S44 Reviews and Notices of Books. 



sources from which he has drawn his information have been 

 Dawson's Geodephaga Britannica, Murray's Catalogue of Scottish 

 Coleoptera, Hardy and Bold's Catalogue of Northumbrian Co- 

 leoptera, Hogan's Catalogue of species found in the neighbour- 

 hood of Dublin, and scattered notices published in the scientific 

 periodicals of the day, such as the Annals of Natural His- 

 tory, the Zoologist, &c. He has thus accumulated 227 species, 

 of which he says it is presumed none are given in Stephens' 

 Manual. We fear he is mistaken in saying so. Stephen's de- 

 scriptions are so vague and undecipherable, especially of the 

 smaller species, and his own collection frequently so inaccurate, 

 that it is often impossible to tell what insect he is describing, and 

 in such cases his names can neither be adopted as principal deno- 

 minations, nor even as accessory synonymes, and the entomologist 

 is compelled to take the Continental names, so that a number of 

 insects under these names may be included in the list which 

 Stephens had got and thought he had described in his Manual. 

 We wish that Mr Janson had, like Mr Smith, given a list of those 

 of Stephens' species which should be deleted from his Manual, or 

 referred to older well-known names. He would have found much 

 assistance in doing so in the works from which he has compiled 

 his list, especially in Dawson's Geodephaga Britannica and Mur- 

 ray's Catalogue of Scottish Coleoptera, where great attention has 

 been paid to the synonymy of Stephens' species. Perhaps Mr Jan- 

 son may undertake this in some future Annual. When it shall 

 be done, it will probably be found that instead of adding to the num- 

 ber of species reckoned as British, we must still reduce them. 



From the summary which we have given, it will be evident that 

 " the Entomologist's Annual" is as yet very far from fulfilling 

 the promise which its title holds out. It can scarcely be said 

 to do so even as a " British Entomologist's Annual," for half the 

 orders of British insects are left untouched. The Hemiptera, Hom- 

 optera, Neuroptera, Orthoptera, Biptera, Aptera, &c. are never 

 mentioned ; and what has been done in the other orders, although it 

 may fulfil what Mr Stainton in his preface professes to do, cer- 

 tainly fulfils only a very small, and that the most inconsiderable 

 part of what we imagine to be the true duty of an Entomologist's 

 Annual. As we take it, the object of such a work should be not 

 only to bring together the notices of new captures in the course 

 of the year, but to make the entomologists aware of what has 

 been doing in the literature of the science, what new works have 

 appeared, what information is contained in them, and generally to 

 keep the entomologist au courant du jour in all matters relating 

 to his study both at home and abroad. British entomologists are 

 in general wofully ignorant of what is going on on the Continent, 

 and to supply this information should be one of the great objects of 

 an Entomologist's Annual. It may perhaps be supposed that 



