841 



REVIEWS. 



FAUNA OF INDIA. 

 COLEOPTERA LAMELLIC0RN1A, I. 



Cetonin^ and Dynastinje. 



BY 



G. F. Aekow. 



This volume is the third dealing with the beetles of India and covers 

 two groups of beetles, the Cetoniids and Dynastids, familiar to all collec- 

 tors of beetles in this country. The Editor, Mr. A. E. Shipley, writes a 

 short preface, as does the author. There is a useful glossary of technical 

 terms, and an extremely good introduction which not only enables any one 

 to understand and use the volume but which deals with biology. There is 

 a marked absence of anything to do with zoo-geography, which is inevitable 

 perhaps when both authors and editor are wholly unfamiliar with India, 

 but which greatly mars the value of the work. 



One other defect, due again to the disregard of India and workers in 

 India, lies in the absence of altitude indications and the failure to indicate 

 the sources of the specimens. Anthracophera crucifera, for instance, is 

 recorded from no altitude higher than 2,000 feet, A. dalmanni from none 

 lower than 5,000 feet, but there is nothing to indicate this. It would also 

 have helped Indian workers to indicate which species were in the principal 

 collections in India, as is done in some other volumes. These defects will 

 be removed, we hope, in later volumes, by the simple expedient of associat- 

 ing with the editor or author some worker who has collected in India and 

 knows it, and by adding in a bracket the collection from which the specimen 

 on which locality is recorded came. 



The species described number 241 Cetoniids and 46 Dynastids. The clas- 

 sification adopted is the usua^one, but we regret that the author has not 

 separated the dung-feeding (Laparostict) Scarabaeids from the vegetable- 

 feeding (Pleurostict) Melolonthids as a distinct family. Of the Cetoniini, 

 the first division of the Cetoniince or rose-chafers, 11 are peculiar to Ceylon, 

 32 to Burmah, 9 to the "Western Himalayas, 16 to the Eastern Himalayas, 

 16 to Assam, 32 to Southern India (mainly the Nilgiris) and 4 to Sind and 

 Baluchistan. Of the rest, 8 occur in Ceylon and South India, 7 in 

 Burmah and Assam, 12 in Burmah, Assam and, the Eastern Himalayas, 

 8 only in the Eastern and Western Himalayas, 13 only in the Eastern 

 Himalayas and Assam. Taking tropical India or the plains, 27 species are 

 recorded, of which two are from the Deccan only, a few from Chota Nagpur, 

 and the remainder from localities in the plains and also in the hills. Very 

 few species are general over India in any sense at all, taking only the sub- 

 tropical hill areas and the group are, so far as the records go, localised into 



