200 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



in the best sense, and friendly manner to all with whom he came into 

 contact, were the best evidence of the genuineness and goodness of 

 his nature. His was, indeed, a truly British character ; for though, 

 as Mr. Eichardson (who is, by the way, his son-in-law) tells us, his 

 father was a Hanoverian — in those remote days a British subject 

 under our then comparatively new dynasty — his mother was English, 

 and he did not even know German, or try to get his children to 

 learn it. Eminently a practical scientist, he qualified in medicine 

 and practised it a short time before taking to journalism, and his 

 ornithological studies were especially concerned with such useful 

 birds as poultry, pheasants, and homing pigeons ; and as, to get 

 practical results, a man must necessarily be scientific, it is no wonder 

 that he was so useful to Darwin. Bees also received his attention, 

 and he proved that the hexagonal form of the cell develops from a 

 cylindrical one in the course of working, and is not the outcome 

 of design. Both in journalism and outside it, he left a gap 

 that ^has never been filled; and, as he was the first naturalist 

 whose work attracted our then juvenile attention, and the one we 

 always respected most, we have a personal pleasure in heartily 

 welcoming this able and sympathetic book. 



The Fauna of British India. Ehynchota, Vol. VI. Homoptera, 

 Appendix. By W. L. Distant. London : Taylor & Francis. 

 1916. 

 This worthy member of a brilliant and useful series contains 

 numerous additions in the way of new species and genera to the 

 previous volumes on the Indian insects of this group. Some 

 idea of the richness of the Indian region may be formed by Mr. 

 Distant's opening paragraph : " In volume III, 149 species of 

 Cicadidae were enumerated and described as found in this Eauna. 

 I am now able to add 23 more species, bringing up the total to 

 172." Many new forms of the extraordinary little MembracidcB, so 

 conspicuous by their thoracic excrescences, are also described, of 

 which the most remarkable are Hypsauchenia kempi, with its 

 scimitar-shaped vertical horn as long as the body, and Anchonoides 

 typicus, in which, besides two lateral horns, there is a central one 

 bending over and joining the back at its tip, thus forming an actual 

 handle — surely a unique structure among animals. 



Erratum. — On p. 160, line 3, for " possessing the," read " possessing two." 



