206 NATURAL SCIENCE [September 
reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and cyclostomes; Dr R. Bowdler Sharpe 
for the birds; Mr Garstang for amphioxus and balanoglossus ; Mr 
W. F. Kirby for the arthropods; Mr B. B. Woodward for the mol- 
luscs ; Mr Bather for the lamp shells and starfishes ; Mr Kirkpatrick 
for the moss animals; Mr Pocock for the “worms”; and Mr and 
Mrs Bernard for the coelenterates and the protozoa. There is, of 
course, a good deal of excellent work in the book, which is a marvel 
of cheapness ; but some of the sections dealing with vertebrata read 
as if they were made up of popular newspaper articles, hurriedly, and 
not very skilfully, welded together. The best part of the book is that 
dealing with the lowest vertebrates and the invertebrates. The sections 
on lamp shells and starfishes deserve special mention ; and students of 
the bryozoa will be grateful to Mr Kirkpatrick for appending to 
his section a classification and bibliography. In a second edition it 
would be well to adopt the same zoo-geographical regions for mammals 
and birds ; and the puzzling sentence on p. 122—“the teats of the 
female elephants are placed between the hind legs, and the young calf 
sucks with its mouth, and not with its trunk ”—should be deleted. 
Stricter supervision, too, should be exercised over the illustrations. 
Fig. 86 (p. 156) bears the inscription 7ragelaphus angasi, about which 
no word occurs in the text; the inscription of Fig. 82 (p. 349) does 
not refer to the bird figured; the illustration of the bearded reedling 
(p. 368) bears the generic name Calamophilus, while Panurus is given 
in the text, though it does not appear in the index. The misprints, 
of which there are considerably more than are justly chargeable to the 
printer, should be carefully sought for and corrected. Alunda, Tevrao, 
Phasiandae, Paro, Syrrhoptes, Scolopaeinae, Nyctierax nyctierax, Try- 
panns, Anthrophysa (and many others) are likely to prove hindrances 
rather than helps; and some readers may stumble at “ catenanan 
formation.” “ Pellage,” too, is an unusual form in English books ; 
while “ Leydecker ” and “ Brydden” conceal familiar names. 
MortTHS 
A HANDBOOK TO THE ORDER LEpIpoPreRs. By W. F. Kirby, F.L.S., F.E.S. Vol. 
V. Moths. Part 38. 8vo, pp. 332, plates 32. (Allen’s Naturalist’s Library.) 
London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1897. Price, 6s. 
WITH praiseworthy celerity, Mr Kirby has brought his handbook of 
lepidoptera to a conclusion. It is unfortunate that his account of the 
noctuids, the geometers, and the whole of the so-called “micro- 
lepidoptera ” has had to be compressed into the volume now before 
us. The space is quite inadequate for a due treatment of these groups, 
especially as the author continues to devote a quarter or half a page 
to the synonymy and references of each species which he selects for 
description. Although a large number of moths are described and 
figured, the families are necessarily much more cursorily treated than 
those dealt with in the preceding volumes. For example, among the 
noctuids we find only one British species, each of such large genera as 
Acronycta, Lewcania, and Agrotis, and not a single representative of 
Hadena ; and turning to the geometers, the large and important 
genera Hupithecia and Cidaria are altogether omitted. As for the 
‘“microlepidoptera,” Mr Kirby states in his preface that he has found 
a 
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