228 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 110. 



and Plants in Mid-winter to Snow Flakes, 

 Birds in Mid-winter, Animals with and without 

 Combs, The Moon, the Oil Beetle, Buds, 

 Dutch-weed, Flower-Haunting Insects and 

 twenty-seven other equally diversified subjects. 

 It is interesting to learn that " Jenner, the dis- 

 coverer of vaccination, was accomplished in 

 music, and studied natural history with dili- 

 gence and success." He it was who made 

 most valuable contributions on the habits of 

 the cuckoo, the hibernation of the Hedge-Hog, 

 and other subjects. 



A curious mistatement is made on p. 53, 

 where the author speaks of the pearl-forming 

 Avicula as the shell which the Chinese utilize 

 in making artificial pearl images. Any local 

 shell collector would have told him that it was 

 Hyria, a fresh water mussel, and not the 

 marine Avicula, which the Chinese use for this 

 purpose. 



The illustrations are well chosen and clearly 

 drawn. For teachers of elementary science 

 and as a reading book for the higher grammar 

 and even High Schools it may well be com- 

 mended. E. S. Morse. 



Researches on Mimicry on the basis of a Natural 

 Classification of the Papilionidse. By De. 

 Erich Haase ; translated by C. M. Child, 

 Ph. D. 1896. Pp. 154, plates 8, colored, 

 4to. Nagele, Stuttgart. 

 It should interest entomologists, and general 

 zoologists also, to know that an English trans- 

 lation of a part of Dr. Erich Haase' s elaborate 

 study of mimicry among the Papilionidae has 

 been published. The results of Dr. Haase's 

 researches were originally published in two 

 parts in Leuckart and Chun's Bibliotheca 

 Zoologica. 



The portion issued in English translation is 

 Part II. of the study, and makes a quarto 

 volume of one hundred and fifty pages with 

 eight colored plates. The translator. Dr. C. 

 M. Child, now of the University of Chicago, 

 undertook his work at the suggestion of Dr. 

 Leuckart, of the University of Leipzig, and has 

 made a conscientious and idiomatic translation 

 of this important contribution to the knowledge 

 of mimicry. Dr. Child, though not a professed 

 special student of insects, is known to ento- 



mologists through his excellent study of Johns- 

 ton's antennal organ of hearing. 



So much of our knowledge of mimicry has 

 come through the study of the mimetic phe- 

 nomena exhibited among insects, and especially 

 among the butterflies, that it was to be ex- 

 pected that the first serious attempt to com- 

 bine a study of phylogeny with a study of 

 mimicry should have butterflies for its subject. 

 Systematists have certainly not yet taken much 

 into account the influence of mimicry in making 

 forms of wide phyletic divergence superficially 

 alike, or in making closely related forms super- 

 ficially dissimilar. Yet mimicry produces ex- 

 actly these conditions ; and where so many 

 members of a group, as Dr. Haase shows is true 

 of the butterflies, owe the chief features of their 

 habitus to the influence of mimicry, systematists 

 have got to take this matter into account. And 

 this will be good for us, for it will hold up very 

 plainly to us one of the most interesting and 

 instructive phases of the biological study of 

 organisms. It may broaden some of us ; it can 

 narrow no one of us. 



As much for its suggestiveness as for its light 

 on the origin and development of mimetic 

 coloration among the butterflies, entomologists 

 should become acquainted with Dr. Haase's 

 work. Vernon L. Kellogg. 



Stanford University, 

 California. 



SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS. 



AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



The February number opens with an article 

 by C. E. Beecher, giving an ' outline of a nat- 

 ural classification of the trilobites.' This is the 

 opening portion of a memoir which will be com- 

 pleted in the numbers immediately following. 

 The author's extended study of this group has 

 enabled him to reach definite conclusions, not 

 only in regard to the position that the trilobites 

 properly occupy as a group of the Crustacea, 

 but also to give a systematic and minute classi- 

 fication of the families and genera. The sub- 

 ject is too special to allow of being developed 

 here, but attention may be called to the plate 

 in which certain typical forms are taken to 

 show the principles adopted as the basis of 

 classification. 



