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FOWLER'S BRITISH COLEOPTERA. 



The Coleoptera of the British Islands. A Descriptive Account of the 

 Families, Genera, and Species Indigenous to Great Britain and 

 Ireland, with notes as to Localities, Habitats, etc. By the Rev. Canon 

 Fowler, M. A., F.L.S., . . . London: L. Reeve and Co., 5, Henrietta 

 Street, Covent Garden. 18S8. Vol. II (Staphylinidae), and Vol. Ill 

 (Clavicornia). 



Students of British Coleoptera who had made good use of the 

 first volume of Canon Fowler's work on this subject, will have hailed 

 with immense satisfaction the publication of the next two volumes. 

 It was indeed high time that the study of so attractive a group of 

 insects should be presented in a correspondingly attractive form, and 

 I think there can be no question that British Coleopterists will 

 rapidly increase in numbers now that they can obtain such an 

 excellent work on British Beetles at such a reasonable price. It is a 

 lamentable fact that hitherto works of this character have seldom had 

 a sufficient sale to save their authors from pecuniary loss, but surely 

 the growth of science, and our increasing love of nature, will, before 

 long, create a larger demand for books, which, instead of giving a 

 few hours' amusement, become, by intelligent use, life-long friends 

 and companions. 



The second volume of Fowler's British Coleoptera has now been 

 published for some little time. It embraces a group of insects which 

 had been very much neglected by early Coleopterists, the Staphylinidce, 

 of which the 'Devil's Coachman' may be selected as a familiar 

 example. As the book has been seldom out of my hands for many 

 days together during the past year, I feel I have some right to give 

 an opinion upon its merits, and I unhesitatingly pronounce it most 

 admirable in every respect. In arrangement and description it is 

 singularly lucid, and while keeping to a style decidedly concise and 

 strictly scientific, the author has, nevertheless, succeeded in giving 

 his book a life and colour which save it from the skeleton-like 

 character, so general in similar works. A beginner could hardly do 

 better than take up a genus like Philonthus, Quedius, or Stenus, 

 {insects that occur in every haystack or pile of garden rubbish), and 

 work them out by the admirable table and descriptions given in this 

 volume. The Staphylinidcc contain some very difficult groups, — 

 groups which no book ever will make easy. The amount of patient 

 study, however, which our author has bestowed on the most trouble- 

 some genera, is amazing, (especially in the case of one who is so 

 much engaged in other duties), and in struggling with an undeter- 

 minable Homalota or Oxypoda, I am sure the student in his most 

 despairing moments will sooner direct his abuse against the hand of 



Nov. 1S89. 



