98 THE entomologist's RECORD. 



hardly appears to us to ring true ; it is that which refers to the 

 reason for not pubhshing a third volume to include an instalment of 

 the " Micro-lepidoptera." It is, of course, true that these could 

 not have been put into vol. ii, which is full already, nor into 

 one volume more, beyond ii ; one learns early in life that the attempt 

 to put a quart into a pint pot leads to disaster, but, at any rate, the 

 Crambids, Pyralids, Plumes, Hyponomeutids, Depressariids, and 

 the groups that make up Chapman's Pi/raloides, would have 

 made another large enough volume, whilst their reproduction would 

 have been far easier than some of the Geometrids already pictured. 

 One suspects that the truth here peeps out in the statement that the 

 so-called "micro-lepidoptera" are interesting only to a "limited 

 number of students," and that the series stops, not from any inability 

 to continue, either on the part of author or artist, but from the doubt 

 that the next volume might not pay so generously. If so, it is 

 unfortunate, for all these popular works on lepidoptera that stop short 

 at the Noctuids and Geometrids, whilst adding to the number of 

 collectors who kill thousands of specimens of the few superfamilies of 

 larger moths, offer nothing to attract the " nature study " votary 

 (whom this series is primarily stated to be intended to help !) into 

 the paths which lead to the life- histories of the smaller species, which 

 are less persecuted by humans, and which are entrancingly interesting 

 once the " nature-student " proper, apart from the collector, learns to 

 know of their existence. 



May we not hope that the great success of vols, i and ii will lead 

 the publishers to allow Mr. South to give us vol. iii, and that some 

 of the financial success that vols, i andii have surely earned, be expended 

 on really supplying "nature-students" with something they want, 

 and which, at present, they cannot get anywhere ! The reason why so few 

 study the " smaller fry " {? some of them are pretty large), is certainly 

 because there is no popularly-written and illustrated book to put them 

 in the right path. Nowadays it would seem, books are most often not 

 given to the world by publishers to attract students, but to supply super- 

 ficial reading for those who are already studying. May we not hope 

 that the publishers of The Moths of the British Isles will rise in a third 

 volume superior to this common but undesirable practice ? 



SOCIETIES. 



Entomological Society of London. — March 8)v/, 1909. — Mendelism 

 IN AciDALiA viRGULARiA, Hb. — Mr. L. B. Prout, on behalf of himself 

 and Mr. A. Bacot, brought for exhibition a very extensive series of 

 Acidalia virgularia, Hb., bred in ten successive generations from 

 various crossings of the London and Hyeres races, which had been 

 undertaken with a view to the further study of Mendelism. The 

 results showed non-Mendelian inheritance, there being no segregation 

 with pure and hybrid forms in definite proportions, and thus supported 

 Mr. Bacot's opinion that such were only to be expected in cases of 

 hybridisation of forms in which natural selection had virtually 

 eliminated intermediates, or, in other words, that apparent Mendelian 

 phenomena were manifestations of selective purity, rather than of 

 gametic purity. Mr. A. Harrison pointed out that in similar experi- 

 ments conducted by himself with Mr. H. Main with British Pieris napi 



