i897- SOME NEW BOOKS.- 



331 



descriptions of families and genera, too, are very meagre, and, in most 

 cases, quite insufficient for purposes of determination. This may not 

 be a matter of so much importance in the edition with the coloured 

 plates, if the student's only object is to name his insects, but it renders 

 the small edition well-nigh useless to beginners for that purpose. In 

 most of the reviews (in Natural Science and elsewhere) of previous 

 volumes of Messrs. Reeve's series of works on British insects, com- 

 plaint was made that not even an advertisement in the small edition 

 informed the reader that there was also an issue with coloured figures. 

 At the end of the present volume is a general catalogue of Messrs. 

 Reeve's publications in which will be found an announcement that 

 volumes i. and ii. of the present work were issued in both forms. It 

 ,may be inferred from this, on the principle of analogy, that a similar 

 course has been adopted with regard to volume iii. 



Mr. Kirby's volumes form part of a manual on the moths and butter- 

 flies, in which the author's aim is to make the study of British species 

 introductory to that of the Lepidoptera of the world. It was intended 

 to include all the butterflies in the first two volumes, but pressure of 

 space in them has led to the third, now before us, commencing with 

 an account of the Hesperiidae or "skippers" — generally considered 

 the lowest butterfly-family. As Mr. Kirby points out, the old, 

 primary division of the Lepidoptera into butterflies and moths cannot 

 be maintained ; and although he places the Hesperiidae under the 

 heading " Rhopolocera," he states his opinion that if any line between 

 "butterflies" and "moths" can be drawn, that family should be 

 classed rather with the moths than with the butterflies. 



In the classification of the Hesperiidae, Mr. Kirby follows Capt. 

 Watson's revision. The more typical genera are described, with one 

 or two species of each, all the British species being figured ; there are 

 also short accounts of the eggs, caterpillars and pupae, and the ranges 

 of the insects are in most cases mdicated. In discussing the general 

 distribution of the family, Mr. Kirby points out that " skippers " are 

 relatively much more abundant in North America than in Europe, 

 though numerous in the tropics of both hemispheres, and that these 

 insects are unrepresented in Greenland where nymphalid, lycaenid, 

 and pierid butterflies occur. 



The greater part of the volume is devoted to certain famihes 

 of moths. In this and the succeeding volume it is intended to 

 complete the " Sphinges " and " Bombyces." Mr. Kirby's arrange- 

 ment of the families closely follows that which he adopted in the first 

 volume of his " Catalogue of Lepidoptera Heterocera." In the 

 present volume twenty-six families are dealt with ; the principal being 

 the Castniidae, Uraniidae (Cydimonidae), Agaristidae, Chalcosiidae, 

 Zygaenidae, Arctiidae, Lithosiidae, Hypsidae, Lymantriidae (Liparidae), 

 Psychidae, Limacodidae, and Notodontidae. Several new famihes are 

 suggested by Mr. Kirby for isolated or aberrant forms. The family 

 Euschemonidae is proposed for the single Australian species EuscJiemon 

 RafflesicE, a curious insect which has been classed by different authors 

 with the butterflies and with the moths. Another moth which 

 receives the distinction of a family to itself is the West African 

 Psendopontia pamdoxa, one of the most puzzling of insects, classed by 

 most German writers with the pierid butterflies, but showing by its 

 wing-neuration some affinity to the chalcosiid moths. 



The great majority of the coloured figures are good, yet one is 

 tempted to ask why are moths so often drawn without legs ? A fair 

 number of species are figured in the present work for the first time, 



