RECENT LITERATURK. 77 



and the gregarious and family habits in butterfly larvae. The body of 

 volume ii., however, is given over to the British Euralines (Thec- 

 linae) and Celastrina (Cyaniris) argiolus, with which most collectors 

 are familiar enough in the imago state, and a first result of detailed 

 attention to their earlier stages confirms the view that the hetero- 

 geneous classifications of previous authors — notably of Staudinger — 

 can no longer be justified on a scientific basis. True, Mr. Tutt in- 

 dulges in a kind of nomenclature that the older school will scarcely 

 admire, and though his generic prefix for lo-album — Echvardsia — is 

 perforce superseded by Chattendenia in the pages containing "Corri- 

 genda," the further transformation will not reconcile sticklers for 

 form and euphony. It remains for an Entomological Congress of the 

 future, conducted on international lines, to give finality to such 

 things. Meanwhile Mr. Tutt makes it abundantly clear that some of 

 the " Linnean shibboleths" will have to be discarded as the natural 

 consequence of the wider knowledge attained in no small degree by his 

 own indefatigable patience and industry, although, as urged in his pre- 

 face, we owe a first debt of gratitude to Scudder in this respect for light 

 and leading on the right way — that is to say, in educating us to 

 recognize the importance of observing the living object as compared 

 with museum and cabinet research, which chiefly concerns itself 

 with cataloguing and orderly arrangement, in accordance with con- 

 vention and convenience, rather than scientific accuracy. 



But, while Mr. Tutt has provided the' biological student who 

 desires to approach the subject in a serious spirit with much solid 

 material, he expresses himself in language which can be understood 

 and enjoyed by that larger audience to whom natural history appeals 

 as no more than a pleasant holiday for the mind. That, in our 

 opinion, is the charm of Mr. Tutt's writing. An experienced and 

 keen worker in the field, he is careful to avoid the dry-as-dust 

 phraseology and treatment which so often discourages and repels ; 

 he is not above the inclusion of those "purple patches" which give 

 colour and variety to highly technical subjects ; into the library he 

 imports the genial gleam of woodland, down, and heath, with which 

 our interesting butterfly fauna is associated. If anything, the 

 sections which include locality and habitat are treated too diffusely 

 in the case of common insects, and some quite unnecessary repetitions 

 might have been avoided. But in the case of our rarer species, for 

 good and obvious reasons, we are not sorry that county records are 

 often vague and of ancient date. Those who are in the field for 

 purely scientific purposes will never, we imagine, have the least 

 difficulty in getting such information as they require for legitimate 

 purposes from their friends and colleagues. 



Again, there is a refreshing absence of insularity throughout 

 these pages. Assisted materially by the discoveries of Dr. Chapman, 

 Mr. Bethune-Baker, and others, Mr. Tutt is able to announce even in 

 this single volume the identity of several ranked species, especially 

 in the wide-ranging genus Celastrina (Cyaniris) ; while, in the parts 

 of volume iii. already to hand, he has established a similar state of 

 things in the several forms of Everes, hitherto separated as distinct 

 in the Nearctic and Palaearctic regions. With the admirable photo- 

 micrographic plates by Mr. F. Noad Clark, and Mr. H. Main, before us, 



