Fehmam, 1914 BulUUn of ihc Bwoklyn EntoTTiological Socicty 25 



This important contribution to biology in its ecological (and 

 less formalized) aspects welds into an orderly whole a multitude 

 of detached and heterogeneous observations and data, makes 

 them accessible and serviceable as a basis for systematic study, 

 and throws a flood of light on methods and results to be achieved. 

 It is a genuine pleasure to find a biological work not designed to 

 further and establish some set theory, into whose procrustean 

 bed the subservient facts are tortured. Nature is regarded in 

 its true aspect of a harmonious unity and the interrelations of 

 its component elements are set forth with an unbiased mind. 

 It is one of those rare works which are not "correlated" a ad in 

 their nature may not be, to the theory of evolution in some of 

 its many manifestations. Sanity is its dominant note. It is, 

 in effect, a brief for "sanity toward nature" which is based upon 

 "a full knowledge of the available facts." Here, in Shelf ord's 

 own words, we have the touchstone by which to try all biological 

 work. Applied to his own book, it passes the crucial test. 



In this necessarily brief note, we can do no more than cite 

 its method, as already done, and enumerate its divisions. The 

 introduction briefly refers to the study of ecology and sets forth 

 general principles, which are more fully developed in six chap- 

 ters. The remaining nine chapters deal with animal communi- 

 ties of large lakes (as studied in Lake Michigan), streams, small 

 lakes, ponds, tension lines between land .and water, swamp and 

 flood-plain forests, dry and mesophytic forests, thickets and 

 forest margins, and prairies. There is an appendix on methods 

 of study. The illustrations are most satisfying, the majority 

 original from photographs, and they actually illustrate the text 

 and are most pertinent to it. An excellent bibliography of 214 

 titles, divided according to the chapters to which it refers, to- 

 gether with two indices (an authors' and a subject index), 

 close a work which is destined to be of the utmost value to every 

 student of biology, so orderly and methodical is the presentation 

 of the facts with which it deals. 



To workers in no biological group will it be of greater in- 

 terest and significance than to entomologists, especially to such 

 as are dominated by the larger aspects of their science. Indeed, 

 great" attention has been given to insects, and no less than 457 

 species of the 933 animals mentioned are Hexapoda;: This work 



