NATURE 



[November i, 1894 



material used in the present work, nor are the type and 

 printing, especially in the later volumes, the best ever 

 produced in India. Misprints are numerous. One is 

 amusing : the Tibetan antelope is credited with no less 

 than ten horns. It is to be hoped that commentators on 

 the Apocalypse will not be led to believe that a ten- 

 homed beast really inhabits Tibet. 



On the whole, whilst in case a second edition is 

 required, careful revision is desirable, which might in 

 some cases take the form of abridgement and the 

 omission of irrelevant matter, the principal feature of 

 the work is the large amount of energy that has been 

 expended in its preparation, and the great effort that 

 has been made to bring together information from all 

 quarters. To write a complete account of the products 

 of India, and to give a full scientific and economic de- 

 scription, both of the products themselves and of the 

 sources from which they are derived, are tasks far 

 beyond the powers of any single individual, and that 

 could only be thoroughly carried out by a committee of 

 specialists. W. T. B. 



CHINESE AND JAPANESE BUTTERFLIES. 

 Butterflies from China, Japan, and Corea. By John 

 Henry Leech, B.A., F.L.S., F.Z.S., F.E.S., &c. 4to. 

 With forty-three coloured plates. (London : R. H. 

 Porter, 1S92-1S94.) 



UNTIL within the last few years, almost nothing was 

 known of the Palasarctic fauna, except that of 

 Europe and the Mediterranean sub-region, and though 

 butterflies are the most attractive and the easiest collected 

 of all insects, those with which we were acquainted from 

 Siberia, the greater part of China, and Japan, might 

 almost have been counted on the fingers. 



Since then, however, great progress has been made. 

 In the first place, Russian exploration and consolida- 

 tion have opened up vast regions of previously almost 

 unknown parts of Asia to science, and the work begun on 

 the .\mur and in Turkestan by Schrenck and Fedchenko, 

 has been worthily continued by the Grand Duke Nicholas 

 Mikhailovitch and his coadjutors, among whom the 

 brothers Groum-Grshimailo deserve the place of honour. 

 When shall we see one of our own Royal Princes bring- 

 ing out a work on the insects of one of our own colonies 

 to compare with RomanolTs " Mdmoires sur les 

 L<;pidoptires ? " In Western Europe, such work is left 

 to private enterprise. 



The French Jesuit missionaries, especially the Abbe 

 David, have penetrated to such out-of-the-way parts of 

 China, as Mou-pin, and have brought back large collec- 

 tions of different kinds, including many very remarkable 

 butterflies, which have been iiluitratcd ^by Oberthiir 

 in his " ittudes d'Entomologie." 



Since the time when Chinaand Japan were thrown open 

 to Europeans, English entomologists have not been be- 

 hindhand in the work of collection and description. The 

 fine collections formed in Japan by Lewis, Pryer, and 

 Maries have been worked out so well by Dr. Butler and 

 others, that the Lepidoptera: of Japan are now more 

 thoroughly known than those of any other part of Asia 

 except British India. The late Mr. W. B. Pryer published 

 a work on the butterflies of Japan, in the country itself, 

 NJ. 1305. VOL. 5 1] 



in EngUsh and Japanese, with coloured plates of all the 

 species known to him ; but as this book is scarce, and 

 the letterpress very meagre, we are glad that Mr. Leech 

 has included Japan in the important work which forms 

 the subject of the present article. 



]\lr. Leech commenced his entomological career by the 

 publication o'f a useful little volume on British Pyralidcr, 

 and by collecting excursions to the Canary Islands, 

 Brazil, &c. Subsequently he became interested in the 

 fauna of Eastern .Asia, and devoted eight years to its 

 study, and to the accumulation of materials for the present 

 work, not only by employing experienced collectors like 

 Pratt and Kricheldorf to explore the interior of China, 

 but by personally visiting and forming large collections 

 in the Himalayas, Corea, and Japan ; in Japan, indeed, 

 he succeeded in capturing almost every species of butterfly 

 known to inhabit the country. By this means, he gradu- 

 ally accumulated the fine collections on which he has 

 based his great work, in which he has been able fully 

 to describe 650 species, a large proportion of which are 

 figured in the forty-three excellent coloured plates 

 which accompany it. We have also a map, and five 

 plates of scenery (four of Western China and one of 

 Japan), the second of which exhibits a side-view of the 

 tremendous and almost perpendicular face of the moun- 

 tain of Omei-Shan, in the neighbourhood of which Mr. 

 Pratt obtained many of the most beautiful and interest- 

 ing butterflies which he discovered. 



The usefulness of the work is increased by an interest- 

 ing introduction, dealing with the literature of the subject, 

 the countries visited by the author and his collectors, 

 and a table of geographical distribution, divided into 

 the following columns : Japan, China, Corea, Amurland, 

 Himalayas, Thibet, Europe, and "other countries and 

 regions." 



The author remarks in his preface : " It is a matter of 

 regret that, owing to an almost complete absence of in- 

 formation respecting habits and life-histories of the 

 majority of the species, the work is unfortunately less 

 complete than the author could have wished." .All honour 

 to him for saying so. It is the duty of every entomo- 

 logist to seek for and record everything of the kind which 

 he can obtain ; but entomologists are sometimes too much 

 disposed to care only for the specimens they receive, 

 and it would not occur to them to encourage their 

 collectors, as they easily might do, to record anything 

 more than dates and localities. Mr.Leech, however, seems 

 both to have sought for and utilised such information, 

 so far as it was accessible or obtainable. 



On examining Mr. Leech's 650 species of butterflies, 

 which are distributed among rather more than 150 genera, 

 it becomes apparent that they are to a large extent 

 mainly an amplification of the European fauna. About 

 300 species are found in Europe proper, divided into about 

 50 genera, of which only about 9 genera, each including 

 but one, or at most two or three, species of very limited 

 range, are not represented in Mr. Leech's work. These 

 are Triphysa, Nciiicobius, Atirolis, Thestor, Zegris, 

 Doritis, Sftitotltyrus, Thymcticus, and Cyclopides ; and 

 there is no reason why some, even of these, should 

 not extend to Western China. In China the European 

 and Indian faunas meet and mingle ; thus in the 

 Satyrina, the Mountain Brown butterflies of the genus 



