26 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of 17 coloured plates, with 466 figures, chiefly of species of which 

 no reference to a good figure can be given, and there are 285 

 woodcuts in the text. 



As a descriptive catalogue the work seems to be eminently 

 satisfactory, and the British Museum and the entomological 

 public are to be congratulated that such an important under- 

 taking should have fallen to so capable an author. In the 

 larger genera many of the species seem closely allied, and our 

 impression is confirmed that in some of these a recognition of 

 geographical variation may diminish the number of separate 

 species. This is a subject of which the study will be much 

 facilitated by the present volume, when the long enough series 

 and a knowledge of early stages are obtained. 



The table of phylogeny of Syntoniidse is interesting, but we 

 doubt whether anyone but the author possesses the knowledge 

 necessary to intelligently consider it. We confess our inability 

 to criticise it. 



There is a short introduction giving some general informa- 

 tion about early stages, structure, phylogeny, and geographical 

 distribution. Possibly that dealing with phylogeny presents 

 items of most general interest. To a descriptive catalogue like 

 this, the phylogeny adopted is really of very little importance, 

 as each volume will be complete in itself; but as a subject of 

 general interest it is really what we are all working at, either as 

 regards the relationship of orders and families, or, in closer detail, 

 of species and varieties to each other. The views held by Sir 

 George Hampson, who has a knowledge of the forms and struc- 

 ture of lepidopterous imagines that is perhaps unequalled, are, 

 therefore, worth some study. A comparison of the table on p. 16, 

 with that in the ' Moths of India,' vol. i. p. 8, 1892, shows what a 

 great advance has been made in the last six years. So great in 

 some respects are the differences, that an equal advance in the 

 next six years will give us a tree that will be very near the 

 truth. 



Besides including the butterflies, the present table strikes us 

 at once as rescuing the Syntomidse from their traditional, but 

 absurd, place beside the Zygcenas (Anthrocera) , and placing them 

 with the Arctiadae and Noctuidas, brought from two different 

 positions in the 1892 table. The Limacodidse are brought into a 

 less impossible place. The Pterophoridas are in a conceivable 

 position ; and several other collocations are more in accordance 

 with the positions suggested by other than the imaginal stage. 

 There still remain several arrangements that are extremely 

 doubtful. Of these the most pronounced is the place assigned 

 to Zygcena. This is more satisfactorily placed in the 1892 table, 

 as it is a terminal form. The highly specialised larva forbids its 

 being an ancestor of many forms placed above it, though its 



