188 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 474. 



most grateful remembrance and will sadly 

 mourn his loss. 



The following details of his life are 

 taken from one of the newspaper notices 

 of his death. He was a son of Karl Zittel, 

 the leader of the Clerical Liberals in Baden, 

 and was born at Bahlingen, near Freiburg, 

 on September 25, 1839. He studied at 

 Heidelberg, Paris and Vienna. After 

 serving as assistant in the Hofmineralien- 

 Kabinet in Vienna, he was appointed pro- 

 fessor of mineralogy at Karlsruhe, and in 

 1866 he assumed the same professorship 

 in Munich, where he also became director 

 of the Paleontological Staatsmuseum. The 

 great scientific value of the Rohlf expedi- 

 tion to the Libyan desert in 1873-74 was 

 owing chiefly to his participation in it. 

 He wrote a book on the expedition ; another 

 on the Sahara, and many treatises on geo- 

 logical and paleontological subjects. In 

 1899 he published his 'Geschichte der 

 Geologie und Palseontologie'— an impor- 

 tant work carrying the subjects to the 

 end of the nineteenth century. He was 

 editor of the periodical Palceontographica. 

 He was present at the opening of the 

 Northern Pacific Railroad in August and 

 September, 1883. It may be added that 

 he had been in delicate health for some 

 years. His death was iinfortunately hast- 

 ened by his being struck by a bicyclist, 

 causing a serious injury to his knee and 

 a long and debilitating confinement. 



He traveled extensively. Aside from the 

 special journey to the United States in con- 

 nection with the Northern Pacific Railroad, 

 he came here again in connection with the 

 meeting of the International Geological 

 Congress, visiting all the American mu- 

 seums and studying the great collections 

 with most intense interest. At the meeting 

 of the Geological Congress in Paris in 1900, 

 Professor von Zittel received the honors 

 to which he was so richly entitled, fre- 



quently presiding over the paleontological 

 and geological sections. 



Henry Fairfield Osboen. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 The Moth Booh. A Popular Guide to a 

 Knowledge of the Moths of North Amer- 

 ica. By W. J. Holland. New York, 

 Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903. Pp. 

 xxiv + 479. Forty-eight plates in color 

 photography and numerous illustrations in 

 the text. 



All persons interested in the study of Lepid- 

 optera, inckiding hundreds of amateur collect- 

 ors, have anxiously been awaiting the publi- 

 cation of Dr. Holland's ' Moth Book,' which 

 was promised five years ago in the introduc- 

 tion to his well-known and very useful ' But- 

 terfly Book.' The volume has now appeared, 

 and will be a delight to collectors and will 

 greatly facilitate their attempts to determine 

 their specimens, and will no doubt induce 

 many others to take up the study of these 

 beautiful and interesting insects. In his 

 ' Butterfly Book ' Dr. Holland had a restricted 

 group of comparatively few species, and was 

 able to illustrate or describe practically every 

 species known to occur within the limits of 

 the United States. The task of producing a 

 serviceable moth book has been much more 

 difiicult. To illustrate and describe all of the 

 thousands of species of moths of this country 

 would require the publication of several vol- 

 umes. Therefore, an effort has been made to 

 select those species which adequately represent 

 the various families and the commoner and 

 more important genera, thus providing a work 

 which will serve as an introduction to the 

 study. The selection has been admirable. 

 The 48 colored plates illustrate with beautiful 

 accuracy more than 1,500 species, and all 

 through the text are illustrated other species 

 to the number of more than 250. Dr. Holland 

 adopts in the main the classification of Sir 

 George Hampson, and uses 43 family names. 

 In nomenclature he wisely follows, for the most 

 part, Dr. Dyar's list of the Lepidoptera of the 

 United States, and has conformed the text of 

 his volume to Dr. Dyar's serial arrangement. 

 Dr. Holland differs, as he says, from Dr. Dyar 



