igOl] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 217 



phy is going to popularize the study of insects as we long ago predicted. 

 Dr. Weed has done wonderfully well and deserves great credit for being 

 one of the first in the photographic field. VV^e have pointed out some 

 poor results in photography simply that advancement may be made. We 

 are firm believers in the method and don't expect perfection at once. 

 We can illustrate where this book will find its utility. A gentleman came 

 into the Academy and picking it up, opened it at pages 120 and 121. One 

 page, 120, is a figure of a Luna moth, and on 121 a figure of a dragonfly. 

 He asked if the moth changed (transformed) into the dragonfly.— H. S. 



The Insect Book. — We have received for review the kind of book 

 we have hoped for and looked for these many years. It is also the book 

 we shall recommend to the many students, teachers and young persons 

 who so frequently come to us and ask, "What book can I get that will 

 tell me what I wish to know about insects." No single work can cover 

 such a vast field as that of Entomology, but the " Insect Book," by Dr. 

 Howard, is the " open sesame" to further knowledge and lays the founda- 

 tion and pxaints out the way. The book is of the same size and general 

 appearance as "Holland's Butterfly Book," and is a " Popular Account 

 of the Bees, Wasps, Ants, Grasshoppers, Flies and other North Ameri- 

 can Insects, e.xclusive of the Butterflies, Moths and Beetles, with full Life 

 Histories, Tables and Bibliographies." By Leland O. Howard, Ph. D., 

 Chief of the Division of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 

 The publishers are Doubleday, Page & Co., 34 Union Square, New York. 

 Sent postpaid to any address on approval. Price $3.00 net. The work 

 contains 429 pages, including index and bibliography. There are 300 

 valuable text cuts, 16 full page plates in color and 32 in black and white. 

 The plates as a whole are excellent, and demonstrate what the future 

 holds in photographic methods. There is a lack of detail in some of the 

 figures, and in some cases the colors are failures, especially in the metallic 

 blues of the wings in the wasps which come out red. This is mentioned 

 to call attention to the fact that the photographer, by careful study and use 

 of the proper lenses, can do much better. We predict the day when any 

 other method will be a thing of the past for any but very minute insects. 

 Many of the figures are wonderfully beautiful, and we do not believe any 

 artist, living or dead, could produce them as well. There is mechanical 

 accuracy, exact reproduction of texture, faultless neuration and other good 

 features. There are a few errors. The sexes of Mutilla occidentalis are 

 incorrect, and the name of fig. 22, plate v, is wrong. The introduction is 

 very thoughtful and suggestive, and the author says " if I had not thought 

 it was needed I never should have written it." We can understand this 

 feeling. Dr. Howard knows the importance of the study, and he takes 

 this means of interesting people in it. The beginner is usually appalled 

 by a dry scientific treatise, and the details that appeal to the devotee only 

 discourage the person who at first only feels the poetry of nature, the 



