PRESS NOTICES OP VOL. III. Xlii. 



in the preface that the author is willing to print one if carefully prepared by anyone who has the 

 requisite time at his disposal. — P. H. Grimshaw. F.E.S., The Annals of Scottish Natural 

 History, January, 1903. 



" The third volume of Mr. J. W. Tutt's British Lepidoptera is a really important book. 

 It has been compiled on the same plan as the preceding volumes, though partly on account 

 of the particular genera treated, but more from the catholic taste with which the author has 

 brought together his materials, the present work is even more useful to the scientific entomologist 

 than vols, i and ii. To the collector and systematist Mr. Tutt's books are without doubt of high 

 value. The analysis of specific and varietal characters is evidently made with extreme care, 

 but, to the general naturalist, and especially to the student of evolution, the book has a 

 direct and uncommon importance. Nothing of this kind has been attempted in any language 

 hitherto. Mr. Tutt though modestly entitling his work A Natural History of British Lepidoptera, 

 has gone much further afield than such a title would lead a reader to expect. For example, 

 in treating Lasiocampa quercus, we are provided not merely with a discussion of the British 

 races, but an abstract is given of all that has been observed in the field or discovered by experi- 

 mental breeding regarding the foreign forms and the laws which govern their heredity and variation. 

 Again, in connection with the natural history of Saturnia pavonia, Mr. Tutt introduces a full 

 account of Standfuss' important experiments in crossing the continental species. Many similar 

 examples might be given illustrating the broad scope of the work. It may well be imagined that, in 

 dealing thus liberally with species such as quercus, potatoria, pavonia, tiliae, popnli and ocellata, 

 all forms famous in the literature of variation and hybridisation, a very fine body of evidence has 

 been amassed. To take the subject of gynandromorphism alone, it is scarcely too much to say that 

 the raw material for a treatise is scattered through Mr. Tutt's pages. The abstracting and 

 condensation of the evidence, so far as it can be judged by one who is not a professed entomologist 

 has been most carefully done, and the reader may feel confidence that, though the points are 

 concisely put, exaggeration has been consistently avoided. Altogether, such a work is one to be 

 thankful for, and there can be no doubt that such a publication will stimulate the younger 

 generation of students to step from the narrow track of mere collecting, and to wander off into the 

 more fertile fields of experiment and observation of living forms. Mr. Tutt tells us in his preface 

 that if anyone will make a subject index, he will print it in the next volume. Cannot some keen 

 young worker take him at his word? Meanwhile the student of evolution must not be daunted by the 

 difficulty of putting his hand at once on the fact he is looking for, and the physiological chiffonier, 

 as Claude Bernard calls himself, may be assured that, if he will only rummage about a little, he 

 will pick up some rare treasures in Mr. Tutt's heap. To include everything that can by any 

 possibility relate to, or interest the student of, the British fauna, is to err on the right side, though 

 the connection with that fauna be rather remote. Now and again, however, we come on a few 

 pages which are very doubtful in point. Space being so valuable, we feel that, for instance, 

 the details regarding the structure and classification of the Attacides of the world need not 

 have found a place here, not that the facts are unimportant, but no one is likely to look for 

 them in a work on a fauna which contains one solitary species of the group. The unprofessional 

 reader wonders, too, who uses the solid pages of locality records in the case of species widely 

 distributed. When these records detail the varieties of the districts their value is manifest, and 

 they will form a solid basis for the observation of future changes in distribution. Did we not 

 feel sure that, in this case, the author knows the requirements of his public, we might be 

 disposed to question whether this was really the best use to which the labour and space could 

 have been put. None of these remarks, however, detract from the statement that the new 

 British Lepidoptera is a fine scholarly piece of work, for which not only the entomological 

 specialist, but naturalists of all orders, will be thankful to Mr. Tutt for many a year." — W. 

 Bateson, M.A., F.R.S., Entomologist' 's Record, &>c, December, 1902. 



" The third volume of this work has now appeared. It is of the same exhaustive character 

 as those which have preceded it, as may be inferred from the fact that, in its 558 pages, only 

 thirteen species are described, i.e. , the remainder of the ' Lachneides' {Lasiocampa quercus, 

 etc.) D. versicoloi-a, S. pavonia, the three species of the old Smerinthid genus, and the two 

 British ' Bee-Hawks,' H. fuciformis and H. tityus {bombyli/ormisj . As an example of the 

 author's exhaustive treatment, L. quercus may be cited. All lepidopterists know the vast 

 amount of discussion that has taken place since the var. callwiae was introduced about 1847 

 as a distinct species. The immense amount of information since obtained as to the habits 

 of this species in different regions of Europe and Asia is brought together and discussed in 

 about 80 pages, in a manner which seems to leave scarcely anything more to be said. It 

 would be an error, however, to suppose that the volume is limited to descriptions of thirteen 

 species, their many varieties and recorded aberrations, their life-histories, habits and localities. 

 These, indeed, are given in very great detail ; but the relations of the species found in our 

 islands to those found in the rest of world are always kept in view, and the result is that 

 a very large proportion of the 558 pages is devoted to information and discussions of as much 

 interest to Continental and American lepidopterists as to our own. In this connection I would 

 draw attention to the frequent observations on the conjectured phylogeny of the species, and 

 of the genera, families, etc., to which they belong, and on their proper places in a classification 

 based on the observation of the insects in all their stages. A knowledge of these is, of course, 

 essential for this purpose, seeing the different traces of their probable origin which they bear in 

 these stages, and the diversity of the directions in which, in these several stages, owing to the 

 entirely different lives they lead in them, they appear to have evolved. As regards phylogeny in 

 general, the observation at p. 359 is deserving of being well weighed. The passage is too long 

 to quote, but it comes to this, that what we call the ' lowest ' members of a stirps are as many 

 generations from the common stock as the ' highest ' are ; we may construct a hypothetical 

 ancestor, having all the generalised but none of the specialised characteristics of a group, the 

 members of it having specialised in different directions so that no existing form can be supposed 

 to be derived from any form now existing. I am so thankful for the great labour which has been 

 expended by the author and his coadjutors in obtaining and recording, with the necessary 

 accuracy required, the detailed information contained in the work, that I do not like to suggest 

 that, if even more labour could have been given, the value of the work might have been greater 

 still. But when I find that such a common and widely distributed species as C. potatoria has 

 more than five closely printed pages devoted to dates and localities of capture in the British Isles, 

 I cannot help thinking that a compressed and classified summary, which need not have occupied 

 more than half a page, would have been preferable. There are other cases also in which it 

 appears to me that compression and condensation would have been usefully employed. Even if 



