584 
B constituent, on the other hand, dissolves lead 
appreciably above 470° C., and hence at the tem- 
perature of hot rolling the a+8 alloys do not 
contain liquid lead and are not hot short. 
H. ©. H. Carpenter. 

PENCIL AND PEN IN SYSTEMATIC 
ZOOLOGY. 
(1) Catalogue of the Amatidae and Arctiadae 
(Nolinae and Lithosianae) in the collection of 
the British Museum. By Sir G. F. Hampson. 
Plates i-xli. (London: British Museum (Natural 
History) and Longmans, Green and Co., 1915.) 
Price 33s. 6d. net. 
(2) A Revision of the Ichneumonide based on the 
Collection in the British Museum (Natural 
History), with Descriptions of New Genera and 
Species. Part iv., Tribes Joppides, Banchides, 
and Alomyides. By C. Morley. Pp. x+167. 
(London: British Museum (Natural History) 
and Longmans, Green and Co., 1915.) Price 6s. 
(3) The Syrphidae of the Ethiopian Region based 
on Material in the collection of the British 
Museum (Natural History), with descriptions of 
New Genera and Species. By Prof. M. Bezzi. 
Pp. 146. (London: British Museum (Natural 
History) and Longmans, Green and Co., 1915.) 
Price 6s. : 
(4) British Museum (Natural History): British 
Antarctic (“Terra Nova”) Expedition, 1910. 
Natural History Report. Zoology, vol. 1., 
No. 3, Cetacea. By D. G. Lillie. Pp. 85-124. 
(London: British Museum (Natural History) and 
Longmans, Green and Co., 1915.) Price 7s. 6d. 
(5) Catalogue of the Fresh-Water Fishes of Africa 
in the British Museum (Natural History). 
Vol. iii. By Dr. G. A. Boulenger. Pp. xii+ 
526. (London: British Museum (Natural 
History) and Longmans, Green and Co., 1915.) 
Price 2l. 5s. 
(6) The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon 
and Burma. Mollusca (Fresh-water Gastropoda 
and Pelecypoda). By H. B. Preston. Pp. 
xix-+244. (London: Taylor and Francis, 1915.) 
Price ros. 
(7) British Museum (Natural History): British 
Antarctic (“Terra Nova”) Expedition, 1910. 
Natural History Report. Zoology. Vol. i., 
No. 4, Mollusca. Part i., Gastropoda Proso- 
branchia, Scaphopoda, and Pelecypoda. By 
E. A. Smith. Pp. 61-112. (London: British 
Museum (Natural History) and Longmans, 
Green and Co., 1915.) Price 4s. 
ODERN researches provide a well-trained 
army of naturalists with an almost over- 
whelming supply of material. A vast literature has 
NO. 2387, VOL. 95] 
| NATURE 


[Jury 29, 1915 

to be examined to make sure that species appar- 
entlynew to science have not been already described. 
Assistance is afforded by elaborate monographs 
of separate groups, such as Sir George Hampson’s 
monumental catalogue of the Lepidoptera Phalz- 
ne, in thirteen volumes. But there is no finality 
in these obliging auxiliaries, for, as usual, while 
Sir George’s catalogue was being issued between 
1898 and 1913 other workers were industriously 
making it incomplete, so that already the mono- 
grapher has had to provide a supplement, begin- 
ning with a first volume of nearly 900 pages. 
Some complication in descriptive work is also 
unavoidable, when several independent expeditions 
make their way to the same goal, as within the 
last few years has been the case with ships visiting 
the antarctic region and exploring the marine 
fauna at stations along the route. 
To meet the initial difficulties in investigation 
of species nothing is more time-saving to the 
naturalist than trustworthy illustrations of the 
group he is studying. Faithful colouring is in 
some parts of the animal kingdom an additional 
boon of great value. The drawback is the initial 
costliness of production, and, consequent upon 
this, prohibitive prices forcing the student in 
many instances to rely upon borrowed copies or 
occasional visits to distant libraries. During the 
last two centuries the extreme desirability of well- 
illustrated zoology has been evidently fully appre- 
ciated though very variously provided for. Among 
individual efforts none is more remarkable than 
that of the Dutch physician, Albert Seba, who in 
the first half of the eighteenth century must have 
spent a fortune over the production of his 450 
large folio plates, many of which are double. 
Latreille in 1830 commended them as excellent, 
though he condemned the “Accurata Descriptio ” 
as worthless. At the same period Cuvier and his 
colleagues paid the plates an extraordinary com- 
pliment by re-issuing the whole mass with a brief 
revision under the editorship of Guérin. Just 
then, also, the French Government was issuing 
198 rather larger and much more refined plates, 
illustrating the voyage of the Astrolabe, to which 
Mr. Edgar A. Smith makes several references in 
his recent memoir. 
As the accomplished authors whose works are 
mentioned at the head of this notice must all be 
acutely conscious of the expediency of doing unto 
others as they would that others should do unto 
them, it is interesting to compare the different 
ways in which they have dealt with the supply 
of illustration. (1) The forty-one plates of Hamp- 
son’s supplementary volume are filled with deli- 
cately coloured representations seemingly of all 
| the species recorded in the supplement which have 
