Ixxi 



characters of the moths. That a casual peep at a drawer-full of 

 larv£e should i:)roduce such a transformation-scene says little for 

 our lepidopterists ; and if Mr. Butler's views are to prevail, it 

 shows what wholesale disintegration of a system, based on mere 

 superficial resemblance of the imago, in which for j^ears we have 

 all been content to acquiesce, may be expected to ensue when 

 attention is paid to the earlier stages, and when, instead of merely 

 collecting so many butterflies and moths and arranging them in a 

 cabinet, the insects are studied ah ovo, and their metamorphoses 

 and habits are thoroughly investigated. 



Of course the publications of this Society represent but a 

 portion of the work of our entomologists during the year ; and 

 in referring to three recent publications on the comparatively 

 neglected groups of the Spiders, the Plant-lice, and the Crayfish, 

 my only regret is that we have not the honour to count their 

 authors amongst our members. In ' The Spiders of Dorset,' the 

 Rev. O. Pickard Cambridge has produced a little volume, the 

 introduction to which raises it far above the level of ordinary local 

 lists ; Blackwall's 300 British species are now increased to over 

 500; of these 358 have been found in Dorsetshire, nearly 70 jjer 

 cent, of the whole in one county, and by far the greater part of 

 them in tlie parish of Bloxworth ; whence the inference is easy, 

 that with a few more Cambridges scattered about the land, the 

 number of British Spiders would not long remain at five hundred : 

 the second volume is to contain, by waj^ of Appendix to the 

 County List, a Supplemental List with diagnoses of the British 

 species which have not yet been found in Dorsetshire, and tlie 

 work will thus form a complete monograph of the British 

 Arachnida. The Ray Society has produced the second volume 

 of Mr. Buckton's ' Monograph of the British Aphides,' a work 

 which ought to have the effect of increasing the number of 

 students of our plant-lice; there are 99 beautiful plates, and 

 another volume is required to complete the task. Under the 

 unassuming title of ' The Crayfish,' Prof. Huxley has written a 

 capital little book, in which, after adverting to the not uncommon 

 belief that what is termed science is of a different nature from 

 ordinary knowledge, and that the methods by which scientific 

 truths are ascertained involve mental operations of a recondite 

 and mysterious nature, comprcliensible only by the initiated, the 

 autlior asserts that there is no solid foundation for the belief that 



