REVIEWS. 
69 
a wonderful phase in normal development ; again, it shows the marvellous 
insight of Newport, who must have spent many and many a weary hour ere 
he could lay down tersely the information above given. Lastly, it shows 
how carefully the editor (for we credit him with the quotation) has brought 
the work to its proper development in thus giving the general reader 
some small idea of the amount of work done by a labourer who is known but 
to anatomists, but who deserves to be remembered when many of the present 
race of naturalists are no more. 
But the general reader, uninterested in metamorphoses, may think 
the above of very little significance, and may naturally be more interested 
in the general habits or other conditions of insects. If he be, he cannot 
fail to find abundance to interest him in this work. For example, let us 
take some of the curious facts relating to parthenogenesis, which are 
recorded, and for which we think again we are indebted to Dr. Duncan. 
Yon Siebold, he says, u collected a great number of the cases, or sacs, as he 
calls them, of Solenobia lichenella and S. triquetrella, and to his great as- 
tonishment none but female individuals came out of them, and only a single 
locality furnished him with a couple of males. He kept these females care- 
fully in little vessels closed with glass lids, and found that they clung to 
their cases, resting upon the outside of them. These virgin females laid eggs 
and filled their sacs with them, and did not wait for a fertilising male, for 
they commenced egg-laying very soon after they escaped from the pupa-case 
or the chrysalis condition. When the Solenobice were removed from their 
sacs, they had such a violent impulse to lay, that they pushed their laying 
tube about in search of the surface of the sac, and at last let their eggs fall 
openly. He writes, ‘ If I had wondered at the zeal for oviposition in these 
husbandless Solenobice , how was I astonished when all the eggs of these 
females, of whose virgin state I was most positively convinced, gave birth 
to young caterpillars which looked about with the greatest assiduity, in 
search of materials for the manufacture of little sacs.’” This is curious 
enough, but is just a mite from the immense store of information which the 
book contains ; and we only wish that our space permitted us a more 
extensive quotation. But we have said, we hope, sufficient to show gene- 
rally the great value and importance of the work, which is an admirable, 
tersely written, English work, and whose engravings are beyond comparison 
as they are almost beyond number. 
HE present work is one of a series which Messrs. Longmans are issuing, 
as we suppose, in opposition to the many works of a somewhat similar 
kind which are being circulated about at present. It is one of a series 
which the editor tells us is intended for the members of a large class which 
* 11 The Elements of Mechanism.” Designed for Students of Applied 
Mechanics. By T. M. Goodeve, B.A., Lecturer on Applied Mechanics at 
the Royal School of Mines. London : Longmans. 1870. 
ELEMENTS OF MECHANISM.* 
