July 27, 1905] 



NA rURE 



291 



Now, however, instead of butterfly-collecting being 

 ridiculed, it has become almost necessary to discourage 

 it in England in order to prevent the total extermina- 

 tion of all our rare and local species, while abroad it 

 is pursued with enthusiasm by travellers and colonials, 

 some of them belonging to the highest social circles. 

 Again, during the last fifty years, so much light has 

 been thrown on various scientific problems by the study 

 of butterflies that eminent professors are ready to de- 

 vote a great portion of their lives to such investiga- 

 tions. 



Of late years, many Indian officers and civilians have 

 taken up the collection and study, of the butterflies of 

 our Indian Empire, which are probably better known 

 at the present time than those of any other part of the 

 world outside Europe, except North America and South 

 Africa. But there exists no complete work on the sub- 

 ject suitable for the use of students. Mr. F. Moore's 

 great works on the butterflies of Ceylon and India 

 are very bulky and costly, and the latter is still in pro- 

 gress, while the regretted death of L. de Nic^ville left 

 the work commenced by himself and Col. Marshall, 

 and subsequently carried on by de Niceville only, 

 complete only as regards the earlier families. Lieut. - 

 Colonel Bingham, a retired Indian officer, who has 

 collected insects assiduously in many parts of India, 

 Burma, &c., and who has already published two 

 volumes on Hymenoptera in the present series, " The 

 Fauna of British India," has been wisely chosen to 

 supply the existing want of a manual of Indian butter- 

 flies, and with his previous practical experience behind 

 liim. and with sufiicient leisure, and access to the col- 

 lections and library of the Natural History Museum 

 at .South Kensington at his disposal, the work could 

 not have been placed in better or more competent 

 hands. 



It is expected that three volumes will be required to 

 deal adequately with the subject. Six families are 

 admitted by the author, of which the first two, Nymph- 

 alidae and Nemeobidse, are discussed in the first 

 volume. The arrangement of the work is similar to 

 that which has been used in previous volumes of this 

 series dealing with insects, which are already well 

 known to all entomologists. The introduction, neces- 

 sarily brief, contains remarks on classification, meta- 

 morphoses and structure, with text-illustrations of the 

 larva and pupa of Vanessa, the head and body of 

 .\rgynnis and Charaxes, and a very useful selection of 

 figures of labial palpi, antennse, neuration of wings, 

 and legs. It is worthy of special remark that the 

 author expressly discards the term " species " as 

 liable to mislead, and uses " form " instead, as less 

 objectionable. 



Four hundred and seventy-nine species are described 

 in vol. i., belonging to the Nymphalidse (with six sub- 

 families, Danainae, SatjTin^, .Acraeinae, Libytheinse, 

 ^orphintE, and Nymphalina;), and Nemeobidae (five 

 genera only). 



The text illustrations are excellent, and among the 

 more interesting ones we may note Figs. 13 and 14, on 

 p. 40, showing the variations in shape and markings 

 of the forewings of seven specimens of Euploea klugii, 

 Moore, and Fig. 94, on p. 501, of Stibogcs nymphidia, 

 NO. 1865, VOL. 72] 



Butl., showing- its remarkable resemblance to a species 

 of the well-known tropical American genus Nymph- 

 idium. 



Ten full-page plates (half-figures only) are added, 

 drawn by Mr. Horace Knight and lithographed 

 by the three-colour process by Messrs. Hentschel, and 

 these alone are sufficient to give some idea to outsiders 

 of the variety and beauty of the butterflies of India. 

 If we take the butterflies of Great Britain at 70, those 

 of Europe at 300, and those of British India, within the 

 limits of the present work, at 1500, we shall have a 

 fairly accurate idea of the proportions borne to each 

 other by these three faunas. 



In outlying districts, no doubt, many species still 

 remain to be added to the Indian butterfly fauna, but 

 apart from this, nothing is yet known of the trans- 

 formations, habits, &c., of a great proportion of the 

 insects, which will be sufficient to occupy the atten- 

 tion of numerous observers for many years. The 

 metamorphoses of each butterfly, so far as yet known, 

 are briefly noticed by Lieut.-Colonel Bingham, but 

 it is only occasionally that he has been able to offer 

 his readers any information of this description. 



THE STATE AND AGRICULTURE. 

 The State and Agricidtiirc in Hungary. By Dr. 



Ignatius Dardnyi, translated by A. Gyorgy. 



Pp. xxii + 264. (London: Macmillan and Co., 



Ltd., 1905.) Price 5s. net. 

 ''PHERE are two fundamentally opposite theories 

 of the duties of a public department dealing 

 with a great industry such as the Board of Agriculture 

 in this country— the one that its function is to foster 

 the industry, the other that it is simply concerned in 

 registering the progress and administering such legis- 

 lative enactments as may be necessary from time to 

 time. 



Our English public offices have all grown up on 

 the latter model, and the Board of Agriculture, which 

 IS always being abused for not doing this or that to 

 improve the position of farmers, might legitimately 

 answer that it was never designed to offer any such 

 help to the agriculturist. Of course, the official 

 apologists of the Board cannot put forward such a 

 view nakedly; their plan is rather to divert the un- 

 reasonable attack by a show of activity. 



To take a concrete case; the Board of .Agriculture 

 endeavours to eradicate swine fever — that it recognises 

 as a proper function, true police work for agriculture 

 — but supposing it should be urged to do something 

 to improve the breed of pigs kept in England by in- 

 troducing new breeds or by distributing boars of the 

 right type in the backward districts, it would prob- 

 ably meet the demand by issuing a leaflet on " points 

 to be aimed at in pig-breeding." The English 

 method is cheap; it is also supposed to be bracing; 

 and the English farmer, being subjected to the State- 

 aided and bounty-fed competition of all other agri- 

 cultural countries in the only open market, his own, 

 is supposed to be in special need of a bracing regime. 



So when people ask why the Board of Agriculture 

 does not educate like France, or investigate like 



