RECENT LITERATURE. 117 



wor-k of Professor Poulton, including Britisli species of tiie Asilidae, 

 the Empidae, the DoHchopodidas, the Cordylurid Scatophaga sterco- 

 raria, and the Anthoniyid Ccenosia tigrina. — Mr. M. E. Moseley, 

 mounts illustrating the various stages in the metamorphoses of 

 Sialis lutaria, Ejyhemera danica, Brachycentrus suhnuhilus, and 

 Dictyopteryx microcephala. — Hy. J. Turner, Hon. Bep. Secretary. 



RECENT LITERATURE. 



Catalogue des Lepidopteres Observes dans L'Ouest de la France. 

 Pte. 1, Macrolepidopteres. By Henri Gelin and Daniel 

 Lucas. 8vo, pp. 232. PubHshed by the Authors: 2, Rue 

 Beaune la Rolande, Niort, Deux-S6vres, France. 6 frs. 



The Lepidoptera of Western France have a peculiar interest for 

 the British student collector, inasmuch as that part at least of the 

 I'egion to the north of the Loire approximates in many respects, 

 climate, formation, and flora, to our own southern counties. At 

 intervals local catalogues of Lepidoptera have been published by 

 some of the learned and scientific societies of the western Depart- 

 ments, but until the publication of MM. Gelin and Lucas's work 

 there has been no reliable review of the whole Atlantic region from 

 Finist^re to the Basses-Pyrenees. The authors, however, are not 

 content to put forward a mere list of captures, or to collate records 

 already in print. In a suggestive preface M. Gelin sums up the 

 characters of the several seaboard and inland Departments in- 

 cluded; and, though modestly describing his own observations as 

 no more than material to assist further scientific research, he 

 throws much light on problems of distribution. M. Lucas, also, 

 expatiates on the wonderful results obtained among the Heterocera 

 by the use of modern illuminants, and incidentally upon the wide 

 field thus made available for the naturalist who is satisfied to work 

 within, what many of us to-day consider, a too restricted area. The 

 Catalogue before us affords perhaps the best excuse for the home 

 collector in the west of France ; for the region is seen to be as rich 

 in the variety of its Lepidoptera as of soil and scenery, ranging from 

 the sandy heaths and dunes of the Biscay littoral to the wooded 

 chalk hills of Charente, and the granite silences of Bretagne. To 

 the growing number of British entomologists who travel the name 

 of M. Lucas is famihar as the discoverer of the fine large form of 

 Hesperia serratulcB var. occidentalis, which, as we are now informed, 

 predominates in Vendee, Vienne, and the Deux-S6vres. Hardly less 

 exhaustive is the account of Coenonympha cedipus and its several 

 forms, which once upon a time we thought confined in France to the 

 marshes of Biarritz, St. Jean de Luz, and Guethary, and chased in 

 vain for want of knowledge of the date of emergence thereabouts. 

 Nor is the consideration in this volume of the Heterocera less 

 thorough, and we commend it the more cordially, therefore, to 

 entomologists who would know something definite of the life-history, 



