1921.] 157 



" Les Col^opteres d'Europe : France et Regions voisines." Par 

 C. HoULBERT. Tome premier avec 104 figures dans le texte et 16 planches. 

 Paris : Librairie Octave Doin. 1921. Price 12 francs. 



This little book, which is the first of a series of three volinnes intended for 

 the use of students in determining the families and genera of European beetles, 

 is not one to which we can give unqualified praise. That part of it v.-hich 

 treats of the external morphology and internal anatomy of beetles contains a 

 considerable amount of interesting and instructive matter, and had a little more 

 care been taken in its preparation, would have formed a very good introduction 

 to the study of the Coleoptera. Here and there staten.ents are to be found in 

 it which need qualification or correcti(m ; and there is one wliich iu a book 

 published in 1921 ought not to have appeared : "The neuration of the mem- 

 branous wings shows a disposition so uniform in the Coleoptera that it has not 

 hitherto appeared possible to make any use of it in classificatioo ; there is 

 ."scarcely any variation except in the po.-<iiion and dimensions of the costal fold." 

 The few paragraphs devoted to the male genital armature of beetles are not 

 very helpful, and the figure (after Sharp), given by way of illustration, is 

 wrongly labelled /(??«« /e instead of male. The systematic part of tlie volume 

 gives an arrangement of the families in ten phyletic series beginning with the 

 Carabidien and ending with the Prionidien, and analytical tables for the 

 determination of all the families, as well as for those subfamilies and genera 

 which are included in the first phjletic series. Representative species of the 

 different fiimilies and genera and their larvae are figured on the plates or in the 

 text, and notes relating to the habits, etc., are to be found under each sub- 

 family ov genus. 



Prof. Houlbert has grouped the families in accordance, he savs, with tlie 

 principle? he had expounded in 1894 in his " PUylofzenie des Coltlopteres." 

 One of his phyletic groups — the Chrysomelidien — includes the following- : 

 Georyssidae, Parnidae, Heteroceridae, Gyrinidae, Hydrophilidae, Erotylidae, 

 Endomychidae, Coccinellidae, and Chrysomelidae. His faith in the principles 

 which have led to that remarkable association of families, and his adlierence to 

 it in spite of all that has been written on the classification of Coleoptera .since 

 1894, may well give rise to astonishment. His tables for the determination of 

 the families not only do not I'each perfection, as he himself admits ; thev w-ill 

 hardly even fulfil his own modest hope of their usefulness. Let a student try 

 by their aid alone to give the family name to a Cebrio, a Ptilmus, a Meloe, a 

 Bruchus, a Mordella, a Layria, or a Leptura : it will be almost a miracle if he 

 succeeds. — C J. Gahan. 



6bituari). 



George Bhmdell Lonystaf, M.A., M.D., F.L.8.—0n May the 7th last, after 

 a long illness, died at his residence. Highlands, Putney Heath, Dr. George 

 Blundell Longstaflf in his 73rd year. The funeral, attended by a large 

 gathering of relations, friends, Fellows of the Entomological Society of 



