SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



299 



setting-boards, etc. These latter, we are pleased 

 to find, are " flat," in true continental fashion. 

 With regard to the coloured plates, we may 

 say at once that most of them are better than 

 the average of such work. They are generally 

 well drawn, though there is some inequality of size ; 

 as for instance, on plate iii., Theda betulce is repre- 

 sented as large as Leucophasia sinapis or var. helicc 

 oiColias edusa and Goncpteryx rhantni. It would have 

 been better to have given the sizes in the text in a 

 few of such cases where measurements are usually 

 absent, though they are given after the names of 



this work is one of sympathy with the author, in 

 what he must feel towards the printers of his 

 coloured plates. The workmen have not in some 

 of them troubled to keep the register, and thus 

 permitted patches of colour to extend where they 

 should not be, even outside the insect itself. Several 

 of the plain figures in the body of the book have 

 likewise suffered from the too heavy attentions of 

 the machine-man. We do not believe that Mr. 

 Walter A. Pearce ever drew Fig. 27 in the worn, 

 fringeless state it appears in the copy before us, he 

 is too careful an artist, In the preface Mr. Tutt 



SERIES XlV.—(conlinneii.) 



T = 'IOI see. 

 From " The Splash of a Drop," by Prof. A. M. Worthington, F.R.S. 



the insects in the index. We repeat that the colour- 

 ing of the figures is much above the average for 

 machine work, and is amply sufficient for identi- 

 fication. The text is cut down as low as possible, 

 the authors relying upon the plates, rather than 

 on descriptions, though each species has some of 

 the technical points indicated. 



British Moths. By J. W. Tutt, F.E.S. 374 pp. 

 8vo. Illustrated by 12 plates in colours and 61 

 figures in the text. (London : George Routledge 

 and Sons, Limited. 1896.) Price 5s. 



The first feeling excited in us on looking over 



states " we are met with the positive fact that there 

 is no text-book extant which deals, or attempts 

 to deal, with our moths on the lines which the 

 study of the last twenty-five years has convinced all 

 true naturalists are the correct ones." Surely 

 our author must have written this previously 

 to the appearance of Mr. Edward Meyrick's 

 " Handbook of British Lepidoptera." The author 

 tells us that " the lines of classification adopted are 

 those of the most recent authorities on the subject, 

 as set out in a correlative of the recent systems 

 published in the ' Transactions of the Entomological 

 Society of London ' in 1895, and are based upon 



