REVIEW 



SOME SOUTH INDIAN INSECTS. 



Such is the title of the latest book published on general Indian Entomo- 

 logy. It is the third on the subject that has come to our notice of late 

 years dealing with that subject. The first was Lefroy's Indian Insect Life, 

 a masterly work and the only one of its kind existing at the time it appeared. 

 The other is Stebbing's Indian Forest Insects, a review of which will be found 

 in the last number of our Journal. The only fault we had to note in 

 Lefroy's book was its size. It should have been published in two volumes 

 of ordinary dimensions like, say, the volumes of the Fauna of British India 

 series. It was presented to the public in one great, unwieldy tome. Such 

 large, heavy books go to pieces by their own weight when carried about and 

 are altogether unsuitable for travelling. All publications with which 

 Government have anything to do seem to be too cumbersome and are 

 thereby badly handicapped in their usefulness. There may be some advan- 

 tage gained by size as the figure plates can be made to contain more figures 

 as many more can usually be put into a large plate than into a small one, 

 and the price and number of the plates can thus be considerably reduced ; 

 but it seems to us that, if size interferes with usefulness, surely cost should 

 be a matter of secondary importance, especially to Government. 



The present volume is also too large. The binding and the print are good 

 and the illustrations and figures are generally quite up to the mark. The 

 •'original" figures are well chosen as explanatory of the text and are, as 

 concerns the insects particularly, very true to nature. The limacod larva on 

 page 411 is, however, wooden and savisage-like ; the woodpecker on page 

 225 and the parroquefc on page 229 might have come out of a Noah's ark 

 and the black and white reproduction opposite the last is hardly artistic. 

 In the coloured plates, the figure of Parnara mathias bears little resem- 

 blance to the real butterfly (PI. b.) ; it is mu.ch more like an lambrix. 



Some South Indian Insects is published under the auspices of the Madras 

 Government and is written by Mr. T. Bainbridge Fletcher, R.N., now 

 Imperial Entomologist to the Government of India. Mr. Fletcher tells us in 

 the preface that he wrote it mainly bo place on record information gathered 

 while he was engaged in overhauling the collections and records formed 

 before and during his tenure of the office of Entomologist to the Government 

 of Madras. He says it is not intended to be a text book, but he hopes it 

 may serve as a basis for further work. 



It is a good thing to record information on particular subjects in accessi- 

 ble form in one place at all times and especially is this the case when that 

 information is reliable, based upon facts and gathered together by an 

 expert in the matter treated. The value is further enhanced when that 

 expert writes himself and has the gift of expressing himself clearly and to the 

 point as in the present case. Mr. Fletcher has produced an interesting 

 and eminently well written book, the result of his work and experience in 

 India. Notwithstanding what he states, his idea has evidently been, at 

 least partly, to supply an elementary Treatise on Entomology for the 

 Madras Presidency and he has made an attempt, in as short and concise a 

 manner as possible, to carry it out, so that beginners might learn something 

 about each aspect of the subject without the necessity of going to other 

 books of a more technical character. And he has succeeded, we venture to 

 think, very fairly well in the endeavour. 



The first nine chapters, all very short, treat of Entomology generally and 

 tlie Structure, Nomenclature and Metamorphosis of Insects find a place in 



