papilio Ajax, do not seem quite to agree with 

 those published by Mr. W. H. Edwards. It would be difficult, however, 

 to treat such subjects fully in the space allotted to each species in this 

 Brief Guide, which, we think, all who use it will agree is too brief, and 

 they would like much more of it, of the same style. — J. F. 



Mailed September 9th. 



