CURRENT NOTES. 



189 



to any other individual member, besides, it happened that Christmas, 

 1907, brought us to the end of a two-years' (1906-7) service as presi- 

 dent, a fitting coming-of-age to the previous two years' service which 

 Mr. Adkin gave in 1886-7, in the same official capacity. As President, 

 Vice-President, Treasurer, Member of Council, indeed, as everything 

 that would aid the Society, Mr. Adkin has given official and unofficial 

 service for a very great number of years. Whatever has had to be 

 done, or found, or settled, Mr. Adkin has been the man to do, find, 

 or settle, and the now long series of Proceeiliiujn of the Society is largely 

 due to his unflagging zeal and generous aid. The "Annual Meeting" 

 held in January last paid a most fitting tribute to the esteem in which 

 he is held by his fellow-members, but there is nothing of this to be 

 gathered from the report of the meeting, Mr. Adkin's editorial hand 

 having eliminated everything except the most business-like statements 

 that the speakers may have unknowingly uttered. It is our earnest 

 wish that the South London Entomological Society may long number 

 Mr. Adkin among its official members, and that others like he may 

 long continue such generous service. Our notice of the Froceedijii/s 

 must not close without reference to the five beautiful plates that enrich 

 it, from photographs by two of the most popular members, Messrs. 

 H. Main and A. E. Tonge. Those illustrating "The lifehistory of 

 ( 'JiaraavK jasiiis" are well-nigh incomparable. 



Another excellent volume of the BoUftiiio del Laboratorio de Zoolof/ia 

 (ienerale e A(/raria delta R. Scmda Superiore d'Af/n'coltiira in Portiei 

 has just come to hand. There are 211 figures in the text, which seems 

 throughout excellent. The greater part of the volume is taken up 

 with a detailed account of the " Insect enemies of the olive" — diptera, 

 hymenoptera, lepidoptera, Coccids, etc., including a new genus of lepi- 

 doptera. The rest of the volume is occupied with an apparently first- 

 class paper by Silvestri, entitled " Material for the study of the 

 Thysanurids." The BoUetino is evidently taking a high place in 

 Italian entomology. 



Just as the crude bringing together of specimens of a species from 

 a large tract of country bearing a common geographical name, and 

 their division into heavily-marked and lightly-marked forms, and the 

 insistence that one or other is a "wet," and the other a "dry," seasonal 

 form, without an atom of knowledge as to whether (1) the specimens 

 have even come from the same locality (or even an approximately near 

 one), (2) the specimens really represent one, two, three, or even a dozen 

 broods, have shaken the belief of all thinking lepidopterists in many 

 probable cases of real seasonal dimorphism, so the insistence that 

 certain distantly related species, supposed to inhabit the same district, are 

 mimics one of another, without any real knowledge on the part of the 

 theorist of the habits of the species alive, or even that (1) the species 

 fly together at the same time on the same ground, or (2) have any 

 habits in common, has made most lepidopterists a bit tired of this 

 museum-made mimicry. It is, therefore, a great relief to have Mr. 

 Guy Marshall's critical paper, entitled "On Diaposematism with refer- 

 ence to some limitations of the Miillerian Hypothesis of Mimicry" 

 {rran.t. Knt. Sue. Land., pp. 9H et seq.), which brushes aside, with the 

 certainty of first-hand knoAvledge, some of the theories propounded of 

 late years about certain of the species whose life-habits he knows so 

 well. We have always insisted that the place to study seasonal 



