100 BihliograpMcal Notices. 



Careless and ill-informed authors of this class are the terror of 

 systematists in all branches of biology. Their sole object seems to 

 be the association of their names with as many " new species " as. 

 possible ; and one's first impulse on seeing "A Description of Some 

 New Genera and Species" &c. is to parody "The Bogie Han," and 

 say with bated breath, 



Hush ! Hush ! Hush ! Here comes the Species Man. 



I wiU conclude by expressing my hope that Mr. Miller will take 

 my remarks in good part : for he has recently made it very clear 

 that he is extremely sensitive to criticism, more especially to some 

 which appeared in "that conduit of English ignorance and conceit, 

 the ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' " and was erro- 

 neously attributed by him to 



P. Herbert Carpenter. 



American Spiders and their Spinning Worlc. A Natiiral History of 

 the Orh-iveaving Spiders of the United States, tvith special regard 

 to their Industrg and Habits. By Henry C. McCook, D.D. &c. 

 Published by the Author, Philadelphia. Vols. I. & II. 4to, demy. 



That second thoughts are best is a saying which, whether true or 

 false in the majority of instances, is undoubtedly deserving of the 

 former epithet so far as the volumes before us are concerned. To 

 write a natural history of all orders of North-American spiders was 

 the author's original wish ; but it soon became apparent that the 

 attempt to compress into a reasonable space adequate descriptions of 

 the habits and structure of such a multitude of species would inevi- 

 tably result in the omission of many important facts and in the 

 superficial treatment of others. Dr. McCook consequently very 

 wisely decided to abandon his original design and to devote his 

 work solely to an account of the Orbitolarias of his country ; and 

 when we see that the history of even this small section of the group 

 occupies three volumes quarto, we cannot but congratulate both 

 ourselves and the author upon the alteration that his plans liave 

 undergone. 



Up to the present time but two volumes out of the three have 

 appeared ; but since the third will treat almost exchisively of the 

 technical descriptions of the genera and species, its publication will 

 be looked forward to by merely those few zoologists who devote 

 themselves to systematic araneology. 



Seeing that one of the most notable characteristics of the Araiiese 

 — certainly the characteristic with which the word spider is most 

 commonly associated in the popular mind — is the construction of 

 tliose familiar objects known as cobwebs, Dr. McCook has acted 

 wisely in setting apart the first of his volumes to the consideration 

 of the various kinds of snares, their formation, function, and classi- 

 fication. Moreover, a study of the nature of the snares is of great 

 importance in view of the prominence that is given to these struc- 



