BOOK REVIEWS. 



ANTS; their Structure, Development, and Behavior, by William 

 Morton Wheeler, Ph. D., Professor of Economic Entomology, Harvard 

 University ; Honorary Curator of Social Insects, American Museum 

 of Natural History. New York, The Columbia University Press, 1910, 

 (Col. Univ. Biological Series, IX), pp. xxv+663, figg. 286 inch front. 

 23 cm. "Literature" pp. 578-648. Issued Mar. 2?., 1910. 



Students and lovers of ants will welcome Prof. Wheeler's "Ants" 

 as a masterly condensation of our scattered knowledge of Formicidct, 

 with a wealth of research material, some of which is published for the 

 first time. While the book covers the ants of the world, Professor 

 Wheeler's labors for over a decade have been devoted more especially 

 to the ant fauna of North America ; hence the major place is given to 

 these species. His work proclaims a mastei^ of myrmecology not yet 

 evidenced by any other entomologist of the Western Hemisphere. Altho 

 the bibliography is 70 pages long, it is a model in bringing complete 

 references into the smallest possible compass, and bears witness to the 

 fact that we shall never know whether we ever exhaust the literature 

 touching upon ants, or not. 



Space fails to detail the 30 chapters into which the 544 pages of 

 solid text are divided except as shown by the title above, the topic 

 "Behavior" occupying the last 20 chapters, rather more than two-thirds 

 of the book. For the general reader this is a wise division of space, 

 since the ethological considerations are the most far-reaching in their 

 applications to general information. The preface records that the 

 book was written wi-th a four-fold purpose: "to the general reader; 

 to the zoologist, who cannot afford to ignore their polymorphism or 

 their symbiotic and parasitic relationships ; to the entomologist, who 

 should study the ants if only for the purpose of modifying his views 

 on the limits of genera and species ; and to the comparative psycholo- 

 gist, who is sure to find in them the most intricate instincts and the 

 closest approach to intelligence among invertebrate animals Of course, 

 the desire to interest so many must result in a work containing much 

 that will be dull or incomprehensible to any one class of readers." 



In a fair criticism of over a column in the New York Times Saturday 



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