308 



SCIENCJE. 



[Vol. VI., No. 140. 



or more plates devoted in part to the illustration 

 of the earlier stages of our butterflies, while the 

 text has constantly improved from that point up to 

 the present time ; a far larger proportion of the space 

 being now occupied in treating of the biology and 

 distribution of butterflies, and with their climatic 

 and seasonal variations — the latter a study in which 

 our author has taken the first rank in this countiy. 

 The first series of parts was completed in five 

 years ; the second has occuioied more than ten for 

 its issue. But the value of the second, with 

 twenty-seven out of its fifty-one x^lates devoted in 

 part to illustrations of the earlier stages, is beyond 

 comparison more valuable than the first series, in 

 which only nine out of the fifty plates contained 

 any illustration whatever of the earher conditions 

 of the existence of these animals. As to the exe- 

 cution of the plates, no iconography of the present 

 time excels them ; in faithfulness and sobriety of 

 color, in gracefulness of disposition upon the 

 plates, in artistic execution and in faithful repre- 

 sentation of the minutest details, they surpass any- 

 thing that has been given to the world from the 

 most famed ateliers of Europe. There is little in- 

 equality about them. They are uniformly ex- 

 quisite, and lepidopterists the world over are 

 indebted to Mr. Edwards for the faitlifulness and 

 luxury of Ms illustrations. By text and plates he 

 has enriched the natural history of our native 

 butterflies to such an extent, during the seven- 

 teen years in which these two volumes have been 

 passing through the press, that the butterfly fauna 

 of the United States is now quite as weU known 

 and illusti-ated as that of any equal region else- 

 where, not excluding the long gleaned fields of 

 Europe. 



The manufacture of the book is equally credit- 

 able, with the single exception of the difficulty of 

 reference. By the system adopted it becomes nec- 

 essary to refer to plate 'PapihoSB,' for instance, 

 instead of to a single number. So also the text is 

 unpaged, excepting in a few instances where it is 

 separately paged tlu-oughout a smgle part, as in 

 ' Lycaena II. -III.' The author's intention is that at 

 the close of the volumes text and plates shall be 

 re-distiibuted and bound in an order fixed by liim- 

 self , and then numbered in pencfl ; and he gives, 

 therefore, a numerical order to the plates. But 

 this is a most unsatisfactory method, and there is 

 no index to the volume, so that any reference to 

 the text is troublesome and vague. 



In closing the first series of his ' Butterflies,' Mr. 

 Edwards gave what he termed a ' Synopsis of North 

 American butterflies,' with ample reference to the 

 literature of the subject. This he has wisely dis- 

 carded at the close of the present volume, substi- 

 tuting therefor a merely nominal list of species. 



In this, however, in which the number of species 

 is raised from 512 to 612, he retains in nearly every 

 particular the antique classification adopted in the 

 first volume. The studies which Mr. Edwards has. 

 undertaken upon the history of butterflies have 

 rendered him an authority on that subject, and his 

 skfll in field investigation has been unexcelled. 

 This, however, constitutes no claim whatever to 

 any knowledge of the structure itself of butterflies, 

 upon which classifications must be founded ; and 

 as he has shown no such knowledge in his writings, 

 we can only regret that he did not altogether omit 

 this list, since it carries an authority to the public 

 eye which it does not possess, the classification 

 being not only faulty m many minute particulars,, 

 but fundamentallv false to nature. 



LIPPS'S PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES. 



This firmly and clearly-written volume is the 

 work of a very acute and able man. No compe- 

 tent person will read it without wishing to read 

 the other work to which its author refers, — his 

 ' Grtindtliatsachen des seelenlebens ' (Bonn, 1883). 

 One can never do justice to a psychologist without 

 knowing the ensemble of his views ; and as we 

 have not yet seen the larger volume, our own notice 

 better be descriptive than critical. There are two 

 essays m the work before us ; one on visual space- 

 perception, the other on the essence of musical 

 harmony and discord ; and both stick close to the 

 particular matter in hand. In the space-perception 

 essay, these topics are treated of: the nature of 

 seen distance, the continuity of the field of view 

 as connected with the filling out of the blind spoty 

 and the space intervals seen between different 

 retinal spots when the latter are excited. On all 

 these subjects Dr. Lipps's views are thoroughly 

 original. To take the last one first ; it is an em- 

 pirical fact that (distance and eye-position being- 

 equal) an object appears of about the same size 

 to us, no matter on what part of the retina its 

 image f aUs ; why is this so ? why, on the whole, 

 do equal retinal distances correspond to equal ex- 

 tensions seen ? The simplest answer is that they 

 have an inborn tendency to do so, of which we 

 can give no farther account. This answer is now- 

 adays unpopular — notwithstanding the very great 

 abihty of some of those who defend it, first because 

 it is the fashion to substitute genesis for innateness 

 everywhere m our explanations just now, and sec- 

 ond because there are variations in the judgments, 

 of size, shape, distance apart, etc., which we 

 get from the same retinal tracts, under different 



Psychologische studien. Von Dr. Theodob Lipps. Hei- 

 delberg. VFeiss. 1S85, IGlp. 



