298 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



vegetable matter. But the only person who has ever "knocked 

 down " a will-o'-the-wisp — at Ickleton, Cambs, in 1780 — found 

 Gryllotalpa ! A recent writer in ' Country Life ' brings forward 

 a very different explanation, pointing out that Linne probably 

 named the barn-owl Strix flammea on account of the occasional 

 luminosity of its breast-feathers, caused (thinks Lydekker) by 

 " their plumage having come into contact with phosphorescent 

 bacteria developed in the decaying wood of their nesting 

 resorts." But jack-o'-lanterns are not found in farmyards, 

 and even a Cambridge yokel of 1780 knew a barn owl from a 

 mole-cricket ! 



Commercial Science rises to great heights with the United 

 Staters. We have received a * Price List of Philippine Insects 

 in the Collection of the Bureau of Science, Manila, P. L,' 

 which we suppose to be an official emanation, since no dealer's 

 name is blazoned forth. The prices are very definite, and nicely 

 printed on creamy paper, and one is given the family name of 

 each species free. They seem to possess many insects, but only 

 one stands under Ichneumonidae ; this is " Megischus tarsatus," 

 and will cost you a dollar, but Megischus, Brulle (1846), is a mere 

 synonym of Stephajius, Jur. (1807), the typical genus of the 

 Stephanidae, and not an ichneumon at all — bui'sa non caput ! At 

 the same time came * Insects and Disease,' by E. W. Doane, 

 A.B., Assistant Professor of Entomology, Leland Stanford, 

 Junior, University ; it is described as a popular account with 

 original illustrations. The text seems, like Hamlet, " made up 

 of quotations." The Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Lan- 

 cashire and Cheshire Entomological Society shows it a thriving 

 institution with a good balance behind it. 



The views of Professor Perrier, of astronomical fame, re- 

 specting the entomology of Mars read like the more extravagant 

 of Miss Budgen's ' Episodes of Insect Life.' Owing to the lesser 

 gravity, jumping animals would predominate ; the great extremes 

 of seasonal temperature would produce "quick-living" creatures, 

 which complete their active life in a single season, such as butter- 

 flies. Flowering plants would grow in abundance, and the six- 

 hundred-and-sixty-eight-day-year points to " intense growth 

 and reproduction, immensely tall grasses, huge fruit, and 

 gigantic insects. As life is a greater struggle there, the writer 

 is led to assume a high plane of intelligence in Martian insect- 

 life. He imagines the wisdom of a thousand ants resident in 

 the brain of one great Martian blackbeetle." With us a sufficient 

 number of such BlattsG in England would probably place the 

 "Back to the Land" theory within practicable politics, for (as 



