294 SOME NEW BOOKS [ocTOBER 
and on the last plate, in each successive part. The object may be otherwise 
attained by supplying a continuous list of such pages and plates, to go with 
the preface or the index. Such a continuous list is in any case desirable, and 
might still be given for each of the volumes already published. The oppor- 
tunity of distributing this small boon will be easily provided in company with 
a far greater one, the promised volume on the Cumacea of Norway, the appear- 
ance of which will be for its own sake eagerly welcomed. 
THoomas R. R. STEBBING. 
BUTTERFLIES’ WINGS. 
Specialisations of the Lepidopterous Wing: The Parnassi - Papilionidae. 
Parts I. and II. By A. RapcuirFE Grote. Proc. American Philosophical 
Soc. XXXVIIL, 1899. Pp. 25-48, 3 plates. 
The author’s theory of the movement of the veins of the wings in 
specialisation suggests a guide for determining the systematic position of the 
genera with greater exactness, and a clue to their phyletic descent. The correct- 
ness of this theory of Grote’s has recently received support through Dr. Rebel’s 
discovery of an ancestral form of Parnassius from the Miocene of Gabbro, Italy. 
This extinct species, Doritites bosniaski, shows a neuration as yet in the 
zerynthian stage, and distinctly comparable with that of Archon apollinus, while 
the markings and facies are Parnassian. In this communication to the 
American Philosophical Society, the author reviews the genera of the 
Papilionides, showing the Parnassians to be the more advanced forms of the 
group, the test being the gradual disappearance, through absorption, of the 
cubital cross vein, as seen by an examination of the generic types from 
Ornithoptera up to Parnassius. He is led to the conclusion that the former 
genus shows generalised characters which bring it nearer to the presumed 
primitive Papilionid, and necessitate an alteration in the present systematic 
position of the genus. As opposed to the views of Spuler, the author repudiates 
any affinity between the Pieridae and Papilionides, and shows that the neurational 
analogies of the latter group lie with the brush-footed butterflies. The common 
white colour of the Pierids and Parnassians is ascribed to convergence, and 
reference is made to the author’s earlier statements in Vatural Science, that an 
increase of white pigment runs roughly parallel with the specialisation of the 
neuration. The author further considers and urges the probable diphyletism of 
the diurnals, as he has previously suggested, and recommends the retention of 
the Papilionides at the commencement of the series. The plates, in addition to 
the figures of Papilionides, give corrected figures of Heliconius, and for the first 
time of Dzone. 
COLOMBIAN ORE. 
The Ores of Colombia, from Mines in Operation in 1892. By H. W. 
NicHous, §8.B. Field Columbian Museum, Publication 33. Geo- 
logical Series, vol. 1., No. 3, pp. 125-177, with Map. 
This publication is a praiseworthy endeavour to utilise part of a collection 
made by Senor F. Pereira Gamba, a mining engineer of Bogota. The collection 
consists of specimens of the ores and associated rocks met with in those mines 
of the Republic of Colombia which were being worked in 1892. It was first 
exhibited in the World’s Columbian Exposition, and about a quarter of it 
was subsequently handed over to the Field Columbian Museum, the remainder 
having apparently been lost. After an introduction, in which proper stress is 
laid on the circumstance that all of the specimens of ores are average samples, 
and after a couple of pages devoted to the physical features and general geology 
of Colombia, the serious business of recording, and in many cases describing, 

