CURRENT NOTES. 195 
gure to peruse. The study of spiders had attracted few workers, and 
of those few most have but dabbled at rare intervals, so that everything 
was more or less new and hitherto unknown, when the Rev. G. 
Pickard-Cambridge began his life’s work. There is an uninterrupted 
series of papers from his pen, commencing with the year 1852 and 
ending with his last contribution in 1914, when he had reached the 
age of 86. But his energies’were not devoted only to the Arachnida, 
for we find an enumeration of numerous papers and notes on Lepi- 
doptera, Ornithology, etc., and even Antiquarian Notes, all particularly 
dealing with the fauna and records of his native county of Dorset. 
This admirable biography gives us delightful insight into the every- , 
day private life, thoughts and acts of one whom it was a pleasure to. 
know. He is shown in his home circle, in his church, in his village, 
in the county to which he was so much attached, and in his converse 
with the world where his talented work secured him an increasing 
circle of co-workers and admirers. He corresponded with Darwin and 
others and associated in his Lepidopterous days with the great collectors 
J. C. Dale, Fred Smith, H. T. Stainton, Sam Stevens, and Chas. 
Turner, as well as with the men of the next generation, such as N. M. 
Richardson, E. R. Bankes, J. B. Hodgkinson, W. Machin, W. Farren, 
G. Elisha, W. H. B. Fletcher, and others. The illustrations, of which 
there are eight, include a capital portrait, his church, the rectory, and 
above all, the outside and inside of “the den,’ as he called the de- 
tached building into which the treasures he accumulated for his study 
had early to be removed from the room they had outgrown. The 
“feeling” in this book is that the writing was a ‘labour of love”’ 
and the perusal seems to bring one into personal contact with a 
ereat and strong mind for good and for industry and for progress ! 
The Reports of the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society for 
1916 and 1917 are to hand recently, and record a period of steady con- 
tinuance during the pressure of the times. The membership varies 
slightly from year to year, and papers come regularly to hand. 
Although the bulk of the exhibits at the meetings is Lepidoptera, 
neither of the two magazines devoted to that order, the Hntomologist’s 
Record and the Entomologist, appear to be in the Society’s library. The 
following papers were read in 1916: ‘Collecting in the Wye Valley,” 
by A. W. Hughes; “ Butterfly Collecting in the New Forest,” by R. 
Wilding; ‘“ Mosquitoes,” by H. T. Carter; “ Suburban Collecting,” by 
Wm. Mansbridge; ‘‘ Notes on the genus Ornix,”’ by F. N. Pierce ; and 
the Annual Address, ‘‘ Our Collecting Grounds,” by the President, Dr. 
J. Cotton. In 1917, ‘‘ Recent Experiments in Breeding Aplecta nebu- 
losa,” by Wm. Mansbridge; a ‘‘ Report of the work of the Laneashire 
and Cheshire Fauna Committee”; “ Wallasey and Porthcawl Sand- 
hills, a Comparison,” by H. M. Hallet; “‘ The Lepidoptera of an Essex 
Garden,” by F. N. Pierce; and the Annual Address, ‘“‘ Some Aquatic 
Insects,” by the President, Mr. Leonard West. ‘To the Report is added 
a further instalment of the annotated List of the Lepidoptera of Lan- 
cashire and Cheshire. There is also an obituary of one of the oldest 
‘supporters of the Society, Lieut.-Col. J. W. Ellis, he having joined in 
1877. He was the author of the List of Lepidoptera of the two 
counties. 
In the Bull. Soc. ent. I’r., Signor Enrico Ragusa, of Palermo, 
makes some observations on the larve of Zygaena erythrus and of 4. 
