40 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



BOOK NOTICE. 



Manual of North American Diptera, by Samuel W. \\ T illiston. 

 Third edition, illustrated ; 405 pages. — James T. Hathaway, 297 

 Crown Street, New Haven, Conn. (Price $4.00, postpaid.) 



During the last twelve years the earlier edition of this work has been 

 found most useful by professional Entomologists, whether engaged in 

 teaching or in economic work, and has served as a daily handbook for the 

 few students of the order. To all of these it must be a source of much 

 gratification that the author has been enabled to complete this compre- 

 hensive and excellent manual, which will be no small help to them in their 

 work. The assistance that it will render to all who attempt to study the 

 Diptera of North America is so great that it should lead many to devote 

 themselves to the investigation of the much neglected but Highly important 

 Two-winged Flies. 



The present edition contains definitions of about twelve hundred 

 genera, being all that are known from North and Central America and the 

 West Indies, with the exception of a few doubtful forms ; more than half 

 of these genera are more fully defined by means of nearly a thousand 

 photographs and carefully drawn figures, which are an immense help in 

 the determination of forms. Of sixty-one families synoptic tables are 

 given, preceded by a table of the families themselves. By means of these 

 and the explanatory figures, a student should be able, after a little prac- 

 tice, to " run down " to its genus any fair-sized fly, and after gaining 

 experience in this way to enter upon a careful scientific study of any family 

 to which his attention may particularly be drawn. The Introduction 

 deserves to be read by all Entomologists, who will find the observations 

 and advice contained in it of great interest and much value. This is 

 followed by a series of chapters on the structure of the various parts of 

 the insects, the head and its organs, the thorax, legs, wings, etc., and the 

 vestiture, which is of so much importance in the differentiation of many 

 forms. 



The author has been assisted in his work by all the well-known North 

 American Dipterists, few in number though they be, and he and'they are to 

 be congratulated upon the completion of a work which should give an 

 immense impetus to the study of this difficult order. A copy of the book 

 should certainly be in every scientific library, and no professional 

 Entomologist can afford to be without it. 



Mailed January 7th, 1909. 



