14^ ENTOMOLOGiCAi, NEWS. [May, '19 



'The Wings of Insects/' by J. H. Comstock, Emeritus Professor 

 of Entomology and General Invertebrate Zoology in Cornell Univer- 

 sity. 4to, pp. XVIII. +430, plates i-x, figs. 1-427, and Bibliography. 

 Published by the Comstock Publishing Co., Ithaca, N. Y. Price $3.75. 



This fine volume marks the completion of the edifice which has been 

 its author's life's work, viz., the study of the wings, and in particular 

 the wing-venation, of insects. Though there are still some conserva- 

 tive entomologists who refuse to accept the Comstock-Needham system 

 of notation for the wing-veins of insects; their number must be 

 rapidly decreasing, and the system is indispensable to any student who 

 »vould work beyond the limits of a single order. 



Amongst the many fine chapters in this book, the author himself 

 would probably be the first to acknowledge that the most important is 

 that on the basal connections of the tracheae of the wings, by R. N. 

 Chapman, M.A. — a quite original piece of work which stamps its 

 author as one of the finest entomological dissectors of the age. Origin- 

 ally the study of these basal connections, as well as of the specializa- 

 tions at the base's of the veins themselves, was greatly neglected. In 

 the present volume, a great advance has been made in overcoming this ; 

 but it is evident that much more remains to be done, and we must 

 not accept this book as in any way the final decision on many im- 

 portant points. It is, perhaps, especially to be regretted that the au- 

 thor should have attempted to fix a single type of venation, with a 

 definite number of branches, as the original possession of the first 

 insects; for any student of the Palaeozoic fossils can only come to 

 the conclusion that there was nothing more variable from the very 

 first, than the number of branches of each of the main veins. In 

 working from this type, and so determining every known type of vena- 

 tion in terms of it, the author falls into some grave errors of which, 

 perhaps, the most serious is the determination to keep the cubitus 

 two-branched in the Lepidoptera, the extra basal branch being ex- 

 plained as the first analis migrated over to join the cubitus. By this, 

 the obvious homologies of the cubital branches in the Lepidoptera, 

 with those of the older Megaloptera, Mecoptera and Planipennia, are 

 entirely lost sight of. 



The removal of the Microptcrygidac from the Lepidoptera to the 

 Trichoptera is the most drastic change from accepted classification 

 proposed in the book. It is a good example of the kind of conclusion 

 that can sometimes be reached by considering only one set of charac- 

 ters, and ignoring all the rest. But even from the point of view of 

 wing-venation it is scarcely defensible, for a careful study of the fresh- 

 ly turned pupae of any of the older families of Lepidoptera will show 

 that their wing-tracheation agrees closely with that of Micropteryx, 

 particularly in the difl^erent courses of Cu and lA in fore and hind 

 wings. Moreover, the pupal wing of Micropteryx has a complete trache- 



