RECENT LITERATURE. 143 



exists between many species which authors have hitherto lumped 

 together in the same genus, this book will be a revelation and a 

 delight. 



The author divides the Plumes or Alucitids into two superfamilies, 

 the Agdistides and the Alucitides, the former containing — as far as 

 Britain is concerned — only one species, Adaetylm bennetii, while the 

 latter includes all our other Plumes (except Orneodes, which is not an 

 Aiucitid at all). The Alucitides are again divided into two families, 

 the Platyptiliidje and the Alucitidse. This division is a very natural 

 one, and the characters marking these two families are apparent in the 

 ovum, larva, pupa, and imago. 



It is true the present volume only deals with the Agdistides and 

 the first family of the Alucitides, some twenty species ; but if we have 

 such a detailed account of these species in volume v., we may hope for 

 an equally good account of the remainder subsequently. As the 

 author rightly points out, Zeller and 0. Hofmann are the authorities 

 on which the student of the Palfearctic Alucitids places most reliance. 

 The former seems to have had an unerring inspiration in discovering 

 and defining the different species, while the latter possessed a mar- 

 vellous talent of grouping the species by their affinity. Authors, in 

 fact, except Hiibner, Zeller, and Wallengren, up till the time of the 

 publication of Hofmann's 'Die deutschen Pterophinen,' appear to have 

 treated the Alucitids somewhat like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, 

 and each one shook them up till they formed a pattern to his own 

 liking ; some continued the process even after 1895, ignoring 

 Hofmann's splendid work. 



In the present volume the classification of the Alucitids has been 

 carried very much farther, and all the known facts employed in this 

 process are placed at the student's service. The affinities and 

 differences displayed by the ovum, larva (in all its instars), the pupa, 

 and the imago, as well as the divergency shown in the life-history and 

 habits of each species, are all taken into account. This has unfortu- 

 nately necessitated the creation of several new genera, a fresh burden 

 on the entomologist's memory. The origin of the Alucitids is well 

 discussed in all its bearings, but as yet no sufficiently clear light has 

 been thrown on this problem, and it seems to be a question as 

 to whether the connecting links between the more generalized 

 ancestors of the Alucitids and the species now existing on the Earth 

 have not, one and all, been entirely swept away. Perhaps when the 

 Micro-Lepidoptera of the Tropics, and especially of Australasia and 

 other more or less untouched regions, have been thoroughly worked 

 out, we may become acquainted with forms of Alucitids, more 

 generalized than we now know, which will throw a clearer light 

 on the origin of the group. Though this volume deals especially with 

 British species, it treats of them on such broad lines that incidentally 

 it contains a good deal of information on palaearctic species which have 

 not yet been discovered in the British Isles. This feature is particularly 

 noticeable in the account of the Agdistides, of the Stenoptiliin^, and 

 Oxyptilinae. The account of the general biological characters of the 

 Alucitids, occupying twenty-five pages, and containing a most useful 

 tabulation of the chief larval characters of most of the larvae, is 



