Februaby 26, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



333 



by Deslandres in the case of the positive 

 column of the ordinary discharge with 

 electrodes. The first group was entirely 

 absent. It was interesting to find that 

 some of the characteristic bands of the 

 negative glow were also observed.' 



Ernest Mebeitt, 



Secretary. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 A Monograph of the Gulicidw or Mosquitoes. 



By Fred. V. Theobald, M.A. Volume III. 



London, printed by order of the trustees of 



the British Museum. 1903. Pp. xvii + 



359; 193 text figures; 17 plates. 



Interest in matters connected with mosqui- 

 toes has been increasing so rapidly of late, and 

 so many students and physicians in all parts 

 of the world have been taking up the investi- 

 gation of this family of dipterous insects, 

 that Mr. Theobald's monograph of 1901, pub- 

 lished in two volumes of text and one volume 

 of plates, was hardly in the hands of investi- 

 gators before almost enough material had ac- 

 ciunulated for another volume. Between 

 April, 1901, and February, 1903, over one 

 hundred collections were received at the 

 British Museum, and the present volume in- 

 cludes consideration of this material. In the 

 volume are described 23 new genera, 88 new 

 species and 8 new varieties. At this point 

 Volume III. stops. Since that time already 

 25 new collections have been received at the 

 British Museum, and whatever new forms are 

 contained in these and subsequent collections 

 will be described in journals, and it is not pro- 

 posed to issue another volume until the arrival 

 of new species slackens and the subject has 

 reached a more final stage. This means that 

 for some time to come people wishing to iden- 

 tify mosquitoes must base their work pri- 

 marily upon the three volumes published and 

 afterwards consult all sorts of scientific peri- 

 odicals, both biological and medical, for de- 

 scriptions of new forms, which will necessitate 

 some rather extensive card-cataloguing. In 

 the meantime it may parenthetically be stated 

 that no doubt Mr. Theobald will be glad to 

 name specimens for persons sending them to 



him, and- the writer holds the services of his 

 force at Washington at the disposal of in- 

 quiring medical men and other culicidologists. 



In Volume III. the British Museum au- 

 thorities have abandoned the colored plates 

 which formed so attractive and excellent a 

 feature of Volumes I. and II., but the text 

 contains many figures giving anatomical de- 

 tails of the new species, including a number 

 of figures of various stages. The plates are 

 all done by the collotype process from photo- 

 graphs, and are in the main very good. Care- 

 ful drawings would have been much better 

 than some of them, especially the heads on 

 Plate IX. and the larva and pupa on Plate 

 XVI. 



In the preparation of this volmne Mr. Theo- 

 bald has shown great care and very good 

 judgment. He has been most industrious in 

 bringing together many points concerning the 

 biology of different species in spite of the fact 

 that his main interest seems to have been in 

 the classification of the adults, and as a matter 

 of course the volume is a mine of information 

 concerning the geographic distribution of spe- 

 cies. He had before him practically no addi- 

 tional material from North America in the 

 preparation of Volume III., although he in- 

 troduces some Central American forms, some 

 from the West Indies and a number from 

 South America. The bulk of his additional 

 material, however, has come to him from 

 Africa, India and Australasian regions. 



One point which he brings out which will 

 be of interest to North American students is 

 his decision that Anopheles walheri, which he 

 described from specimens (number not given) 

 collected at Lake Simcoe, Ontario, in Sep- 

 tember by E. M. Walker, is really a synonym 

 of Anopheles hifurcatus LinnKUS of Europe, a 

 species of rather wide European distribution, 

 occurring from Lapland to Italy and the Medi- 

 terranean islands. 



Since the publication of Volumes I. and II. 

 an important attempt has been made by M. 

 Neveu-Lemaire to formulate a classification, 

 of mosquitoes mainly on palpal and vena- 

 tional characters. Mr. Theobald shows that 

 while the French author in his classification 

 upholds certain genera proposed by Theobald 



