156 NEW WORKS ON ENTOMOLOGY. 



sensible, is its slow rate of progress. A recent writer observes, 

 " On a former occasion we spoke of the twenty years which would 

 be occupied in its publication ; but we really cannot help thinking 

 that thirty or forty will be more likely to be the period during 

 which the annual or biennial volumes must regularly appear before 

 the whole of the species will be described, at the present rate of 

 twenty-four to each." It is such a common thing for people to 

 commence Herculean works, and never to finish them, that we are 

 not surprised that the conclusion of "The Natural History of the 

 Tineince" is looked on as something hardly to be expected. How- 

 ever, our consolation is, that in the nature of the thing it can 

 never be complete, and it will always be complete as far as it goes. 

 A history of any period brought down to the day when it is written 

 is necessarily incomplete, and needs a continuation ten or twenty 

 years afterwards, and it is no more possible to write a complete and 

 final history of animals than to do the same office for mankind. 



That an interval of two years will again elapse before the appear- 

 ance of the next volume seems hardly probable, as the manuscript 

 of Vol. III., which will contain Elachista, Part I., and Tischeria, 

 Part I., is already written, and the first portion is in the hands of 

 the printer. 



THE INSECT HUNTERS; or Entomology in 

 Verse. By Edward Newman, F.L.S. Foolscap Svo. 

 Cloth, gilt edges. Price Is. 6d. 



London : Edward Newman. 



An amusing attempt to introduce scientific definitions into the 

 infant mind by means of versification in the "Hiawatha" style, 

 and undoubtedly the best and most useful of Mr. Newman's Ento- 

 mological Works. " Hiawatha," it is true, has been parodied 

 almost ad nauseam ; first we had " Drop'o'watba," then " Milk- 

 anwatha," from which, as perhaps some of our readers have not 

 seen it, we give the following extract : — 



" But beside him, Milkanwatha 



Loved the very fat man Bee-del j 



He, the fattest human being, 



That you ever laid your eyes on. 



From his very earliest childhood, 



He was round, and fat and lazy ', 



Didnt go a squirrel-hunting, 



Didnt skate and didnt nothing — 



Wasnt like the other children ; 



