862 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1146 



given from the whole United States being less 

 than two thirds of that now known from east 

 of the Mississippi. 



As expressed by the authors, the primary 

 object of the present manual is — as in the 

 " Beetles of Indiana " — " to furnish to students 

 and tyros in entomology a simple means of 

 enabling them in the most direct way possible 

 to arrange, classify and determine the scientific 

 names of the weevils in their collections." 

 To do this, all the higher subdivisions have 

 been carefully denned, keys for the separation 

 of all families, tribes, genera and species have 

 been prepared or adapted, original descriptions 

 have been condensed so as to show more 

 readily the principal diagnostic characters, and 

 geographical range, time of appearance and 

 habits recorded so far as known. The whole 

 is preceded by a chapter on structural char- 

 acters, and followed by a tolerably complete 

 bibliography and indexes of both the beetles 

 and the plants on which they occur. Add to 

 this the fact that the press work leaves little 

 to be desired and the illustrations are numer- 

 ous, nearly all good, and many of them beau- 

 tiful, and we have a very attractive as well as 

 useful contribution to Coleopterology. 



In a work of this sort, based upon a multi- 

 plicity of sources of information, it is inevi- 

 table that there should be some errors of fact; 

 furthermore inasmuch as all schemes of classi- 

 fication and taxonomy involve so large an ele- 

 ment of individual opinion, it is altogether un- 

 likely that any specialist could be found who 

 would agree entirely with the authors in their 

 sequence of tribes, genera, etc., or in their 

 delimitation of species. The authors, on the 

 whole, appear to have followed a sanely con- 

 servative course, and, while the work embodies 

 the results of the best of recent studies both 

 in this country and in Europe, they have 

 rarely accepted the views of the extremists, 

 and, where differing from the authorities, have 

 frankly stated the reasons for their conclu- 

 sions. 



Let no one be deceived by the words of the 

 authors, quoted above, into believing that the 

 book will prove a sinecure for the entomolog- 

 ical " tyro." A difficult subject has perhaps 



been simplified as far as possible, but it still 

 remains a difficult subject, and the tyro will 

 still have to depend largely on the specialist 

 for the determination of his specimens. On 

 the other hand, the student with a considerable 

 fund of experience will find this work of very 

 great assistance. Would that we had more 

 like it. 



H. C. Fall 

 Pasadena, Calif. 



SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS AND ARTICLES 



Bollettino di Bibliografia e Storia delle Scienze 



Matematiche. Publicato per cura di Gino 



Loria. Torino, 1915, 1916. 



Such are the conditions in Europe at the 

 present time that both the publication and the 

 transmission of scientific journals are at- 

 tended with great difficulty. Some of these 

 journals have been discontinued altogether, 

 others appear in reduced form, and many are 

 greatly delayed if, indeed, they are allowed 

 to pass the barriers at all. Of those which 

 reach us Professor Loria's " Bollettino " is 

 among the most regular and among those 

 which best preserve their usual placidity. 



Since this publication consists chiefly of 

 notes on recent mathematical works, there are 

 but few articles that admit of interesting sum- 

 mary in a review of this nature. It is pleas- 

 ant to observe, however, how little the war dis- 

 turbs the academic atmosphere, for these 

 mathematical notes, relating to current books 

 of various European belligerents, give no evi- 

 dence whatever of the conflict which now dis- 

 turbs the world. Such, for example, are the 

 " notizie " on " La mateinatica in Germania 

 in questo ultimo quarto di secolo," " Sofia 

 Germain " (by Schwarz), the " Materialien fur 

 eine wissenschaftliche Biographie von Gauss " 

 (Klein and Brendel), and the " Entwickelung 

 der Mengenlehre und ihrer Anwendungen " 

 (Schoenfliess). 



Of the original articles of a mathematico- 

 historical nature, mention should be made of 

 a few which may have some interest to Amer- 

 ican readers. M. Lucien Godeaux of Liege 

 has an article on " Un mathematicien Beige 

 du XVIieme Siecle: Jean Taisnier." Al- 



