262 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



information for that time. Full life histories are given for most of 

 the important species. 



An extremely useful German work, entitled (translated) " The 

 Plant I*2nemics of the Class Insecta." is a large. 848-])age book bear- 

 ing the date 1872, the author of which was J. H. Kaltenbach. The 

 author was born in 1807 and died in 1876. He w'as a teacher at 

 Aachen, who had made a rcjiutation for himself by his monographic 

 work on plant-lice. 



The work under present consideration was published originally 

 under an.other title as a series of papers in the Proceedings of the 

 Natural History Society of Rhineland Prussia, beginning with the 

 year 1856. These were finally lirought together in admirable book 

 form and published by Julius Hoffmann of Stuttgart. Although the 

 title page bears the date 1872, the introduction is dated 1873. I did not 

 buy this book until 1888, but since then it has been constantly on my 

 desk and consulted very frequently. It contains no illustrations of 

 insects, but the whole w^ork is grouped under the classification of 

 the plants, under the name of each plant being given the names of 

 its insect enemies, long paragraphs being devoted to the most impor- 

 tant of these. The plants themselves are illustrated by good line wood- 

 cuts, and there are full indices of the Latin and German plant names 

 and of the T^tin insect names, the latter being arranged according to 

 their classification, the genera under each large group being arranged 

 alphabetically. 



The usefulness of such a book to the economic entomologist is at 

 once evident, since, although no remedies are given, he can see at 

 once any important European insect with the plant upon which it 

 feeds, can gain a sound idea of its life history, and through its use 

 we in America have been able to gain easy first-hand information 

 as to the injurious insects we are likely to meet with in plant impor- 

 tations of any kind. 



In 1879 and 1880 there appeared a work in Germany which, tak- 

 ing everything into consideration, was the best thing that had been 

 published concerning applied entomology down to that time. It was 

 not really a book on applied entomology in the modern sense, but 

 perhaps in the care and thoroughness of the basic treatment of the 

 insects it was a model for present-day writers. 



The author. Dr. E. L. Taschenberg, was born in 18 18 and died at 

 the beginning of 1898. He was at first a botanist, and his early papers 

 were upon botanical subjects. In 1856, however, he was appointed 

 Director of the Zoological Museum in Halle, and began to write about 

 insects. He soon became a very well informed entomologist. Appar- 



