NOTES BY THE WAY. 33 



Governed," by H. Christopher McCook, published by Hari)er 

 Brothers, in which the learned doctor ajjpears to regard the 

 constitutional monarchy of the queen ant as susceptible to 

 human laws and explanations as that of Portugal, though his 

 personal observations, and especially those in the Alleghany 

 Mountains, are of an unusually close nature. The other is 

 ' Ants : their Structure, Development, and Behaviour,' by 

 William Norton Wheeler, published by the Columbia University 

 Press in New York ; and here we have egotistical wisdom — such 

 wisdom as would consign the knowledge of the Ven. William 

 Kirby in the Seventh Bridgewater Treatise "to the theological 

 dustbin" (they are well worth resuscitating), and refers to 

 " scholastic writers, like the Jesuit Wasman," whom he accuses 

 of allowing his views on instinct to be governed by a zeal to 

 " save one of the old Thomistic dogmas." Both books are 

 evidently worthy of perusal. 



We hasten to congratulate Percy H. Grimshaw upon being 

 entrusted by Messrs. Lovell, Pteeve and Co. with the preparation 

 of a work U|)on the British Diotera, upon the lines of Canon 

 Fowler's 'Coleoptera of the British Isles' and otbers of the same 

 series, to run to some five volumes. We are informed that the 

 first volume will contain the Cecidomyidae, Mycetophilid;e, Bibio- 

 nidcie, Simuliid^e, Chironomida), &c., and that the author is 

 anxious to amass at once material for the first family from all 

 parts of the country — galls, larvae, and imagines — since the dis- 

 tribution of these interesting gnats is an important feature. 

 There certainly is room for a work of intermediate nature 

 between the beautiful and ponderous tomes emanating all too 

 slowly from the doyen of the Entomological Club, and the mere 

 analytical tables of Pev. W. J. Wingate, published by Williams 

 and Norgate in 1906, though most useful in their sphere. We 

 also learn that Mr. II. J. Charbonnier, of Shepton Mallet, is pre- 

 paring his collection of Diptera for generous presentation to the 

 Taunton Museum. 



The other day we picked up for a song another link with a 

 bygone entomologist. This is the ' Bohemian Poems, Ancient 

 and Modern,' of A. H. Wratislaw, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of 

 Christ's College, Cambridge, well known to most corresponding 

 lepidopterists fifty years ago, who wrote upon " Entomolouy in 

 Suffolk" in the Trans. Sufi". Archieolog. Soc. 1870, pp. '219-'222, 

 and " Kemiuiscences of Entomology in Suffolk " in E. M. M. 

 1880, p. 86, &c. This volume shows him in a new light to us ; 

 that he was Head of Bury St. Edmunds School we knew, but that 

 he himself came of an old Bohemian family, of kindred race with 

 the Count Valerian Krasinski, to whom the volume is dedicated, 

 and attained such beauty of translated and original verse as is 



ENTOM. — JANUARY, 1911. D 



