170 



NATURE 



[June 19, 1890 



can be read in the " Epistola," not of Moufet, but of Sir 

 Theodore do Mayerne, in which he dedicates the work 

 to the illustrious Sir William Paddy, Moufet constructed 

 the " History " hoping to acquire fame by dedicating his 

 compilation to the Virgin Queen ; but she, as Hume 

 notes, was no great lover of literary or scientific men, and 

 the dedication appears not to have been accepted, and 

 shortly after her death Moufet also died. " Great poverty 

 at home " then delayed the publication, so the book lay 

 for a long time in obscurity, until it was offered to Sir T. 

 de Mayerne by Moufet's apothecary, Darnello. It lay 

 even then in de Mayerne's library for a long time, sub- 

 ject to the attacks of " moths and cockroaches," and that 

 through no fault of his, "but the printers demanded 

 too much money." In the month of May 1634, dedi- 

 cated to no sovereign, but to the " ever illustrious 

 Paddy," and having been approved of by " Guliel. 

 Bray, of Lambeth Palace," it was published in London 

 by Hope. 



Remembering who wrote the " Epistola," it is funny to 

 find Mr. Buckton writing, " Moufat was a true naturalist, 

 and well loved the subject of which he treated. In his 

 Epistola he dilates on the pleasure, &c., felt by the 

 operator, &c." Instead of Moufet one should read Th. 

 de Mayerne, and the operator was William Paddy, and 

 whoever may have been the Frenchman referred to in 

 this same paragraph, assuredly it was not Reaumur, for 

 he was not born until half a century after the publication 

 of Moufet's work. Perhaps enough in the way of criti- 

 cism has been written about this subject, but it seems 

 right to call attention to the numerous errors of transla- 

 tion from Moufet's Latin text, which errors are the more 

 to be deplored as the translation given in the Rev. Edw. 

 Topsel's " History of Animals," published in 1658, is 

 fairly accurate, and could have been easily referred to. 

 In referring to the text where Moufet writes about 

 the song of the Cicadas, Mr. Buckton deplores (p. xii.) its 

 want of clearness, and even ventures to emend it, but 

 Moufet's text is not correctly quoted, and in the transla- 

 tion the whole sense of the original is quite lost. Moufet, 

 no doubt, omitted the word 'KaXiarepav from his quotation, 

 but the words cited by Athenasus mean, " I have never 

 seen one more loquacious, no, neither a Cercopia, nor 

 a jay, nor a nightingale, nor a Tettiga, nor a turtle- 

 dove." 



Moufet may or may not have been disgusted with the 

 luxury of his day, and possibly partook of the Puritanic 

 spirit of the age (p. xxi.), but he could not have intended 

 that the word " magistrse " should have been translated 

 (even with a ?) as " mistresses " : the whole of the trans- 

 lation here is indeed curious ; the " health-giving diet of 

 one's forefathers," is interpreted to mean the "health- 

 giving tables of the iefUr sort " ! 



Leaving this portion of the subject, we pass on to briefly 

 notice the diagnoses of the species and the coloured 

 plates. We trust that we are not hypercritical if we 

 suggest that the student should have had some clue to 

 the classification adopted in this portion of the work ; 

 such may be given in the introduction, but, if so, we 

 presume it will have to explain the sequence of the 

 species and genera in the text, which surely ought to 

 have explained itself. Thus, under the heading, British 

 NO. 1077, VOL. 42] 



Cicadae, comes the genus Cicadetta, and this is followed 

 by "II. Membracidae, Stal," with two genera, Centrotus 

 and Gargara, after which we find " Fulgorinae, Sta.1.," 

 with III. Tettigometridae, IV. Issidae, and V. Cixiidse ; 

 but the next group, the Delphacidae, is not numbered, so 

 there is no help given one from the name-endings, or the 

 numerals, or, we may add, the typography, as to what 

 Mr. Buckton regards as a family, or a sub-family, nor 

 can we be quite sure always even of the names that he 

 would adopt for the forms described, as, for example, the 

 species given on pp. 28 and 29. 



We have thus pointed out a few of the blemishes that 

 to some slight extent mar the early pages of this important 

 and interesting work, and the literary student could easily 

 point out many more in the already published pages ot 

 the introductory chapter, still this part is of but secondary 

 value to the entomologist, and a little more attention to 

 the part containing the diagnoses of the genera and 

 species, and the recording the habitats of a// the British 

 forms, are points that can be easily attended to in the 

 future parts. Of 41 species of the genus Liburnia re- 

 corded as British, twenty-seven have no British habitat 

 quoted, unless, indeed, in some few cases, such phrases 

 as " common on marshy lands," "uncommon in England," 

 and "from Mr. Douglas's collection," are to be regarded 

 as such. 



The figures are drawn on stone by the author : those 

 of the perfect insects enlarged are very characteristic and 

 pretty, those of the anatomical details would be improved 

 by a little more distinctness in their outlines. 



While the British Cicadas are thus being monographed 

 by Mr. Buckton, those of the Orient are being mono- 

 graphed by Mr. W. L. Distant, the first two parts of a 

 "Monograph of Oriental Cicadidae" having been published 

 by order of the trustees of the Indian Museum, Calcutta. 

 Part I. is dated July 1889, and Part II. December 1889. 

 They are in large quarto, each containing twenty-four 

 pages and two plates. We have no words but those of 

 praise for this splendid work, which the trustees of the 

 Indian Museum are to be warmly congratulated on pub- 

 lishing. Mr. Distant leaves us in no doubt as to the forms 

 of which he treats : they belong to the sub-order of the 

 Homoptera, and to the family of the Cicadidce ; for this 

 family he adopts two divisions — the sub-families Cicadinae 

 and the Tibiceninae— while the diagnoses of the genera 

 and the species leave nothing to be desired. The typo- 

 graphy is excellent. A word of commendation is also 

 due to Mr. Horace Knight, to whom the drawing of the 

 figures from nature has been intrusted ; one figure on 

 each plate of a species of each genus is represented in 

 colours. 



Mr. Distant proposes in this work to fully describe and 

 figure all the species known from continental India and 

 Ceylon, the islands in the Bay of Bengal, in Burma, 

 Tenasserim, the Malay Peninsula, the length and breadth, 

 of the Malayan Archipelago, including, but extending 

 eastward of. New Guinea ; and, lastly. Eastern Asia, in- 

 cluding China and Japan. Thus this monograph will 

 include all the Oriental species. We trust the author may 

 bring this work, so auspiciously commenced, to a success- 

 ful issue. 



