THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 347 



Provincial Agricultural College at Truro, N. S., he graduated at Cornell 

 University, Ithaca, N. Y. Later he was appointed State Entomologist and 

 Professor of Entomology at the Agricultural College for South Dakota. 

 Two years ago he returned to Cornell University where he assisted on the 

 staff of the entomological department, taking his doctor's degree last year. 

 Dr. Matheson's training makes him well qualified for the position he now 

 holds, and with the recent introduction of the San José scale, the presence 

 of the Brown-tail moth and the occurrence of several other serious insect 

 pests in Nova Scotia, he will find problems of importance and interest 

 awaiting him. C. G. H. 



BOOK NOTICE 



The Humble-Bee. — Its life-history and how to domesticate it, with de- 

 scriptions of all the British species of Bombus and Psithyrus. By F. 

 W. L. Sladen. 13-283 pp., 34 figs., 5 coloured plates (Macraillan). 



$2.50. 



"Everybody knows the burly, good-natured bumble-bee," the author 

 states in his opening sentence, and while this is true, the author has shown, 

 in giving us the results up to date of what has been a life-study, how little 

 even the entomologist knows of these people of the hedgerows, whose 

 homes he no doubt laid waste when a boy. 



Roughly speaking, the book can be divided into three parts. In the 

 first part the life-histories and habits of Bombus and of the parasitic 

 usurper'/^^/V/rF^-^/^ are described in full and in a fascinating manner, a 

 manricr which makes the general reader {e.<:\ the intense interest of the 

 real naturalist. We see the queen in her solitude anxiously choosing the 

 site>f the future nest and brooding over her eggs and young ; then the 

 gradual development of the litile community. Some of the author's 

 descriptions are the best we have read in entomological literature ; one of 

 these is the description of the death of the queen : "In the case of B. 

 praiorujn, and probably of the other species whose colonies end their 

 existence in the height of summer, ^he aged queen often spends the even- 

 ing of her life very pleasantly with her little band of worn-out workers. 

 They sit together on two or three cells on the top of the ruined edifice, 

 and make no attempt to rear any more brood. The exhausting work of 

 bearing done, the queen's body shrinks to its original size, and she be- 

 comes quite active and youthful-looking again. This well earned rest 

 lasts for about a week, and death, when at last it comes, brings with it no 

 discomfon. One night, a little cooler than usual, finding her food supply 

 exhausted, the queen grows torpid^ as she has done many a time before in 



