. RECENT LITERATURE. i 
and the gregarious and family habits in butterfly larvae. The body of 
volume ii., however, is given over to the British Ruralines (Thec- 
line) and Celastrina (Cyaniris) argiolus, with which most collectors 
are familiar enough in the imago state, and a first result of detailed 
attention to their earlier stages confirms the view that the hetero- 
geneous classifications of previous authors—notably of Staudinger— 
can no longer be justified on a scientific basis. True, Mr. Tutt in- 
dulges in a kind of nomenclature that the older school will scarcely 
admire, and though his generic prefix for w-albwn—Hdwardsta—is 
perforce superseded by Chattendenia in the pages containing ‘“ Corri- 
genda,” the further transformation will not reconcile sticklers for 
form and euphony. It remains for an Entomological Congress of the 
future, conducted on international lines, to give finality to such 
things. Meanwhile Mr. Tutt makes it abundantly clear that some of 
the ‘‘ Linnean shibboleths”’ will have to be discarded as the natural 
consequence of the wider knowledge attained in no small degree by his 
own indefatigable patience and industry, although, as urged in his pre- 
face, we owe a first debt of gratitude to Scudder in this respect for light 
and leading on the right way—that is to say, in educating us to 
recognize the importance of observing the living object as compared 
with museum and cabinet research, which chiefly concerns itself 
with cataloguing and orderly arrangement, in accordance with con- 
vention and convenience, rather than scientific accuracy. 
But, while Mr. Tutt has provided the biological student who 
desires to approach the subject in a serious spirit with much solid 
material, he expresses himself in language which can be understood 
and enjoyed by that larger audience to whom natural history appeals 
as no more than a pleasant holiday for the mind. That, in our 
opinion, is the charm of Mr. Tutt’s writing. An experienced and 
keen worker in the field, he is careful to avoid the dry-as-dust 
phraseology and treatment which so often discourages and repels ; 
he is not above the inclusion of those ‘purple patches’? which give 
colour and variety to highly technical subjects; into the library he 
imports the genial gleam of woodland, down, and heath, with which 
our interesting butterfly fauna is associated. If anything, the 
sections which include locality and habitat are treated too diffusely 
in the case of common insects, and some quite unnecessary repetitions 
might have been avoided. But in the case of our rarer species, for 
good and obvious reasons, we are not sorry that county records are 
often vague and of ancient date. Those who are in the field for 
purely scientific purposes will never, we imagine, have the least 
difficulty in getting such information as they require for legitimate 
purposes from their friends and colleagues. 
Again, there is a refreshing absence of insularity throughout 
these pages. Assisted materially by the discoveries of Dr. Chapman, 
Mr. Bethune-Baker, and others, Mr. Tutt is able to announce even in 
this single volume the identity of several ranked species, especially 
in the wide-ranging genus Celastrina (Cyanirss) ; while, in the parts 
of volume iii. already to hand, he has established a similar state of 
things in the several forms of Hveres, hitherto separated as distinct 
in the Nearctic and Palearctic regions. With the admirable photo- 
micrographic plates by Mr. F. Noad Clark, and Mr. H. Main, before us, 
