820 Pomona College Journal of Entomology 



de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle de Geneve, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 111-278. 

 5 plates. 1912. This paper is reviewed in "Nature" by F. Merrifield, for 

 October 3, 1912, in an article entitled : "Experimental Researches on Variation 

 in the Coloring of Lepidoptera." The following quotations from this review 

 might be suggestive and instructive : 



"Melanism is a sign of vigor and health; albini.sm, on the contrary, of the 

 enfeebling of the organi.sm. ' ' 



"The cause of variation may be generally stated thus: An individual 

 ■which in the course of its ontogeny makes less pigment than its congeners, 

 albinises ; inversely, it melanises if it makes more pigment than is normal ; 

 the quantity of pigment is much more important than chemical modification 



of it." 



"Lepidoptera, Dr. Pictet tells us, with very few exceptions, vary in only 

 two directions, melanism and albinism." 



"Dr. Pictet 's valuable researches certainly cannot be considered to exhaust 

 the subject of the cause .of variation in the coloring of Lepidoptera." 



Mr. Prank Walter Weymouth, who recently received the degree of 

 Master of Arts from Stanford University, in the Department of Zoology, for a 

 thesis on a group of crabs of Monterey Bay, spent the summer at Woods Hall 

 ]\rarine Laboratory, and is now at Johns Hopkins University, where he is 

 candidate for the degree of Ph. D. He read the Phi Beta Kappa poem at 

 Stanford, last May; the title was "Earth." 



Dr. A. Penyes, of Pasadena, is monographing the Aleocharinac (Staphy- 

 linidae) for the Genera Insectorum, ])ul)lished in Brussels, Belgium, by P. 

 Wytsman. 



