﻿RECENT LITERATURE. 163 



fessor Poulton exhibited examples of Eurytela dryope, Cramer, and 

 E. hiarbas, Drury, bred by Mr. W. A. Lamborn in the Lagos district. 

 Mr. Lamborn had bred considerable families of dryope three times, 

 and hiarbas once, from known female parents. The dryo])e parents 

 produced nothing but dryope, the hiarbas nothing but hiarbas. It 

 was therefore almost certain that the two forms were distinct 

 species, at any rate in the Lagos district. Professor Poulton 

 exhibited specimens of Pseudacraeas, &c., captured on December 3rd, 

 10th, and 17th, 1911, by Dr. Carpenter, in the primitive forest which 

 still exists in the centre of Damba Island. — Mr. A. E. Gibbs, two 

 specimens of the scarce butterfly Baronia, brevicornis. — Mr. Douglas 

 Pearson, a drawer of aberrations of the genera Melitaa and Erebia, 

 amongst which were some striking forms of E. stygne, E. ceto, and 

 M.- varia, as well as a remarkably variegated female of M. aurelia, 

 generally speaking the most constant of the group. — Dr. Jordan, on 

 behalf of Dr. Malcolm Burr, two specimens of a new Dermapteron, 

 discovered in vast numbers in a cave in Java, for which a new sub- 

 order is required. — George Wheeler, M.A., Hoii. Sec. 



RECENT LITERATURE. 



Dermaptera (Fascicule 122 of the 'Genera Insectorum'). By M. 

 Burr, D.Sc. Pp. 112; illustrated by eight coloured and one 

 plain plate. Brussels, 1911. 



Such a publication as the one before us cannot but mark an 

 epocli in the history of the Dermaptera, a group of insects better 

 known to the ordinary naturalist as the "earwigs." One publica- 

 tion only would be even more welcome — the promised monograph of 

 these insects which our author has in hand. Owing to a great extent 

 to the comparative scarcity of material the classification of these 

 ancient, and therefore specially interesting, creatures has been in an 

 almost hopeless state of confusion, but the strenuous labours of Burr 

 and others have altered the position of affairs. In the fine volume 

 devoted to the Dermaptera in the ' Fauna of British India,' Dr. Burr 

 gave us a definite scheme of classification of the earwigs, and in the 

 present publication we have it brought still further up to date. In 

 the Introduction will be found the principles of classification adopted. 

 Differences in the genitalia must, of course, enter largely into the 

 various diagnoses, but we are glad to find that Burr does not consider 

 them all-important. The average entomologist, though he may not 

 be specially a student of the earwigs, will often like to properly 

 place his specimens, and he will have a much better chance of 

 succeeding if he has not to depend entirely on such an abstruse point 

 as the construction of the genitalia. 



It is to be hoped that the system of classification and the nomen- 

 clature of the earwigs is now fairly fixed. The seven hundred and 

 one species here enumerated are distributed amongst eight families, 

 including the Arixeniidae and Hemimerid® with one species each. 

 These families of parasitic insects are much more pronouncedly 



