The imm MT^EAUST: 



A Penny Weekly Magazine of Natural History. 



No. 138. 



JULY 1st, 1882. 



Vol. 3. 



MY LIBRARY. 



II. 



The Illustrated Natural History of 

 British Moths, by Edward Newman. 



^PHIS is a handsome looking volume 

 J- of much greater pretensions than 

 the last. It contains the Sphinges, 

 Bombyces, Noctua3, and Geometra?, 

 but none of the other groups, it is of 

 very unequal merit, and while the des- 

 scriptions, &c., on the early pages are, 

 perhaps, rather brief, the later ones are 

 very much spun out. We believe the 

 beginning of it was originally published 

 in Young England, a much more deser- 

 ving paper than many that have attained 

 an enormous circulation by pandering 

 to the taste for highly spiced fiction, that 

 is corrupting our very schools. A sepa- 

 rate publication of these papers was 

 begun, and three numbers, extending 

 to the end of the Bombyces, were 

 I issued. The publication was then 

 suspended for a considerable period, 

 and when it was resumed, much more 

 lengthy descriptions, &c., were given. 

 Thus the first sixteen species, includ- 

 ing the largest Sphinges, arc all 

 figured and described in eight pages, 



of which about half are taken up by 

 the figures, being an average of quarter 

 of a page of letter-press to each. In 

 the latter part of the volume there is 

 sometimes a whole page of letter-press 

 to a species; though, doubtless, the 

 more closely allied species require more 

 elucidation, we cannot say that the 

 descriptions here are very easy to 

 understand, and certainly prefer the 

 briefer ones of StainMs Manual. 

 There, the difi'erences between species, 

 are clearly pointed out ; here, they are 

 almost lost in the multiplicity of words, 

 most of which are but repetition. The 

 division into genera is entirely ignored, 

 in fact, after the fourth family of 

 Geometm, even the divisions into 

 families are not noticed ; and the species 

 follow each other in unbroken succes- 

 sion, except that there is a change of 

 heading to the pages on which the Cus- 

 pidates and Noctuas are described. 

 English names arc given to every 

 species, but so many of these are 

 utterly meaningless, that in our opinion 

 they hinder instead of helping the 

 beginner. In a former article we 

 mentioned that there were no less than 



