Marcu 5, 1914] 
The value of such work was well expressed in 
the letter written by Huxley to Francis Darwin 
(“Life of Darwin,” vol. i., p. 347), which begins 
with the sentence :—‘‘In my opinion your sagaci- 
ous father never did a wiser thing than when 
he devoted himself to the years of patient toil which 
the Cirripede book cost him.” 
The three volumes of the Hope reports that 
have recently been issued may be regarded as an | 
indication of the revival of systematic zoology after 
a period of comparative neglect, and a sign that 
some of our best thinkers are beginning to realise 
that “the great danger which besets all men of 
large speculative faculty is the temptation to deal 
with the accepted statements of fact in natural 
science as if they were not only correct, but 
exhaustive.” 
The entomologists who are associated with Prof. 
Poulton in the Hope Department at Oxford are 
engaged in the study of large and important 
speculative questions, but, as these volumes show, 
their work is based upon the careful detailed study 
and descriptive statement which pure systematic 
work demands. They have the great advantage 
which the rapid growth of the collections in the 
Hope department affords of basing their con- 
clusions upon the study of a very large number 
of specimens that have been sent to the museum 
from various parts of the world by the band of 
skilled collectors and keen observers that Prof. 
Poulton has interested in his work; and whether 
we agree with the conclusions or not, we must 
feel confident that the work has been done with 
a thoroughness and wealth of illustration that has 
probably been unequalled in the history of specula- 
tive zoology. 
Our interest naturally centres, in the first in- 
stance, on the progress that has been made during 
the pericd, of which these volumes form the record, 
in the study of mimicry and protective resem- 
blance. It has been urged so frequently as an 
objection to the theories of Batesian and Miillerian 
mimicry that the insects that are supposed to 
exhibit them are not subject to the attacks of birds 
or other vertebrates gifted with eyes that can see 
or be deceived by colour patterns; and that the 
palatability of their flesh cannot in any way be an 
advantage to them in their struggle for existence ; 
that the experiments in this connection of Mr. 
Pocock on the palatability of British insects, and 
the observations of Mr. Swynnerton on butter- 
flies attacked by birds in Rhodesia are of special 
interest. The negative evidence of observers who 
say they have never seen a particular species of 
insect attacked by birds is really of very little value 
compared with the positive evidence that is 
accumulating, and the onus of proof is now shifted 
from those who support the theory of mimicry 
to its opponents. 
But a still more interesting discussion for the 
general reader upon which these volumes throw 
much new light is on the question of the origin 
of the mimetic forms. Have, for example, the 
four mimetic females of the well-known African 
butterfly Papilio dardanus arisen by sudden 
NO. 2314, VOL. 931 
NATURE 
Il 
mutations, or by the natural selection of small 
variations from a common type? It will be diff- 
cult for Prof. Poulton to persuade the mutation- 
ists that they are wrong, that in this particular 
instance the many transitional forms between the 
dominant mimetic forms that the Hope collections 
include do indicate that it is by the selection of 
slight variations in the right direction that the 
similarity between the mimics and their models 
has been reached, but the gradually accumulating 
series of facts bearing upon this discussion which 
these volumes contain are of extraordinary value 
in giving those who have not yet declared them- 
selves on one side or the other a rich harvest for 
their consideration. 
It is in a discussion such as this that the trained 
eye and detailed knowledge of the systematic 
entomologist is of supreme value, and the weighty 
article by Mr. R.:C. L. Perkins on the colour 
groups of Hawaiian wasps, and the paper by 
Colonel Manders on his temperature experiments 
on Danais and Hypolimnas in Colombo, will be 
read with much interest. 
It is quite impossible in a short notice to do 
justice to the many articles of interest that the 
volumes contain, but special attention may be 
directed to the interesting address by Dr. Dixey, 
as president of the Entomological Society, on the 
effect of external influences on the germ plasm in 
insects, and the evidence it affords bearing on the 
theories of evolution, and to the essay by Mr. 
Guy Marshall on the limitations of the Millerian 
hypothesis. To the morphologist, Prof. Poulton’s 
memoir on the structure of the lepidopterous pupa, 
and Mr. Eltringham’s account of the male genital 
armature of the species of the genus Acraea, and 
to the systematist Mr. Shelford’s elaborate and 
beautifully illustrated memoirs on the Orthoptera, 
Mr. Eltringham’s important contributions to our 
knowledge of the African species of the genus 
Acraea, Colonel Bingham’s memoir on_ the 
Aculeate Hymenoptera and other shorter papers 
will prove to be of interest. 
Prof. Poulton and his colleagues may be 
heartily congratulated on the extensive and im- 
portant contribution to knowledge they have made 
during the period that is covered by these three 
handsome volumes. Sufi wd: 
DR. MAWSCN’S ANTARCTIC 
EXPEDITION. 
R. MAWSON has returned from the Ant- 
arctic to Australia, and readers of his 
message to the Times, recounting his wonderful 
escape after a month’s march alone, when he had 
witnessed the death of two companions, will con- 
gratulate him on the courage and endurance which 
saved him from an end like theirs. The three 
were on a march of exploration south-eastward 
from the main base in Adélie Land, in November- 
January, 1912-13, when Lieutenant Ninnis fell 
with a loaded sledge into a crevasse. Dr. Mertz 
and Dr. Mawson, in the face of starvation owing 
to this disaster, returned to within one hundred 
