OURRENT NOTES. U7 
‘insect. On sending details and sketches to Prof. Silvestri he found 
that the three species he had met with belonged to the order lrotura 
established by the Professor in 1907. Much of the other matter is of 
more or less local interest. Small illustrations are inserted wherever 
necessary to aid the text. 
In the December number is an interesting article on ‘“ Hyeless 
Migrants,” by Mr. J. H. Hull. It deals with the mites such as one 
finds clinging to the bodies of beetles and other insects. He states 
that these mites, Gamasids, ‘‘are not parasites, but merely passengers. 
The food problem is the chief reason for the connection between the 
beetle and the mite.” Mr. J. W. H. Harrison describes the famous 
collecting ground, Birtley Fell, ‘co. Durham, and its insect fauna. 
There is also a.summary of the immigration of Ayrius convolvuli in 
1917; a considerable number of specimens were met with in the 
Northern Counties of England, and one has been reported even from 
the Shetlands. Altogether this is a very useful quarterly. We eon- 
oratulate the Editors on their venture. 
A small book has been sent for review entitled “‘ Plant Material of 
Decorative Gardening: The Woody Plants.’’ It consists of a very full 
Analysis of “ trees, shrubs, undershrubs and climbers” met with both 
wild and under cultivation in N. America. The whole is an elaborate 
scheme of Keys of Groups, Genera and Species with a useful Synopsis 
of Terms. Its claim upon our pages may be instanced by the following 
extract from the introductory matter. ‘An entomologist comes to me 
with a branch of a tree badly infested with scale insects. The Synopsis 
of Groups leads me to Group A. It is obviously deciduous, not at all 
prickly or spiny, with rounded twigs, opposite leaves that are rather 
large, pinnately compound with five or seven somewhat toothed short- 
stalked leaflets green on both sides. Through Key A, I go by successive 
steps to 112. Here I cut the twig cleanly across midway between two 
nodes and find that the pith is of moderate diameter as compared with 
elder pith ; the succeeding steps lead on to 114 where I find that the 
scars from which last year’s leaves have fallen are squared off below 
this year’s twigs or any undeveloped buds of last season, so that I am 
convineed that it is a Hraxinus. In the key to the species of ash I go 
successively through to 14 where I find it to be Frawinus lanceolata.” 
As the work deals with a large number of garden varieties of shrubs 
and trees it will no doubt be of considérable use in identifying the food- 
plant of many a troublesome garden pest and thus help in the investi- 
gation of life-histories by the economic entomologist. 
In the Entomologist for October, Mr. W.G. Sheldon attacks a problem 
which many have attempted but failed to accomplish, that is to work 
out the real life-history of that most variable of the Tortrices, Peronea 
eristana. In the first portion the writer deals with the species 
historically and then describes the ovum, and the larva in its various 
instars. : 
In the death of Mr. W. West, of Sutton, the South London Ento- 
mological Society loses one of its oldest members. He joined the 
“Club,” as it was then familiarly called, in 1878, and for the whole 
forty years had kept up active work in it, being on the Council at the 
time of his death. He was in the chair in 1884. 
Another old member of the South London Entomological Society 
has just passed away in the death of Mr. W. T. Manger, of New Cross. 
