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AQUATIC INSECTS. 



The Natural History | of j Aquatic Insects | By | Professor L. C. Miall, 

 F.R.S. | with Illustrations by A. R. Hammond. F.L.S. | London | 

 Macmillan and Co. | . . | 1895 i • • [8vo. cloth, pp. xii 4-395, **& 

 illustrations in the text]. 



This is a remarkably interesting and fascinating work, and deals 

 with an astonishing number of forms of aquatic insect life. The 

 details of structure and life-history are multitudinous in their array 

 and the work is evidently the result of many years' diligent and 

 systematic investigation in the field and in the library, in which 

 the author has been assisted by numerous helpers, of whom three 

 Messrs. W. F. Baker, T. H. Taylor, and J. J. Wilkinson— are 

 specially thanked in the preface. The scope of the work includes 

 an account of all the different types of aquatic insects, their habits, 

 mode of life, development, and such details of their structure as are 

 found to bear upon the life-history. 



The introduction deals with water and its surface-film, and with 

 generalities concerning aquatic insects. The water-beetles are treated 

 of in the first chapter, flies with aquatic larvae in the second, aquatic 

 hymenoptera in the third, aquatic caterpillars in the fourth, caddis- 

 worms in the fifth, the alder-fly in the sixth, stone-flies in the 

 seventh, may-flies in the eighth, dragon-flies in the ninth, pond- 

 skaters, water-scorpions, and water-boatmen in the tenth, the water 

 springtail in the eleventh, and insects of the sea-shore in the twelfth, 

 while in the last chapter are summarised the contrivances of aquatic 

 insects, their modes of locomotion, of feeding, of respiration, attack 

 and defence, egg-laying, etc. 



We shall all sympathise most warmly in the Professors admiration 

 for the works of the sreat zoologists of the olden time — Swammerdam, 

 Reaumur, Lyonnet, and De Geer — and in his desire to promote the 

 study of what he calls live natural history; and we are glad to see 

 that in his preface he expressly disclaims any intention to disparage 

 the study of systematic zoology. This in itself is a great advance 

 upon the spirit shown by a few biologists, who appear to think that, 

 because they are not systematic, they may be loose and inaccurate. 

 But Professor Miall gives excellent advice to students in the course 

 of the work. We might, however, take exception to a remark on 

 p. 26 which seems to imply that a student of natural history or 

 anatomy need not be accurate in naming his species. We hold, on 

 the other hand, that it detracts from the value of otherwise good 

 anatomical or life-history work of the subject if it be not accurately 

 and precisely determined, and we can recall as a case in point that 

 Prof. M, Lawson published an account of the anatomy of Umax 



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