222 



PSYCHE. 



[February 1S92 



though in the latter one would of course sup- 

 ply in the mind the missing "and before 

 2d" needed to make it definite. 



Dryocampa riversii Behr. — The name 

 of this species has been omitted from Prof. 

 Smith's new list of lepidoptera of boreal 

 America, but no harm has been done thereby 

 as it must be referred to the synonymy. I 

 have seen three specimens by the kindness 

 of Prof. Rivers and of Dr. Behr. The fol- 

 lowing is the synonymy and bibliography : 



Oedemasia salicis Hy. Edw. 



1876 Hy. Edw,, Proc. Cal. acad. sci., 

 v. 7, 121, Heterocampa. 



1882. Grote, Check list Bomb. No. 238 1-2, 

 Oedemasia. 



1891. Dyar, Psyche, v. 6, 177. 



1S91. Smith, List lep. No. 1303, riversii 

 Behr. 



1889. Behr, Proc. Cal. acad. sci., 2nd ser. , 

 v. 2, 94, Dryocampa. 



Dr. Behr adds walnut (Juglans) to the 

 already known food plants of this species. 

 Harrison G. Dyar. 



Recent Literature. — The eighth part of 

 Buckton's British Cicadae has now appeared 

 completing the work, which extends to two 

 octavo volumes with over four hundred pages 

 and eighty-two plates. 239 species are de- 

 scribed, referred to 49 genera. The final part 

 contains some matters of general interest, 

 over fifty concluding pages being given up to 

 some special sections : one on the sterilization 

 of Tettigidae is based principally on Giard's 

 papers on "castration parasitaire" ; another 

 on the pygofer, with a plate, treats of the 

 male abdominal appendages with special ref- 

 erence to Sharp's observations; a third on 

 fossil Tettigidae, with two plates, is based 

 on the studies of Heer, Westwood, Scudder, 

 and Germar and Berendt; and these are fol. 

 lowed by a general summary, with sections 

 on mounting and preserving and on Tettix 

 found on classic coins, illustrated by a plate. 

 An index is given to each volume, but if 



there had been added a special table of con- 

 tents combined with a systematic list of 

 genera, it would have made it more useful 

 and the heads of the separate essays now 

 scattered through the book would have been 

 brought together. 



In a recent paper in the Zoologischer 

 anzeiger on the chronological succession of 

 wing colors in chrysalids of butterflies, 

 Urech claims that the Vanessas must have 

 been originally white! White, yellow, red, 

 brown, black, he finds to be the order in 

 which the colors appear, starting from an 

 originally completely white area. His 

 studies, however, have been too limited to 

 draw such sweeping conclusions, though 

 their interest and perhaps their importance 

 cannot be denied. 



Dittrich reports in the Zeitschrift. fur en- 

 tomologie of Breslau for 1891, p. 21, a Cyclo- 

 pean honey-bee sent him by a school-master 

 in St. Petersburg, one of whose pupils 

 brought it to him saying: "the rascal al- 

 ways flew head downwards !" The only part 

 misshapen was the head whose length ex- 

 ceeded its breadth by one-third. Viewed 

 from the front, a single crescentic compound 

 eye was situated at the upper margin of the 

 head, reaching on either side nearly to the 

 mandibles, without trace of any emargina- 

 tion at the middle line of the head, as one 

 would expect, to indicate the fusion of two 

 eyes. The ocelli were absent. 



On further inquiry of the school-master, 

 Herr Hans, the latter stated that he once 

 found a number of such examples in young 

 bees which fell to the ground and repeatedly 

 tried to rise without being able to mount 

 more than half a metre ; he had found as 

 many as a hundred in a day; all were born 

 of one mother. The same thing began to be 

 repeated the following year in the brood of 

 the same parent, so that he killed the ex- 

 traordinary mother. He adds "the daugh- 

 ter of this mother has so far given birth to 

 very few such monsters." Here, surely, is a 

 chance for some Weismannian experiments. 



