212 [February, 



tive text. The first plate is devoted to Satyrus Wheeleri ; the second to Papilio 

 Asterias var. Calverleyi, and a biformed example (5 figures in all) ; the three others 

 to the wonderful forms of Papilio Turnus. and the dimorphic forms of its $ (hence 

 including Q-laucus, in eleren figures, and with details of transformations). The lady 

 artist, Mary Peart, who draws the figures, has done her part of the work (as usual) 

 in the most admirable manner ; and the way in which the author has treated the 

 purely descriptive and biological matter is, to say the least, exhaustive and masterly. 

 The text referi'ing to P. Turnus is a complete life history of the species in all its phases. 

 Although it was only in 1862 that the late B. D. Walsh asserted his belief that Glaucus 

 was nothing more than a form of the ? of Turnus, it appears that so long since aa 

 1832, Ridings had taken them in copula; the fact has over and over again been subse- 

 quently proved by breeding from the same batch of eggs. How many others of the mul- 

 titudinous so-called species of Butterflies may be in similar case, time alone can deter- 

 mine. Mr. Edwards speaks of the dimorphism in Turnus as without a strict parallel 

 among Butterflies, because it is not seasonal and is subject to geographical limitation, 

 inasmuch as north of about 40°, the dark $ is scarcely, or rarely, found. It appears 

 to us that the African P. Mfrope offers a parallel ; only that in it the 9 is poly- 

 morphic, and when we consider that in Madagascar Merope (supposing Meriones to 

 be only a form of that species) has an unaltered ? , it would seem that with it also 

 geographical influences are at work. 



CoxEOPTERA Sanct^-Helen^. By T. Vernon "Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. 

 Van Voorst, 1877 : 8vo, pp. i — xxv, and 1—256, col. pi. 



This, the last of the many valuable contributions to geographical entomology by 

 its lamented author, results from a visit to St. Helena, where, with Mrs. WoUaston, 

 who herself collected and studied the Lepidoptera with considerable success, he 

 spent some months (October, 1875, to February, 1876), residing in Plantation House. 

 The chief results were chronicled by him at the time in this Magazine, vol. xii, 

 pp. 156 and 252 ; and it is a subject of regret that they could not have been pub- 

 lished before Mr. Melliss's apparently exhaustive work on the physical, historical, 

 and topographical features of the island, as the very peculiar beetle-fauna discovered 

 by Mr. WoUaston would have formed by far the most interesting characteristic of 

 its animal productions. 



Two hundred and three species (based upon some 10,000 specimens, mounted 

 and examined) are recognised by Mr. WoUaston as occurring in St. Helena, whereof 

 fifty-seven are undoubtedly imported, the majority of them being indeed cosmo- 

 politan, seventeen more are in all probability accidental visitors, and the one hundred 

 and twenty-nine remaining are considered indigenous. Of these, the Ehynchophora 

 comprise no less than ninety-one ; only thirty-eight species representing the 

 whole of the rest of the beetles. There are no ITydradephaga, Philhydrida, or 

 Longicornia (the first of these being indeed absent, even when the certainly and 

 probably accidental visitors are counted) ; the Necrophaga and TrichopterygidcB 

 are represented by one, Coccinellidce and Lamellicorns by two, the Prioceraia (Ela- 

 teridcB and Anobiidce) and Phytophaga by three, the Brachelytra and Heteromera by 

 six, and the Geodephaga by fourteen species, respectively. It will thus be seen that 

 groups of world-wide distribution are either entirely absent or very poorly repre- 

 sented, whilst the weevils alone number nearly 4hree-fourths of the whole fauna. 



