15^ 



NA TURE 



[April 8, 1909 



some — those on Cairo and Thebes, for instance — have 

 been almost entirely re-written. A new section, 

 necessitated by the opening up to tourists of the Upper 

 Nile, deals with the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and thus 

 we have, within the compass of a handy volume of 

 600 odd pages and a plentiful supply of maps and 

 plans, a guide-book which will carry the traveller from 

 Alexandria or Port Said to the frontier of Abyssinia 

 and to the Uganda Railway and Mombasa. In a 

 pocket of the cover Mr. Hall has added a small booklet 

 of 35 pages of " Notes on the Arabic Language, with 

 a Vocabulary of Words and Phrases," which ought to 

 prove of much use to the amateur traveller. 



In reading through the handbook we find that Mr. 

 Hall has done the work on the archaeological side 

 most admirably, and there is little that he has added 

 to the book which we should feel inclined to dispute. 

 In his transliteration of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, 

 however, we are sorry to note that fie has adopted 

 the_ unscholarly ich or ;/ for the serpent hieroglyph 

 which, by English and German Egyptologists,' is 

 always rendered by :; or d. In any future edition of 

 the handbook that may be issued, we hope the 

 publishers will see that the section on geology is 

 brought up to date, for in the edition before us no 

 mention is made of Dr. Andrews' or Dr. Beadnell's 

 recent discoveries in the Fayum, nor can we find any 

 mention of the new Geological Museum, with its fine 

 collection of fossils and minerals, now housed in a 

 building in the garden of the Ministry of Public 

 Works. 



Inicx Kewensis Plantarum Phancrogamarum. Sup- 

 plementum tertium nomina et synonyma omnium 

 generum et specierum ab initio anni MDCCCCI 

 usque ad finem anni MDCCCCV complectens. 

 Ductu et consilio D. Prain confecerunt herbarii horti 

 regii botanici Kewensis curatores. Pp. iii-i-193. 

 (Oxford : Clarendon Press, igoS.) Price 285. net. 

 Workers everywhere in svstematic botany w^ill wel- 

 come the appearance of this, the third, supplement of 

 the Kew Index. We now have a register of the generic 

 and specific names of seed-plants up to and including 

 the year 1905— a boon to workers which only those 

 can adequately appreciate who remember the' period 

 when there was no Kew Index. The supplement 

 follows closely the plan of the original work— would 

 that those concerned could be persuaded to make one 

 small but valuable improvement ! namely, the inclu- 

 sion of the date of publication in all the references to 

 the original descriptions, as is now done only in the 

 case of periodicals. 



The Index and its previously issued supplements are 

 so well known and so generally used that a notice 

 resolves itself into a few remarks and more or less 

 petty criticisms. Thus we note that a fair number of 

 genera are recognised which in the Index or its earlier 

 supplements were regarded as synonyms; in these 

 cases the genus-name formerly accepted is added in 

 brackets followed by the letter's I.K. Similar quota- 

 tions, followed by the letters D.T. & H., look more 

 mysterious, though, presumably, the valuable reference- 

 list of genera by Dalla Torre and Harms will occur 

 to most on reflection. In the absence of explanatory 

 notes, it is not always easy to understand the reasons 

 adopted for the recognition of some genera and not 

 of others; why, for instance, is Limonium still rele- 

 gated to synonymy as equivalent to Statice, Linn. ? 

 Linnaeus included under Statice the sea-lavenders, for 

 which the name has until recent years been generally 

 !:^!f' "ed, as well as our sea-pin'k (Armeria). But 

 Miller in 1759 followed Tournefort in keeping the I 

 name Limonium for the sea-lavenders and regarding | 

 NO. 2058, VOL. 80] 



the sea-pink as a distinct genus, Statice, and it is 

 generally agreed that the two genera are distinct. It 

 is, of course, unfortunate that Statice should have 

 been used so long for Limonium ; Messrs. Groves, 

 however, in the recent edition of Babington's 

 manual, have accepted the original position, which 

 is therefore no longer strange to British botanists. 

 Limonium, by the way, is cited as of Tournefort, who 

 established the genus before 1753, which is now taken 

 as the starting point of botanical nomenclature ; the 

 genus should be credited to Miller (1759). Again, four 

 species of Crassocephalum, described by S. Moore, are 

 referred to Gynura; this reference may be justifiable, 

 but it would be useful to know what standard has 

 been adopted, especially in cases where there is no 

 recent monograph of the family to which the genus 

 belongs. 



The supplement forms an interesting review of 

 progress in systematic botany in the first five years 

 of the present century, and is a tribute to the energy 

 and devotion of botanists engaged in this branch of 

 the science. A. B. R. 



Die Metamorphose der Insekten. By Dr. P. Deegener. 



Pp. 56. (Leipzig and Berlin : B. G. Teubner, 1909.) 



Price 2 marks. 

 This is an exceedingly elaborate discussion of the 

 nature of the various processes involved in the trans- 

 formations of insects. We should have preferred to see 

 it in larger book-form, with headings and text-illustra- 

 tions ; but reference to the subjects discussed is facili- 

 tated by a table of contents prefixed to the work. 

 The chief problems are, of course, presented by insects 

 with complete metamorphoses, in which most of the 

 larval structures are entirely dissipated during the 

 pupa-state, and new ones formed for the use of the 

 imago, whereas in the case of insects with incomplete 

 metamorphoses the organs of the larva are gradually 

 modified into those of the imago. . It may be useful 

 to condense Dr. Deegener's classification of larval 

 organs : — 



(i) Primitive organs. Those less complicated in the 

 larva than in the imago ; those about equally de- 

 veloped in larva and imago ; and those wholly absent 

 in imago. 



(2) Organs rudimentary in both larva and imago. 



(3) Organs inherited by the imago from the larva. 



(4) Organs acquired by the larva independently of 

 the imago, or which occupy a subordinate position in 

 the imago. (Provisional organs of the first class.) 



(5) Organs common to the larva and imago, but 

 which follow a different course of development in each 

 stage. (Provisional organs of the second class.) 



(fa) Primary organs, the development of which is re- 

 tarded during the larval state. 



Dr. Deegener points out that the larva is scarcely 

 destitute of any organ present in the imago, whereas 

 many organs present in the larva are wanting in the 

 imago. Hence he concludes that the larva, as such, 

 presupposes the pre-existence of the imago, and that 

 the imago is phylogenetically older than the larva. 



The origin of insects from lower forms is then 

 discussed, and Dr. Deegener suggests that they have 

 originated in a primitive Campodea-form, which has 

 developed in one direction towards the imago and in 

 another towards the larva. Other questions discussed 

 are the various processes of metamorphosis, and the 

 sexual relations of larvje. 



We have rarely seen so small and unpretentious a 

 book which contained so much matter of scientific 

 importance, and it has been impossible for us to do 

 more than direct attention to a few salient points in 

 this brief notice. W. F. K. 



