n-RRENT NOTES. 81 



Boad, London, N.E., or to Mr. A Sich, Corney House, Chiswick. At 

 present Dr. Chapman is on the continent, and material should not be 

 sent to him until his return. If as much work is done by our tield- 

 helpers as last year, our account of the " plumes" will be the most 

 complete of any group of ]^>ritish lepidoptera yet attempted. 



The f-!iit()uii)lniiisi/irs .lalirhiirli for 1905 contains its usual amount 

 of entomological material to suit various tastes, from the general 

 monthly hints on field-work for the cnleopterist to the description 

 of new aberrations of lepidoptera. There is nothing really in the 

 book that specially belongs to 1904, nor anything that has any 

 scientific value beyond the usual matter to be found in magazines, 

 e.ih, "Lepidoptera collected m Styria in 1902," " List of the Liparids, 

 Saturniids, Drepanulids and Cymatophorids of Chemnitz," "Varieties 

 and aberrations of Triphacna coines,'' "Lepidoptera taken in the 

 neighbourhood of Prague," " Coleoptera of Frankish Switzerland," 

 " Coleoptera of Thuringia," etc. A very poor section is the " Ento- 

 mological book-list " for the year — this includes a large number of 

 " price lists " of various dealei's, notices of the proceedings of one or 

 two societies, and not a single book of real scientific value. The 

 compiler evidently knows nothing about the best entomological books 

 published in 1904. The Jalirhiuh is an excellent sample of the mixed 

 medley that appeals to the collector all over the world, and that serves 

 the scientific man's purpose for a detail or two of variation or geographi- 

 cal distribution if he just remembers where to put his hand on them 

 when he wants them. One suspects, however, that like most of the 

 contents of our transactions and magazines, these sink largely into 

 the vast area of foi-gottenness, there being far too few people at work 

 in classifying these facts before they become too overwhelming, and 

 in rescuing the grains of wheat from the bushels of chaff" in which 

 most of the facts are buried. 



The appearance of a second edition of Davenport's St,ati!<tiral 

 Mvthiuls-', itc, is some proof that the correct handling of biological 

 statistics is now practised by a by no means small number of students. 

 This edition embodies many of the newer methods of Professor Karl 

 Pearson, with a summary of some of the results gained by them. The 

 volume contains almost everything that is required by anyone entering 

 upon any statistical enquiry on any biological subject, especially 

 variation. The first chapter is on how to measure objects, and 

 describes succinctly and accurately how one should proceed, defines 

 terminolog}', explams measuring instruments, and refers to useful tables 

 and calculating machines. The second chapter treats on the methods 

 of dealing with the data obtained, and the third elaborates the results, 

 with a good deal of mathematical detail. The next, on " Correlated 

 variability," is illustrated by detailed examination of actual instances, 

 such as " eye colours," " ^lendel's law of inheritance," kc. A nsinin' 

 of " Some results of statistical l)iological methods of study" is given 

 in chapter v, amongst which we notice " Seriationsof wing dimensions 

 of T/ii/niis alihattii,'' " Number of eye-spots on wings of Kpimiiluic,'' 

 " Number of spots on different species of I'apilin," " l^readth of wing 

 of Stre)iia dathiata," "■ Variation in asexually produced offspring in 

 Aphidae." The references to all these instances may be found in the 



'Siati:itir<tl Methods, with siiecinl reference to IHolo/jicul I'aridtion. Hy C. B. 

 Davenport. Second edition, revised. London : Chapman and Hall, 1904. 



