THE TEAKSAOTIONS OP THE LTNXEAN SOCIETY. 199 



wood. It has been found in various parts of France and Italy, also 

 in Algeria. Mr. Ilaliday proposes to make it tlie type of a separate 

 family between Lepismidcd and JPoduridce. We could wisli that this 

 experienced entomologist would more frequently print for our in- 

 struction his notes on similar aberrant or interesting forms. 



Mr. Andrew Murray's ' Monograph of the Eamxily of Nitidularioi 

 is one of those miraculous accumulations of industry which none but 

 an entomologist could raise. It almost takes one's breath away to 

 read the list of foreign cabinets which Mr. Murray examined by way 

 of preparation for his task, and Mr. Herbert Spencer himself could 

 not frame even a ' symbolic conception ' of the hundreds, we might 

 say thousands, of drawings and dissections executed during its prose- 

 cution. Mr. Murray avowedly undertook " no journey of a Sabbath 

 day," and if, as he somewha.t mournfully anticipated, there are few 

 from whom he "could expect an intelligent appreciation " of his work, 

 he should remember that the estimation of one of these must, in 

 any just allowance, overweigh a whole theatre of others. Labour of 

 this kind is not lost, though no man can hope to achieve it who will 

 not rise up early, and late take rest, and eat the bread of carefulness ; 

 as all genuine workers know. It would be tedious, though far from 

 unprofitable, to analyze the great body of facts which this Mono- 

 graph includes. The Nitidularice are a group of beetles, including 

 Nitidula of Fabricius with its subsequently discovered allies, now 

 amounting to we are afraid to say what number of genera and 

 species, whose figured representations, to the non-entomological eye, 

 look terribly like one another as, in artistic guise, they sprawl grace- 

 fully over the surface of numerous plates, the intermediate blankness 

 of which is usefully relieved by a crowd of outline sketches, showing 

 in detail the characters of their several parts. Yet, as loyal subjects, 

 we may boast that our national collection, thanks to Mr. Murray's 

 exertions, possesses the most complete series of these creatures 

 known to students. 



As might have been expected from the careful study of so ex- 

 tensive an assemblage of forms, Mr. Murray has been led to re- 

 cognise the general conclusion that the minor groups of systematists 

 are " to a greater or less extent artificial." He is not here speaking 

 of the larger, or Linnean, genera which may possibly have " boun- 

 '' daries laid do^\-n by nature and not by man," but of the genera 

 and sub-genera established by modern entomologists. " If genera 

 " reallv did exist in nature, we ought to be able to find positive and 



