ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 49 



When we turn from general works to those dealing with a single order, either in 

 whole or part, the choice is more difficult and no one book is sufficient. 



To any one who has the money to spend and who is interested in the butterflies of 

 the whole continent north of Mexico, no finer work can be recommended than the mag- 

 nificent volumes of Mr. Wm, H. Edwards on the butterflies of North America with their 

 152 exquisite coloured plated,, but unfortunately the price, aggregating $135 for the three 

 volumes, places the work beyond the reach of the great majority of lepidopterists. 



For the butterflies of the Eastern United States and the contiguous parts of Canada, 

 Scudder's splendid work leaves nothing to be desired, as it is a complete manual on the 

 most elaborate scale of the butterflies to be found in the region, with a great wealth of 

 illustration, but unfortunately its price, $75, puts it also out of the reach of very many. 



An excellent work, dealing with almost the same territory but comprising about 

 one fourth more species and published in 1886, at a moderate price, is French's " Butter- 

 flies of the Eastern United States." This is a very useful work of 402 pages and gives 

 descriptions of 201 species. The nomenclature and classification follow those of Mr. W. 

 H. Edwards. Short directions are given for collecting, setting, preserving and rearing 

 specimens, and there is an acccentuated list and an analytical key. The preparatory 

 stages where known are described with considerable detail, and the distribution is given 

 in a general way. There is, however, a dearth of illustrations, especially in the Lycse- 

 nidae and Hesperidse. 



A less pretentious but extremely useful work is Scudder's " Brief Guide to the Com- 

 moner Butterflies of the Northern United States and Canada," published in 1893, by 

 Henry Holt & Co, at the very moderate price of $1.25. The author has selected for 

 treatment 84 species which he judges would be almost surely met with by an industrious 

 collector in the course of a year or two years' work in the Northern States east of the 

 great plains and in Canada, but such as he classes as " rare " or occurring only in 

 restricted localities are omitted. This, I think, is a pity, as no one starts out to collect 

 merely common things however beautiful, and we all long for the rare and valuable. 

 Besides, several are omitted which occur over wide areas, such as Grapta Gracilis, which 

 is found in the Adirondacks, the White Mountains, in the Muskoka region, on the Lower 

 St. Lawrence and even to the extreme end of the Gaspe Peninsula, and also Colias 

 Interior, embracing a similar but apparently still wider distribution. 



One great charm that I found in the acquisition of my first entomological work, 

 viz , Coleman's British Butterflies, was that it treated of all the species found in Great 

 Britain, and so I felt confident that whatever I caught I would find treated of there 

 and it certainly seems to me that the few extra pages that would have been required 

 for these species, even if their addition had slightly enhanced the cost of the book, 

 would have been well worth the cost. 



This book has no illustrations of any of the species, but though this is doubtless 

 disappointing to the beginner, it has this advantage that when he has worked out the 

 determination of any butterfly by the analytical key and the description he has a 

 much more scientific knowledge of the species than if he merely named it by a super- 

 ficial comparison with a good figure. The nomenclature, of course, is Mr. Scudder's 

 own, the general adoption of which most of us, I think, would regard with disfavour. 

 Otherwise the book has much to recommend it to the beginner. 



Another work, of very limited scope but very beautifully illustrated, is Beuten- 

 miiller's "Descriptive Catalogue of the Butterflies found within fifty miles of New York 

 City," published in the " Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History," separ- 

 ate copies of which may still be obtained from the author -at $1 each. 



This work consists of sixty-eight pages and five plates, two by the Lithotype 

 Printing Co. being especially fine. Ninety-three species are treated of and of these 

 sixty -two are figured. Descriptions of the caterpillar and chrysalis are given where 

 known, and the food plants and short notes on the life history. It is certainly to be 

 regretted that this pamphlet is not more generally accessible. 



4 EN. 



