220 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [xxxt, “262 
its habitat, and occasionally by critical taxonomic information or discus- 
sion. In many cases we find much to criticize in the latter, which is, in © 
a number of instances, too controversial for introduction in a work of 
this character. A book for the tyro is no place for the airing of moot 
points of relationship and nomenclature, and the average zoologist con- 
siders the critical matter accumulated in the composition of such a man- 
ual best published in advance in another paper, which action would re- 
move the otherwise inevitable doubt and uncertainty from the mind of 
the “tyro”? to whom the manual is addressed. 
The keys are relatively full and the illustrations numerous, although 
very few are original and many of those taken from other sources are 
poorly reproduced, in some cases on account of too great a reduction. 
In the Blattidae we find Compsodes cucullatus (Saussure and Zehntner) 
recorded from the United States for the first time. 
In the summary of the Saltatoria the author gives the impression that 
all sound made by the insects of the suborder is produced by or with the 
wings, overlooking the remarkable abdominal and limb sound-producing 
specialization found in the Old World Pneumorinae and in which the 
wings have no part. The grouse-locusts are considered a family equiva- 
lent in rank to the remainder of the locusts, which are termed the family 
Acrididae. The author shows a peculiar perversity in many of his con- 
clusions regarding the rank of forms treated, shutting his eyes to certain 
important structural features, often other than genitalic, which latter 
types of characters he frequently condemns although drawing upon them 
freely at other times. In more than one case he has fallen back upon a 
color feature to use in relegating a form to the limbo ofa “‘variety,” and 
has ignored in his argument a structural feature mentioned in the descrip- 
tion preceding it, and which a previous author had utilized. The con- 
clusions reached in the critical discussions of a number of species and 
races, as Radinotatum brevipenne, Trimerotropis acta, Podisma glacialis 
vartegata, the relationship of certain forms of Mermiria and of Chorto- 
phaga are not sound and not supported by the facts in the cases. The 
conception formed relative to the position of certain species described 
as belonging to the genus Eotettix and also the conclusions on the rela- 
tionship of many of the species of Melanoplus and certain of those of 
Hesperotettix are open to serious question. The naming of the form of 
Eritettix simplex which lacks supplementary carinae on the pronotum is 
unfortunate, as it opens to some workers the necessity for naming a num- 
ber of similar forms in the Amblytropidi as found elsewhere. The au- 
thor’s desire to retain his ‘“‘sylvestrus’”’, one of these forms of- Macneillia 
(there called Pedeticum), is possibly responsible for this attitude, which 
is quite out of keeping with his treatment of many other forms. 
Under the Tettigoniidae we find many sharply criticizable points, the 
general conclusion reached in regard to the relationship of Amblycorypha 
oblongifolia, A. floridana and A. floridana carinata being entirely unsound 
and not supported by the known and published facts. The nomenclatoral 
