Miscellaneous. 65 
gone through all the contributions of previous writers, but also to 
have entered personally upon a most elaborate investigaion of the 
anatomy of the reproductive organs in the different forms of these 
insects. This portion of Mr. Buckton’s work is particularly valuable. 
The succeeding section, relating properly to fossil Aphides, is 
rather discursive, and strikes us as perhaps hardly in place in con- 
nexion with a Monograph of British Aphides. The author here 
enters more or less into a discussion of the occurrence of fossil 
insects in sedimentary rocks and in amber, and finally describes and 
figures the Aphides occurring in the latter, those determined by 
Heer from the Tertiary deposits of Giningen and Radoboj, and 
finally the species obtained by Mr. Scudder from the Tertiary basin 
of Florissant, in the Colorado region. ‘The last-mentioned forms 
have been determined and named by Mr. Buckton from Mr. Scudder’s 
drawings. 
The volume concludes with some practical remarks on natural 
and artificial checks to the increase of Aphides, and on preserving 
and dissecting these minute and delicate insects, which will prove 
of great service to intending students of the group, whose number 
we hope may be greatly increased by the facilities which Mr. Buck- 
ton’s labours have offered to them in his present work. His care- 
fully prepared descriptions and figures place in the hands of students 
a ready means of working out whatever is already known of the 
British forms of one of the most interesting and curious groups of 
insects, a group many members of which, from their wonderful 
fecundity, are among the most formidable foes of the farmer and the 
gardener, and which thus has as it were a double claim to our 
notice. In conclusion, we would heartily congratulate Mr. Buckton 
upon the completion of his work, which, although we know it to 
have been a labour of love, must nevertheless have tasked his 
energies severely. 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
On the Development of Balanoglossus. By Witrt1am Bateson, 
Cambridge, England*. 
Aw unlimited quantity of this remarkable form was easily to be 
obtained at half-tide all along the shores in the neighbourhood of 
Hampton, Virginia. The difficulties attending the investigation 
were far less than those that have been previously met with at other 
localities. Since the time during which I have been able to remain 
in America was exceedingly limited, I thought it best to confine my 
work at Hampton to the study of fresh specimens of the animal, 
and to the task of collecting and preserving them for subsequent 
* Note from the ‘Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory,’ 1883. 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. xiii. 5 
