208 NATURE [APRIL 22, 1915 


always given (at the foot of the page in this case); | in which the larve of the pear-tree hover-fly deal 
the other is that the illustrations are furnished | with aphides, of the giant water-bug of Trinidad 
which | some- 
ass SiR : A i a a eee rT ee times kills 
HR Tere Wi ra tiga er gatig frogs — of 
these and a 
hundred other 
marvels, is it 
not written in 
the captivat- 
ing book of 
Mr. Step? 
(2) Ca p- 
tains Carpen- 
ter and Wil- 
son - Barker 
a d “dijree sus 
themselves to 
the voyager 
who wishes 
to know 



if 1 PS Sap GAM is Ne some thing, 
== ae eee es put not ' too 
Photo.) Fic. 1.—‘‘ Cuckoo-spit.’’ From ‘‘ Marvels of Insect Life.” [H. Bastin, much, about 
what is to be 
seen from a ship’s deck—the ocean itself and all 
with adequately detailed descriptions in small but 
that in it is. They deal in an interesting way, 
clear type. We have but one fault to find, that 
we can discover no order in the marvels. 
They form a delightful volume, but not a 
unified book. Or are we overlooking some 
arrangement which is subtle as insect. be- 
haviour itself? Perhaps we are ultra-sensi- 
tive, but we like to be orderly, even in our 
pleasures. It is interesting to find that Mr. 
Step vouches for the mother-earwig’s hen- 
like care of her offspring, as to the reality 
of which Mr. Brindley’s careful observations 
recently raised some doubts. We may also 
note that the author’s account of cuckoo-spit 
(Fig. 1) is not quite up-to-date. 
These are small points, however, and what 
we particularly wish to say is that we can 
think of no introduction to entomology which 
surpasses the volume before us in its Capa- 
city of gripping the beginner and prompting 
observation. Would one know of the mouse- 
catching locust from the Congo, of the Kan- 
chong Mantis which is so like a flower that 
butterflies visit it, of nightmare insects that 
look like jokes in morphogenesis, of the big 
blue wasps of Texas which are able to over- 
come the huge bird-spiders, of the growth 
of the caterpillar of the privet hawk- moth 
which increases its weight nearly ten thous- 
and times in thirty-two days, of the long- 
necked ant-lion of the pyramids which has its 
prothorax pulled out into an instrument for 
reaching down into crevices, of the whimsical 
leaf- legged bug of South America (Fig. 2), 
of the maternal bug of the birch-tree which 


Photo.) , i [A. Bastin, 
covers her offspring | as a hen her chicks, of the IS le ore = nee a a ' Sees 
Sat nsect trom Ou merica.: e vel On. and sien er 
peculiar aquatic larv «2 of the fly whose bite 1 1S hind-' Wace flea -out at ae top of the shank into arertiecslenea leaf-like 
growths wh must tend to disguise the insect’ 's true nature when seen upon 
said to cause the strange skin. disease calléd fiaeen, FEcin CUM aeelCoe Ty cons THESE: ae porte 
pellagra, of the stalk-eyed fly that has its - 
eyes and minute antenne borne on relatively 1O8E | ‘without ” going very» deeply into things, with 
lateral extensions of the head, of the quaint way ‘| the phYsical features of the sea, with the whales _ 
NO. 2373, VOL. 95| : 


