HRITI8il J.El'lDOl'TEKAi lUH 



of detail, which Stainton, Newman, Meyrick, and l^Jarrett seem never 

 to have read, and which only wanted abstracting and arranging with 

 critical skill to become available to that large army of lepidopterists 

 who cannot afi'ord the £50 or £60 now necessary to purchase complete 

 sets of the various magazines — Zaolunist, l\nt. Weekhj Intelliticnccr, Knt. 

 A)inual, Kilt. Montldii Mai/azuie, hjiitoinolunist, Knt. Record, Yonnif 

 Naturalist, to say nothing of the Trans. Knt. Soc of London and the 

 many continental magazines — to which reference must be continually 

 made by a I'eally intelligent lepidopterist who Avishes to be an fait with 

 his work, and does not wish to join the laggards who have neither time 

 for advanced study nor the necessary training to understand it. The 

 British lepidopterist has here, at hand, a large quantity of research and 

 original work for reference, by means of which his own work can be 

 done with the least possible waste of time. The biological student has 

 also a fine accumulation of facts relating to his own particular branches 

 of study, and the bringing-together of the work done by hundreds of 

 isolated students into a well-planned Avhole must produce a feeling of 

 satisfaction in the minds of the recorders of to-day who see the possi- 

 bility of their observations being rescued in the future from the buried 

 dustheap of the almost-forgotten volumes of past days, to help to 

 build up a detailed account of species such as has never been published 

 before. 



Of the detailed work only a few points can be mentioned. The 

 paragraphs on the " Habits " and " Times of appearance " of Sesia 

 stellataniiii are of great interest as bearing on the spasmodic appearance 

 of the species in northern latitudes. That on the " Hybridity of the 

 Eumorphids" is of the greatest value. How many of our lepidopterists 

 know anything of the crossing of clpenor and porrellua, of iiallii and 

 ri(idwrhiai',-dnd their relatives ? Those parts of the chapters on ( 'derionallii, 

 IJi/U'scupJioi-biae, PJiri/.riis livornica, Hippotion celerio,-a.n(\. Iktphnis nerii 

 that relate to their position as British species is exceedingly full, and the 

 facts are well put, whilst in the study of Hi/loicii)ijii)iastriis& clear marshal- 

 ling of the facts relating to its appearance in the British fauna, and few 

 will differ from the author's conclusions. Concerning Sphin.r lii/iistri 

 the correction of the previous work done in the early larval stages of 

 this species is most important, involving as it does a critical apprecia- 

 tion of the differences between the Sphingid and Amorphid larvte in 

 their first instar. But the part of the book which will attract the 

 British lepidopterist most will be the life-histories of Af/rius convolvuli 

 and Mandaea atropos. With the exception of the author's own account 

 of Lasiocaiiipa qaercus, no species, perhaps, has before been treated 

 quite in this exhaustive manner. The history of the first-named 

 species occupies from p. 880 to p. 392, and that of the second from 

 p. 898 to p. 471. The chapter on the habits of M. atropos (pp. 485-455) 

 is, in short, a monograph of all that has ever been written on the sub- 

 ject, and from the account of its peculiar pairing habits, through a con- 

 sideration of the use of its scent-fans, the details of its breeding, the facts 

 of its migrating habits and extent of its immigration, its remarkable 

 attacks on apiaries, the consideration of the theories brought forward 

 to account for the production of its well-known sound, to the discussion 

 of the peculiar structure of the so-called "barren " females, offers an 

 intensely interesting array of readable facts compressed into the 

 smallest possible space and of the greatest possible value to all bio- 



