102 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



RECENT LITERATURE. 



Etudes de Lepidopterologie Comparee, fasc. in. Charles Oberthur. 

 Eennes : June, 1909. 



We have received from Eennes the third part of M. Charles Ober- 

 thiir's " Etudes de Lepidopterologie Comparee," an ample volume of 

 415 pages, illustrated by no fewer than twenty-five coloured plates, 

 and divided up into five separate papers, of which by far the most 

 interesting to British readers will be the last, " Notes pour servir a 

 6tablir la Faune Fran^aise, et Algerienne des Lepidopteres." For 

 this paper is in fact the beginning of the first comprehensive work on 

 the Butterflies of France since the time of Berce — a sufficiently long 

 interval filled up for the most part by authors who have busied them- 

 selves with repeating the observations, and not a few of the errors, of 

 their predecessors of the middle-nineteenth century. So far as we 

 are aware, it is also the first attempt made by a French naturalist of 

 the highest authority to summarize and explain the existence and 

 meaning, the limitations and possibilities of variation in the many 

 species brought under his own personal notice. Since not the least 

 merit of these "Etudes" consists in their being the individual work 

 of a scientist who, having unrivalled opportunities of forming a 

 collection without peer among the private collections of the world, 

 has turned his advantages to the use of the student. 



M. Oberthiir may not hold the same views of species, nor employ 

 a nomenclature more advanced than that of Staudinger, but he 

 justifies his arrangement by repeated references to the earliest autho- 

 rities. Nor is the work such a one as commends itself to the 

 advanced entomologist alone. Written with the ease and charm 

 which seem to flourish more naturally in literary France than in 

 England, M. Oberthur delights to tarry in the flowery Breton by- 

 paths, or in the splendid solitudes of the Pyrenees — his own particu- 

 lar happy hunting-grounds — to discourse upon the rare virtues and 

 fellowship of the many lepidopterists with whom he has taken the 

 field, from Guenee onw^ard ; or to paint a charming word-picture of 

 pastures and uplands wholly beyond the ken of our most enthusiastic 

 butterfly hunters. His vision of Angouleme, on the threshold of the 

 Midi, in the transparent sunshine of a still summer morning ; the 

 tender references to the father who first kindled in him the love of 

 Nature ; the grateful optimism which has preserved his afi'ection for 

 men and winged things alike, fresh and untainted — all contribute to 

 make these studies the more enchanting, without depreciating in the 

 least their scientific value. To those deeply interested, as the writer 

 of this notice, in the distribution of the Lepidoptera of Western 

 Europe, and often seeking in vain for accurate and reliable informa- 

 tion, they are a mine of wealth. For, although there are innumerable 

 Catalogues of many departments in existence from Duponohel and 

 Donzel to M. de Johannis" — that is, from the beginning of French 



* " Contribution a I'Etude des Lepidopteres du Morbihan," par J. de 

 Johannis, Ann. Ent. Soc. Fr. 1908, pp. 689-868, a work of special value as a 

 guide to the Micro-Lepidoptera of the Department, but containing some 

 truly remarkable records of species among the butterflies, and the time of 

 their appearance ! 



