110 REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
Collectors will find some useful hints regarding field work. We 
quote the following passage : — 
‘¢ Mr. — field collections are made with unusual care. A 
gauze net is used by him, of so delicate a texture that the cap- 
tured insect, in its efforts to escape, may brush against its sides 
without the loss of any of its cilia. As quickly as possible it is 
withdrawn from the net in a wide-mouthed bottle, and speedily 
quieted by a few drops of chloroform, poured on some cotton 
contained in a glass tube passing through the cork. When the 
insect is dead, or nearly so, it is carefully” turned out on the palm 
of the left hand, and in that poruon pinned, without taking it as 
is usually done between the 
I have found a lump of hat of potassa, secured by a piece 
of gauze to the stopple of a bottle (a French mustard jar with its 
hollow screw stopple forms an excellent collecting bottle), to be 
more convenient for use than chloroform, and near ‘ly as prompt in 
its effects.” 
We are quite well satisfied with the use of cyanide of potassa. 
A Hawnp-soox or Bririsu Funer.*—The increasing interest in 
the study of the Fungi, especially their microscopic forms, leads 
to the frequent inquiry for some compact and trustworthy manual 
of this somewhat puzzling class of plants. Mr. Cooke is well 
known as an enthusiastic and experienced author on the subject, 
and this treatise is the best which the English or American student 
can employ to assist him in his home researches. References to 
United States habitats are largely given, and the measurements 
and descriptions by Greville, Fries, Berkeley, Smith, etc., added to 
Mr. Cooke’s own observations on almost ev ery species. In classi- 
fication, the author has endeavored to simplify the arrangement, 
_ as much as the great influx of new discoveries would permit. To 
have succeeded, however imperfectly in this, is to have earned the 
gratitude of every student of the Fungi—for no branch of botany 
has been in greater confusion and embarrassment of nomenclature. 
The extremely plastic character of fungus life is perhaps an ex- 
cuse for this, but Mr. Cooke seems to have taken hold of the diffi- 
_ culty with courage and to have worked with decided views of his 
_ own, which it is to be regretted that the proposed limits of the 
volumes left him no room to explain at length. The references 
are very full, much more so than the size of the work would prom- 
ae : * Hand-book of British Fungi, with full Description of all the Species, and Illustra- 
_ tions of the Genera. By M. U. Cooke, M.A., London and New York: Macmillan and 
“810, 2 vols., pp. 982. Price 312. : 
