1910] Reviews 169 
somewhat local, species in California. It flies in the hot sunshine 
and seems to have a preference for open plots in wooded localities 
and along the roadsides. Professor French, in his paper already 
alluded to, has fully described the preparatory stages, there being 
but one brood a year. The food-plant is Pentestemon and Professor 
French has also fed the larve on Ribes aureum (Missouri Currant). 
In fact, the larve, like other Arctians, should prove to be quite 
general feeders. About San Francisco Bay, the adult insect emerges 
in late April and May. I have taken specimens in the Sierra 
Nevadas in Placer County, early in April. 

REVIEWS. 
Meunier, F. Monographie der Leptiden und der Phoriden des Bernsteins. 
Jahrb. d. kénigl. Preuss. Geolog. Landenanstalt, Vol. 30, pp. 64-90, pls. 
3-7. Berlin, 1909. 
Meunier has given in the present paper descriptions of a number of 
species of Leptidz and Phoride (principally the latter) occurring in Baltic 
Amber. Of Leptidz, he recognizes two genera, Leptis and Atherix, seven 
species of the former and three of the latter, while in the Phoride three 
genera are recorded, Phora, Aphiochewta and Conicera with fourteen, five 
and one species respectively. A comparison of the Phorids with recent 
species is rather difficult as their describer fails to mention many of the 
characters used for the separation of living forms, and lays great stress 
upon the comparative length of the tarsal joints which have not been 
hitherto extensively used in the classification of recent species. 
There are several species, however, which are of especial interest. One, 
Phora vincta Meun. resembles greatly in the armature of the legs, species 
of the section Dorniphora Dahl, represented in both the American and the 
Malayan regions and the antiquity of this very minor group may explain 
its present wide distribution. Another, Phora concinna* has a_ peculiar 
flattened space on the hind tibia resembling a structure seen in certain 
Platypezide and Dolichopodide, but known among the Phoride only in 
three species of Aphiocheta (4. smithii Brues from America and A. hirti- 
ventris Wood, and A. derasa Wood from Europe). Five tolerably well exe- 
cuted plates accompany the paper. C. T. Brues. 
Banks, Nathan. Catalogue of Nearctic Spiders. Bull. U. S. National 
Museum, No. 72, pp. 80. Washington, 1910. 
The little attention which systematic zodlogists have bestowed upon 
spiders in this country has undoubtedly been due in great measure to the 

*Not the Phora concinna of Meigen (1830) which is a common European 
species, and entirely different from this one to which Meunier inadvertently 
gives the same name. 
