82 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [Feb., 14 
exaggerations and legends which have collected about my person, and 
thus to set all things in their true light.” 
A common fault in biographies is that they are generally too lauda- 
tory, and in this book the author has not neglected his opportunities in 
this respect. However, if it be a fault, it is one that can be readily for- 
given. The most interesting part of the book is the account of the life 
of a very modest man, who never took advantage of any untoward 
means of personal advancement, an enemy to all advertisement, depend- 
ing solely on honesty of purpose and an effort to investigate the won- 
ders of nature for the joy of the work and with the hope that mankind 
would benefit from his endeavors. The pleasure was in the work and 
the hope of material reward unseen and unlooked for. 
The title of the work illustrates another feature in such books. Au- 
thors are prone to look so far into the poetic and aesthetic side that 
they develop a pronounced myopia in relation to the necessary technical 
and scientific part of all natural history investigation. On the other 
hand the true scientist and systematist sees the poetic and aesthetic as- 
pect but also recognizes the absolute necessity of a scientific terminology. 
In fact, it is the aesthetic that starts him on the road. Our author 
makes Fabre appear restless as a user of the technical names of insects; 
yet use them he must. He also places him as an opponent of evolution, 
at least in part. 
The lay reader of the book would suppose that all things related in 
the work were the discoveries of the “Poet of Science,” yet all careful 
students of science know that most of the important facts and discov- 
eries in nature and science have been cumulative and built up like con- 
cretions, or like the rolled snowball, that has had a push from many 
hands, before it reaches its final resting place. The book, however, is a 
most interesting one and was constructed by loving hands, in honor of a 
modest man who has done a noble work as a naturalist, entomologist 
and as a literary chronicler of our minute, but none the less mighty, lit- 
tle friends and enemies—HENryY SKINNER. (Advertisement.) 
Two Booxs on ANIMAL EcoLocy. 
ANIMAL COMMUNITIES IN TEMPERATE AMERICA, AS ILLUSTRATED IN 
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Published for the Geographic Society of Chicago by the University of 
Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, October, 1913, 8vo., pp. xiii, 362. 
More than 300 figures, maps and diagrams. Price $3.00 net, postpaid 
$3.22. 
GuIDE To THE STupY oF ANIMAL Econocy, by CHARLES C. ADAMS, 
Pxu.D., Associate in Animal Ecology, Department of Zoology, Univer- 
sity of Illinois, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1913, 12 mo., pp. xii, 
183. 7 figures. Price $1.25. 
