332 NATURAL SCIENCE. May. 



preference being given to unfigured insects when new plates were 

 thought desirable. On this account alone the book will be valuable 

 for reference. Most of the British species are mentioned and figured 

 and the more important foreign genera are noticed. In some cases 

 particulars of the early stages of the exotic forms make a welcome 

 addition. A plate is devoted to metamorphosis of the large South 

 American psychid moth, Oiketicus Kivhyi ; but there is unfortunately 

 only a very meagre account of the British species of this most 

 interesting family. Throughout the volume, an altogether dispro- 

 portionate amount of space has been devoted to the synonymy and 

 references of the species which are mentioned ; in many cases these 

 take up as much space as the account of the insect itself, and some- 

 times more room is allotted to a list of names and books than to the 

 description of the moth, its haunts, and its habits. These are con- 

 sequently passed over very summarily and the important question of 

 variation is often not mentioned at all. It would be ungracious to 

 complain of omissions in a book covering so wide a field, were it not 

 that nearly a whole page is at times devoted to matter proper to a 

 catalogue. 



Mr. Kirby is so high an authority on questions of nomenclature 

 that it is impossible not to give respectful consideration to the altera- 

 tions in familiar names which he thinks necessary. But we surely 

 might be allowed to retain a well-known name like Urania which is 

 pre-occupied only in botany. And the suggested transference of the 

 specific name hibvicipeda from the buff to the white ermine moth would 

 cause well-nigh intolerable inconvenience. Linne called both species 

 hibvicipeda, distinguishing the buff insect, which has borne the name 

 unquestioned for more than a century, by the addition of the letter 

 ^. To make the law of priority so " stern and unbending " that a single 

 letter causes such confusion in nomenclature as this, will ensure the 

 continual disregard of that law by the majority of working naturalists. 



In the fourth volume of Mr. Kirby's book the systematic portion is 

 comparatively short, comprising only the Sphingidae, Bombycidae, 

 Saturniidae, Drepanulidae, Lasiocampidae, Zeuzeridae, Hepialidae, and 

 a few small families. The rest of the volume is occupied with valu- 

 able essays on the classification and bibliography of the Lepidoptera. 

 We are told in the preface that these were to have been issued in the 

 fifth (last) volume of the series, but they are included in the fourth 

 in order to avoid dividing the systematic account of the noctuid 

 moths into two instalments. 



Some of the most attractive of all moths, such as the hawk-moths 

 and the silk-producing insects, are here dealt with, and it is satisfac- 

 tory to notice that more space is given to description and less to 

 references than in the preceding volume. Still, it is disappointing, 

 after nearly half a page devoted to the literature of Lasiocampa querctcs 

 V. calhina;, to find no word as to how that insect differs from the type. 

 All the British species are described and figured, together with typical 

 exotic forms ; the caterpillars — in these families often very striking in 

 colour and form — receive a fair amount of attention, but it is surpris- 

 ing to find no figure of the common silkworm. And, in describing 

 the larvae of the hawk-moths, some reference might, with advantage, 

 have been made to the supposed biological import of the two forms of 

 caterpillar (brown and green) occurring in so many of the species, of 

 the series of side-stripes on the caterpillars of the sphingids, and of 

 the large * eyes ' on those of the choerocampines. 



The essay on the literature of the Lepidoptera, which concludes 



