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NA rURE 



\_Nov. 26, 1885 



locality within the region for each species is recorded ; 

 thus, as so iarge a number of new species are described, 

 it is evident that the volume will be an indispensable 

 necessity to every future student of the Neotropical 

 Adephaga. It contains moreover what is practically a 

 new classification of the family Carabidie. Its author 

 has long been known and respected as an entomological 

 systematist, for it is now nearly twenty-five years since he 

 inaugurated a rational classification of the Rhopalocera or 

 butterflies. He has been recognised since the death of 

 Baron Chaudoir as the one entomologist possessing an ex- 

 tensive yet intimate knowledge of theCarabidas of the whole 

 world. But Chaudoir, though he published a crowd of 

 valuable memoirs on the family, died without leaving 

 behind him any general work on its classification. It 

 is therefore a matter for congratulation that the author 

 of this beautiful volume has presented us with a syste- 

 matic arrangement as complete as the faunistic nature 

 of the work permitted ; it is one that requires, indeed, 

 comparatively little supplement from the faunae of other 

 countries to render it quite complete. Assisted by the 

 labours of LatreilIe,Dejean, Lacordaire, Schiodte, Leconte, 

 and Chaudoir, and availing himself largely of the valuable 

 work recently published by Horn, he has been able to 

 form of the numerous sub-families, which are the equiva- 

 lents of Horn's tribes, aggregates of greater importance, 

 which he terms subdivisions. The family Carabids is of 

 such enormous extent — 12,000 species being known, with 

 a vast number of others to come — that the necessity of 

 some series of intelligible aggregates subordinate to the 

 division, but superior to the tribe or sub-family, is un- 

 deniable, and Mr. Bates' attempt to furnish such a series 

 is therefore of great value, even though his subdivisions 

 are at present capable of only loose and partly traditional 

 definition. The division II, of Carabid^ comprises eight 

 of these subdivisions based chiefly on the form and 

 sexual clothing of the male tarsi and on the form 

 of the apices of the elytra. It is evident that the 

 classification of such an enormous comple.>c as the 

 Carabidas will require for its perfection the combined 

 efforts of many naturalists, and if Mr. Bates's subdivisions 

 are sufficiently natural they will be gradually evoluted and 

 perfected by others, and we may therefore indicate that 

 the first of them, viz. the Diversimani or Pedunculati 

 seems scarcely tenable. The variability of structure or 

 an organ amounts only to a negative, not a positive state- 

 ment, and is therefore useless for practical purposes ; and 

 if we add to this, that other characters now considered in 

 the Carabida: to be of much importance, such as the 

 number of glabrous joints at the base of the antennas, are 

 also subject to much variation in the aggregate, it is evi- 

 dent that a change in its composition is inevitable. We 

 would also venture to call in question the propriety of 

 treating the Pseudomorphinffi as merely a sub-family of 

 Truncatipennes. Horn accords them the much higher 

 rank equivalent to the " division " of Bates, and as they 

 are to a considerable extent synthetic between the univer- 

 sally recognised two great divisions of Carabida, it is 

 probable that this will, from a systematic point of view, 

 prove nearly correct. Bates, however, only expresses 

 himself with considerable hesitation on this point, and as 

 the group is chiefly Australian, it will devolve on some 

 student of the Australian fauna to work out this ques- 



tion of primary importance to the classification of the 

 Adephaga. 



The thirteen plates with which the volume is adorned 

 supply coloured figures of no less than 325 species repre- 

 senting upwards of 100 genera. The figures are litho- 

 graphs coloured by hand, and though they are, we believe, 

 about the best that can be obtained in this country at 

 present, they are certainly not equal to some of the 

 refined lithographic figures of insects that have in recent 

 years been produced in Austria ; they are, however, so 

 good as to enable the species to be recognised from them 

 with certainty, and will therefore be a very welcome boon 

 to entomologists. 



Messrs. Godman and Salvin, the editors of the work, 

 are to be congratulated on this satisfactory completion of 

 the first part of the Coleoptera. No faunistic work that 

 has hitherto been published gives anything near to so 

 complete an idea of the vast wealth of tropical nature in 

 insects, it being usual for only a few of the more con- 

 spicuous forms of this class to be described or illustrated ; 

 and if the Insecta can be completed in a manner at all 

 corresponding to this first instalment, we shall have a 

 work quite without rival in its way, and that will be 

 painted out as an illustration of what can be accomplished 

 in our country and generation by the liberality and energy 

 of private individuals. The assistance rendered to science 

 by the publication of this volume has been supplemented 

 by the presentation to the nation of the magnificent col- 

 lection of Geodephaga accumulated by Mr. Godman for 

 the purposes of the work ; it consists of gS6 species, and 

 nearly 8000 specimens, something like 400 of the species 

 being represented by the typical examples, and is now in 

 the British Museum of Natural History at South 

 Kensington. D. S. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 



Outlines of Natural PJulosopliy. By J. D. Everett. 



(London : Blackie and Sons, 1885.) 

 '■ This book is intended to supply the widely-felt want of 

 a work at once easy enough for a class reading-book and 

 precise enough for a text-book." " The woodcuts with 

 which the work is profusely illustrated are not thrown in 

 for mere ornament, but have been carefully dcsigtied and 

 selected for the elucidation of the text, and are fully ex- 

 plained." Had it not been for the single word which we 

 have put in italics in the second of these extracts from 

 the Preface, we should have at once concluded, from its 

 general tenor, that this work was written to explain a long 

 series of plates (most of them unmistakably French) 

 which have already done duty in various elementary 

 books. We were reminded of Warrington's exhortation, 

 when he brought the proof-plate to Pendennis : — " Now, 

 boy, here's a chance for you. Turn me off a copy of 

 verses to this." 



These plates form a wonderful collection. Some are 

 really excellent ; not only from the scientific, but even 

 from the artistic, point of view. In others, notably 

 Figs. 88, 93, 94, loi, 102, 130, 160, the artistic pre- 

 dominates over the scientific to such an extent as to 

 render them positively misleading to the beginner. Thus 

 in Fig. 88 the shadow of a sphere, cast by a luminous 

 point on a plane, is drawn in such a manner as to outrage 

 all the Laws of Projective Geometry ; and the pleasing 

 sketch Fig. 93 can only be explained (if at all) by a most 

 peculiar state of the air over the still water. Thus, the 

 eaves of a house are depicted as seen by reflection at a 

 portion of the water-surface, from which (as the drawing 



