August 1S91.J 



PSYCHE. 



133 



whether such a periodical should be open to 

 direct contributions from others than the 

 divisional force and those in the state exper- 

 iment stations working in concert with them. 

 Particularly technical articles like Lord 

 Walsingham's seem out of place, and it 

 would be hard to justify them, when there 

 are plenty of openings for their publication 

 and the}' have only a very indirect bearingon 

 economic entomology. Were such articles 

 omitted, the periodical would certainly gain 

 in character, and as it is, quite apart from its 

 value on the purely economic side, no ento- 

 mological periodical in the world is so rich 

 in interesting and varied notes on the habits 

 of insects. 



Apropos of the "jumping-bean" which is 

 twice mentioned in this number of Insect 

 life, once in the answer to correspondents 

 and again in the proceedings of the Ento- 

 mological society of Washington, it may be 

 well to call attention to a recently published 

 foreign paper on Carcocafsa saltitans, and 

 on another and nearly allied moth, Gra- 

 ■pholitlia motrix, which causes similar move- 

 ments in the fruit of Colliguaya brasilteiisis 

 in Uruguay : the article, by Dr. Berg of 

 Montevideo, will be found in the Anales of 

 the Sociedad cientifica argentina, vol. 31. 

 The new moth is particularly interesting since 

 the motor power in Dr. Riley's new jumping- 

 bean is recognized by him as also a 

 Grapholitha. 



Kolbe's Introduction to the knowledge of 

 insects is so good that one must scold at its 

 slow appearance. Begun in 1889, it has only 

 reached its sixth number, and to judge by 

 the scheme laid down in the prospectus it is 

 not a quarter finished ; we hope it is not, for 

 though we find some oversights, it contains 

 a rare collection of facts and some very in- 

 teresting discussions; the present number 

 deals with the structure of the legs and of 

 the abdomen ; the account of the ovipositor 

 and of the claspers seems rather meagre 

 though possibly more is to be given in the 

 next part. 



A MOULTING-HABIT OF LARVAE OF PLA- 



tysamia ceanothi. — In watching a brood of 

 ceanothi larvae, which are living on wild 

 cherry, my attention has been drawn to a 

 habit, noticed at each moult, and which I 

 have not seen in other Bombj'cid larvae. 

 When first becoming quiet the larva spun a 

 loose web to the twig just in front of its 

 head, at a short distance. When the mask 

 had fallen and the skin split in moulting, the 

 larva grasped this loose web with its first 

 pair of feet, and pulled itself along by it, till 

 all the feet were free and could cling to the 

 silk. Then moulting proceeded by the usual 

 contraction and expansion of the muscles. 

 This was done by every larva at every moult. 

 Caroline G. Soule. 



A "Manual of North American Butter- 

 flies" by C. J. Maynard has just been pub- 

 lished by DeWolfe, Fiske, & Co. of Boston. 

 It is an octavo of over 200 pp. with ten plates 

 and numerous figures in the text, and de- 

 scribes more than 600 nominal species. The 

 first thing which strikes one on looking it 

 over is the total absence of the slightest 

 allusion to any of the early stages of butter- 

 flies, excepting that a single chrysalis is fig- 

 ured. The only reference to the fact that 

 they have a history — a history the study of 

 which forms the chief charm and interest in 

 these insects, and the one thing to which all 

 novices should be pointed — is in some such 

 curt statement as "occurs in June and July." 

 Not even a single reference either general or 

 particular is given to show that such life" 

 histories are known; we believe the word 

 "larva" or "caterpillar" does not appear be- 

 yond the third page where the body of the 

 work begins. The second thing we notice, 

 considering that the book "is intended for 

 the use of the tyro as well as for the advanced 

 student," is the absence of a single table to 

 distinguish the different genera of a family, 

 or the different species of a genus. Thirty- 

 five genera of Nymphalidae. for instance, to 

 be distinguished by the tyro with no other 



