36 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



notice has thoroughly discussed the bionomics of these interest- 

 ing insects, and has produced a work which is very much more 

 than a mere description of species, and one which will afford 

 much valuable information to the botanist as well as the ento- 

 mologist. L'Abbe Kieffer has treated his subject very thoroughly, 

 and has provided good bibliographical references to what other 

 workers have written on the subject. The volume is enriched 

 with twenty-seven plates, and may be described as a book for all 

 interested in galls and Gall-flies. 



Mon. Andre's volume is devoted to a large subfamily of 

 fossorial Hymenoptera, more or less parasitic in habits, and 

 exhibiting a marked dissimilarity between the sexes. It thus 

 appeals to entomologists as a rule, and to hymenopterists in 

 particular. To those zoologists, few indeed !, who follow Darwin 

 and Wallace — most frequently at a distance — in an encyclopaedic 

 or universal survey of the science, such a book escapes from the 

 restricted study of the specialist, and becomes material for great 

 generalizations. This is not the purpose, but is probably the 

 true salvation of a monograph, and marks its general canoniza- 

 tion. To know everything about one subject, and a little about 

 all, is perhaps the only possibility of scholarship, and is too 

 frequently the despair of a zoologist. Mon. Andre's book is a 

 good brick for such an edifice, and is distinctly a treatise which 

 will be studied by the specialist. 



