Bibliographical Notices. 483 
already referred to. These provide interesting reading, and will go 
far to compensate for the deficiencies of the book in other respects. 
The plates seem on the whole well up to the average. In some 
of the figures we miss that attention to structural detail which was 
to be expected from an artist who is at the same time the author of 
a work on entomology. The beetle represented at fig. 2, pl. ii., as 
having three-jointed tarsi and six-jointed antenne gives a very 
erroneous idea of the characters of the family Tenebrionidex, to 
which it is said to belong. The neuration of the wings is, in some 
cases also, less accurate than is desirable in a work where the 
beginner has to rely almost wholly upon the figures for the identi- 
fication of the species as well as for a knowledge of the structural 
characters of families. This leads us to notice that the author has 
introduced into the book a certain number of species which he 
refers to as new. He figures but does not describe them, nor does 
he give any clue as to where descriptions of them may be found. 
li he wishes to obtain recognition from the systematic entomolo- 
gist for the names he has given to’these species he would do well- 
to publish brief technical descriptions of them. 
Notwithstanding the defects pointed out we trust that this work 
may succeed in the purpose for which it was written, of inducing 
the youths of New Zealand to take a more active interest in 
entomological science. 
On the Modifications of Organisms. By Davip Symn. Melbourne: 
George Robinson and Co. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 
and Co. 
Somr idea of the spirit of this book may be gathered from the 
following sentence:—‘ Darwin describes the action of natural 
selection as preservative and accumulative, but properly speaking 
it isa purely destructive process. It is heredity and not natural 
selection which is preservative and accumulative.” 
In a very vigorous fashion Mr. Syme denies almost every state- 
ment which Darwin relied on, maintaining that he “* has practically 
abandoned his theory altogether when he admits that the tendency 
to vary in the same manner is so strong that whole species may be 
modified without the aid of any form of natural selection.” He 
asserts that ‘‘ Darwin’s language is wanting in precision, and his 
definitions and theories are variable and contradictory,” even to 
forgetting his own statement of what natural selection is, The 
survival of the fittest should be the result of natural selection or the 
struggle for life; yet Darwin uses. the three terms as synonymous. 
But, according to Mr. Syme, “it is the organism which struggles, 
not, however, to select this or that variation, but to adapt itself to 
its environment.” Darwin, with good reason (except, perhaps, as to 
