THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 165 



plant." In its twenty-two quarto plates, engraved on copper, is shown the 

 cotton plant in every stage of development from the seed to the mature 

 plant, and in its various conditions as resulting from insect attack or from 

 disease. In association with these figures, twenty-four insects frequenting 

 the plant are represented. Several of the species are illustrated in an 

 agreeable prodigality, giving enlarged views of the egg, the larva at differ- 

 ent stages of growth, the pupa, the cocoon, the perfect insect at rest and 

 in flight, its under surface, enlargements of parts, and the more marked 

 varieties of the larva and the imago. Although not so stated, it is believed 

 that the edition of these Notes was no larger than the others of the 

 series, and consequently, that only about fifty societies and individuals 

 have been the fortunate recipients of a copy. 



The Natural History of the Agricultural Ant of Texas is a volume of 

 208 pages and 24 plates, by H. C. McCook, treating at length of the 

 habits, structure and architecture of this interesting insect. The histo- 

 logical details have been worked out from preparations made by Prof. 

 J. G. Hunt. 



A volume, upon which Baron Osten Sacken has been for a long time 

 engaged, has recently been completed and published by the Smithsonian 

 Institution. The Catalogue of the Diptcra of North America prepared by 

 this author and published in 1858 was simply a compilation of published 

 names, not claiming synonymic accuracy. It contained 1,800 species, but 

 many of the number were too imperfectly described for identification. 

 The new Catalogue is of such merit as to deserve more than a passing 

 mention. It is fully up to, and in itself materially advances, our know- 

 ledge of the Diptera of our country. Its author modestly regards it as 

 only critical in part — so far as the families have been worked out into 

 monographs, and as still remaining a mere list of reference to earlier 

 writers, in those families which have not been studied, or in which the 

 existing collections are to a great extent still unnamed, as in the Culicida, 

 Chironomidce, Cenopidce, the group of Muscidce calyptera>, and the section 

 Asilina. Its critical character may be seen from the statement, that of the 

 102 species of Tabanus enumerated in the old Catalogue, only $6 have 

 been adopted in this. 



An admirable feature of this Catalogue is that a large proportion of the 

 species which it records — over 2,000 carefully described and authoritatively 

 labelled species — are contained in the Collections of the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, where every possible care is given to 



