102 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 
Argynnis selene, Cosmotriche potatoria, Aplecta tincta, A. nebulosa, 
Noctua brunnea, N. triangulum, and Triphena pronuba, with several 
Geometrids. I took these in two or three days in woods near Oxford. 
C. Metxiows; Oxford. 
RECENT LITERATURE. 
The Genitalia of the Grown Noctwide of the Lepidoptera of the 
British Islands. By F. N. Pierce, F.E.S. Pp. xii., 88, pls, 
xxxll. Liverpool: A. W. Duncan, 65, South John Street. 
1909. “Wsxod: 
Tuts book marks an era in the study of the British Lepidoptera. 
Mr. Pierce tells us it is the outcome of twenty years’ study, and 
many students of British Lepidoptera during that period have known 
him as expert in making preparations of the organs here treated of 
and as learned in the study of the specimens so treated. The maga- 
zines during that period report many instances in which questions 
of specific identity or differentiation have been referred to him for 
investigation, not only in the Noctuz but more or less throughout 
the Lepidoptera, and always with a result advancing our knowledge. 
The volume is the first attempt that has been made to describe 
these appendages throughout a whole family of the fauna of a dis- 
trict. There are figures of the genitalia of some three hundred 
and fifteen species, the Noctue of the British Islands. Of course, 
this is after all but a flea-bite to what an examination of all the Noctuze 
would be, the Catalogue of these by Sir George Hampson presenting 
a vista of almost interminable volumes. 
The earliest observations on the genitalia of the Noctuz that we 
recollect are those of Lederer (‘ Noctuinen Europa,’ 1857) ; he figures 
the end of the clasp in thirty species.. It is interesting to note that 
his figures are crude to the last degree, yet illustrate that these parts 
vary in the different species. Down almost to the present time we 
find much vagueness in figures of these organs, as in a recent 
illustration in a German periodical figures appeared of the genitalia 
of Hveres argiades to prove its identity with alcetas, yet the figures 
would have served equally well for Cupido minimus or even sebrus. 
liven Scudder’s figures are often rather vague, and quite inadequate 
to convey any very definite idea of the structures, and would often 
fail to distinguish allied species, although they are very nicely drawn. 
One of the earliest really satisfactory plates of male appendages 
of Noctuz is plate xi. in the first vol. of ‘Iris’ (1884) of four 
species of the lucernea group of Agrotids. 
Dr. K. Jordan’s figures in the Novit. Zool. are certainly far and 
away the most excellent in all respects. His account of the appen- 
dage of the Sphinges is certainly the most complete and accurate 
piece of work of this class that exists, and though only part of a general 
monograph of the Sphinges, is itself a most important monograph, 
and one wishes it were less enfolded with the other material. It 
includes of course our British Sphinges, but these are so few species 
that it hardly strikes us that it is dealing with a British family. 
Those who still retain any doubts as to the value of these organs 
