BOOK NOTICES, ETC. 



95 



been neglected by the author. The principal defects of the book are that it has 

 no index (a table of contents doing duty as a substitute), and that it bears no date. 

 The last defect — though often characteristic of the Religious Tract Society's publi- 

 cations — is a serious one, especially in a book dealing with a scientific subject. 



>00< 



We can most heartily commend Messrs. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.'s penny 

 series of Young Collector's Handbooks, which are admirably got up for the price, and 

 embellished with good engravings. The literary contents are sound and practical, as 

 indeed would be naturally expected of such writers as R, Bowdler Sharpe, W. F. 

 Kirby, B. B.Woodward, James Britten, Barclay V. Head, and their coadjutors. 



>oo< 



From Messrs. W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. we have received various other 

 books for notice. One by S. R. Bottone on 'The Dynamo: how made and how 

 used, a book for amateurs,' is so far beyond the scope of a natural history journal 

 that we confess our inability to say much of it beyond^that it is plentifully illus- 

 trated with woodcuts, and apparently written in a direct and practical manner. 



>ocX 



The Rev. Henry Wood's 'A Season among the Wild Flowers' is a pleasantly 

 written and gossippy series of papers which aim at giving, in a conversational style, 

 simple but accurate information respecting the principal natural orders and genera 

 of British plants. It is well got up, and includes numerous woodcuts. 



— >oo< 



'Flowers: a Fantasy,' by Cornelia Wallace (Sonnenschein & Co., 1884), which 

 is dedicated ' to sister woman,' includes little cuts of various flowers and com- 

 pares them to divers types of female character. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



In the Midland Naturalist for this year, Mr. W. B. Grove, B.A., gives a series 

 of important papers on the Pilobolidse, embodying a synopsis of the European 

 species, and giving a description of a new one. 



In the Entomologists^ Monthly Magazme for August, the Rev. W. W. 

 Fowler, M.A., F.L.S., has begun a series of valuable notes on 'The Nitidulidse 

 of Great Britain,' which will be of great use to coleopterists. It is a critical 

 revision of the family, and includes brief definitions of the various genera and 

 species which it includes, together with useful analytical keys, 



>cx 



In the Entomologist is still continued the valuable series of papers by Messrs. 

 John B. Bridgman and Edward A. Fitch, F.L.S., to which they give the 

 unassuming title of 'Introductory Papers on Ichneumonidas.' Herein the genera 

 and species are discriminated by the ready method which an analytical key affords, 

 and much information upon the subject of parasitism conveyed by means of a 

 series of tables of ' hosts,' and of the parasites which prey upon them. 



>ox 



The close time for wild birds in the county of Northumberland has recently 

 been varied by order of the Home Secretary, so as to be from the ist day of 

 March to the nth of August in each year. 



>oo< 



The 24th Annual Report of the Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club, for 1883-4, 

 has reached us, whereby it appears to keep up its work in Botany with accustomed 

 vigour. It seems, however, a pity that in so strong a Society equal attention should 

 not be paid to other branches of science, at all events to Geology and the various 

 branches of Zoology. In the report now before us the ' Botanical Resume,' by Mr. 

 Robert Brown and Mr, John Vicars, is, as in former years, of considerable interest. 

 A large number of plants have been observed, as might reasonably be expected 

 from the wide range of country traversed in the excursions, which in 1883 were in 

 Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Westmoreland. 



Nov. 1884. 



