O52. THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S RECORD. 
part of the work descriptions of 242 species are gathered together from 
various sources, and the author thinks that very few have escaped him. 
He is careful also to tell us that very possibly it will prove that some 
of these are not distinct, but are synonymous, due perhaps in some 
degree to carelessness of describers, more often to the insufficient 
description of earlier students. It might have been well had these 
been carefully elucidated by the author, but this would hardly have 
been possible, consistently with the aim of getting together at once all 
the material the author could find as a basis for further work, rather 
than providing a finished monograph of the group. If we regard it as 
what it proposes to be, a collection of the known material for the use 
of the student of medicine in the field, we must congratulate the 
author on haying produced a work with such well digested arrange- 
ment. Of the 242 species, 72 are given as Huropean and 24 as 
British. Of the latter several are genuine mosquitoes (¢.e., blood- 
sucking gnats), but our weather is rarely hot or dry enough to give 
them a taste for anything beyond their natural food of vegetable juices. 
It is for this reason that they are rarely very troublesome in this 
country, and not because the insects themselves are absent. We are 
inclined to suspect, however, that it is very much due also to the com- 
parative rarity of the insects. One rarely sees Culex pipiens, or especi- 
ally C. annulatus, without finding them ready to bite, but then they 
usually appear by ones and twos, and not in swarms.—T. A. C. 
‘THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE City or Lonpon EntomonoeicaL anp NaturaL 
History Society, 1899, demy 8vo., pp. 1-80.—Price 2s. [Published at 
the Society’s Rooms, London Institution, Finsbury Circus, H.C.].— 
The Transactions of the City of London Entomological and Natural History 
Soctety for 1899 consist of three parts: (1) The proceedings at the 
meetings, (2) Original papers, and (8) The continuation of the Fauna 
of the London District. The first part contains a large number of 
incidental notes and observations on the species exhibited by the 
members, most of them of great value, more particularly to field 
naturalists, whilst here and there (e.., p. 11, ‘“‘The Coleoptera of 
Weymouth,” Donisthorpe) one finds important abstracts of papers not 
printed in full. The papers in the second part are most valuable ; 
‘‘ Notes on Spilosoma lubricipeda,” by A. W. Mera; ‘‘ Poisonous plants. 
in relation to medical jurisprudence,” by F. Bouskell, F.E.S.; ‘ The 
lifehistory of Oporabia autwmnata, Bkh.,” by L. B. Prout, F.E.S. ; 
“Variation in broods of Aaylia putris, Cucullia umbratica, Spilosoma 
urticaec, and Malacosoma castrensis,”’ by A. Bacot; ‘‘Some marsh 
beetles of the Lea Valley,’ by F. B. Jennings, F.E.S5. Mr. Prout’s 
paper is particularly important to all lepidopterists, and no one should 
miss it who is at all interested in the Geometrids. ‘‘The Fauna of 
the London List,” is carried on throughout the Noctuids, Deltoids and 
a part of the Geometrids. The nomenclature used will probably be to . 
a large extent that finally accepted under the now generally recognised 
laws of priority, and we should be glad if correspondents would as 
far as possible keep entirely to the revised nomenclature as investi- 
gated by Mr. Prout and here published. The Transactions should. 
certainly be in the hands of all lepidopterists. 
ErratumM.—p. 213, line 33, for 12mm. read 1:2mm. 
