20O ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [June, '05 



Entomological Literattire. 



Mengel's Catalogue of the Erycinid^e ok the World. — Ac- 

 curate catalogues are indispensible to the systematic worker in Entomo- 

 logy. In some families and even orders it is not a hopeless task to find 

 out whether a given species is described, but without a good catalogue it 

 nvolves far more labor than many of us have time to give it. A cata- 

 logue is always an inducement for others to study the group treated- 

 Prof. Mengel has given us an accurate and painstaking piece of work, 

 and has published it at his own expense. A good general catalogue of 

 the butterflies is badly needed, and we hope some one will do for the 

 other families what Prof. Mengel has done for the Erycinidae. 



The very interesting and instructive paper by Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Peck- 

 ham on "The Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps." published by 

 the Wisconsin Biological Survey, Madison, 1898, has been revised and, 

 with much additional matter, appears under the title " Wasps, Social and 

 Solitary," by George W. Peckham and Elizabeth G. Peckham. With an 

 Introduction by John Burroughs. Illustrations by James H. Emerton. 

 Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. [April], 1905. Pp. xv, 

 311. The titles of the chapters are : Communal Life, Ammophila and 

 and her Caterpillars, The Great Golden Digger, Several Little Wasps, 

 Crabro, An Island Settlement, The Burrowers, The Wood-Borers, The 

 Spider-Hunters, The Enemies of the Grasshopper, Workers in Clay, 

 Sense of Direction, Instinct and Intelligence. From the Introduction we 

 quote; " I am free to confess that I have had more delight in reading this 

 book than in reading any other nature-book for a long time. Such a 

 queer little people as it reveals to us, so whimsical, so fickle, so fussy, 

 so forgetful, so wise and yet so foolish, such vicrims of routine and yet so 

 individual, with such apparent foresight and yet such thoughtlessness, . . . 

 hardly any two alike. ..." 



Miss Isabel McCracken has a paper on " A Study of the 'Inheritance of 

 Dichromatism in Lina lapponica" in The Journal of Experimental Zoology, 

 Vol. ii. No. I, Baltimore, 1905, giving the results of breeding experiments 

 on this Chrysomelid beetle carried on during 1904 at the Entomological 

 Laboratory of Stanford University, California. There are two color forms 

 of this species in both sexes, one with black elytra, the other with each 

 elytron brown with 7 black spots. By breeding, cross-breeding and inter- 

 breeding these two forms through several generations, the experimenter 

 sought to test Mendel's principles of dominance and segregation as shown 

 by the color of the elytra. The results are expressed in a series of valu- 

 able tables, and from their summary we can quote only the following : 

 " No amount of crossing between the two characters in question accom- 

 plishes any disintegration or breaking up of either one. These are abso- 

 lutely fixed with reference to each other in this species. . . . Blacks ap- 

 pearing in a cross between the two opposing characters transmit black 



