80 THE ENTOMOLOGIST S RECORD. 
Finsbury Circus, London, W.C.—This Annual Volume was published 
during the autumn, and consists of over a hundred pages with Index 
and one plate. The first thirty pages contain the List of Members, 
Extracts from the minutes of the meetings giving notes on the various 
exhibits, the Council’s Report for the year, and the various reports of 
the eight committees and branches into which the Society divides its 
work. The remaining seventy pages are taken up with the President’s 
Address and the Papers read at the meetings. 
The President, Dr. E. A. Cockayne, in the Address, dealt with the 
subject of Evolution, summarising the application of Darwin’s Natural 
and Sexual Selection, De Vries’ Mutation Theory, Mendel’s Theory of 
Heredity, Galton’s Law of Ancestral Heredity, the Determinants of 
Weismann in his Theory of Heredity, etc. Hereferred to the advance 
made in microscopical investigation by. modern Cytologists, and dis- 
cussed Bateson’s views on the inheritance of acquired characters. The 
view is expressed that “it is impossible to doubt that acquired charac- 
ters are inherited,” and the President instanced how ‘‘ such acquisition 
of a useful character may readily and rapidly alter a whole species,” by 
pointing out “the rapid spread of melanism in some British Lepi- 
doptera.”’ 
Mr. L. B. Prout has an importaut paper entitled “‘ Some Points of 
Interest in the Geometridae.” He deals with larval and imaginal 
structures, characteristics and habits in their bearing on classification, 
he refers to the occurrence of winglessness in the family, and points 
out that ‘a very wide and interesting field of investigation is opened 
up by the numerous and varied ‘secondary sexual’ structures in the 
Geometridae, particularly on the legs or wings.” ‘The paper is a most 
suggestive one for future lines of work. 
More than forty pages are taken up by a paper and the subsequent 
discussion on ‘‘ Apterousness in Lepidoptera,” by Dr. T. A. Chapman. 
After referring to previous articles and notes on this subject, the writer 
summarises the phenomenon in ‘“ other orders,” and endeavours to find 
out in these orders a cause and origin, which may be applicable in the 
cage of the Lepidoptera. He then tabulates the Palearctic species 
under four chief heads. 
1. Lay their eggs on or in their cocoons or pupa cases. Hmergence 
of imago in summer (spring and autumn but to the summer margin). 
9. Moths appearing in winter or very late autumn, or very early 
spring. 
8. Certain Alpine or mountain species. 
4. Desert species. 
The sub-groups or species in each of these sections are then dealt 
with in considerable detail. This is followed by a consideration of the 
results arrived at by Prof. Poulton in his paper, ‘‘Hxternal Morphology 
of the Lepidopterous Pupa: an examination of the question of Degene- 
ration in Female imagines in Lepidoptera.” (Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. v., 
Qnd ser., p. 248, etc.) The paper concludes with a short Bibliography. 
The remaining three papers are concerned with bird life. 
We must congratulate the Society upon its suecess as pourtrayed 
by the Transactions year by year, but why not continue to place upon 
the cover the time-honoured name of the fine little Society from which 
the present one sprang and of which it is really a continuation, The 
City of London Entomological Society.—H.J.T. 
