REVIEWS AXD EXCHANGES 
93 
Shooting stars are likely to be numerous during the first week in May, but 
they will appear after l a.m. in the morning. This shower is directed from 
A(|uarius, and is supposed to be connected with Halley’s comet, which is expected 
to return in 1910. 
The evening sky is now very attractive, with the brilliant planets Venus and 
Jupiter displayed to their best advantage. 
W. F. D. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
A Guide to the Exhibited Series of Insects. With 62 Illustrations. x 5^ in. 
Pp. 60. Price IS. British Museum (Natural History), Zoological Department. 
Insect Section. 
The casual visitor to our National Collection wishing to obtain some general 
notions on the animal kingdom, may well be misled by the relatively small space 
occupied in the public galleries by insects. The main collection, we are told in 
this Guide, “ is estimated to contain 1,150,000 specimens, and comprises about 
155,700 named species, occupying 13,000 drawers and 602 boxes.” This is 
accessible to students, but is in the basement of the building, and is, therefore, 
not seen by the general public. The Class Insecta is not only the most numerously 
represented, so far as species are concerned, in the animal kingdom, but fur- 
nishes such a wealth of illustration of biological principles that it has often 
appeared to us that more space should have been given to its representation in 
the public galleries. As it is, we are inclined to think that the most important 
omission in this excellent Guide is a general plan of the Museum indicating the 
whereabouts of the Insect Gallery. The author — presumably, from the signature 
to the preface, Mr. Charles O. Waterhouse — furnishes us with an only too brief 
summary of the structure and classification of the Class. This only extends to 
seven pages, much of which is occupied by illustrations. He then passes in 
review the ten orders into which he subdivides the Class. The excellent illustra- 
tions have almost all been specially prepared from the specimens in the Gallery. 
Evolutionists will be interested to find that the author ventures upon a genea- 
logical table of the group, but we do not notice any reference to its fossil 
representatives, or to the geological sequence of its subdivisions. As we are 
told that the arrangement of the Gallery and the Guide are both provisional, 
we can only hope that at an early date Mr. Waterhouse will “ let himself go ” 
in a new edition. 
I'he Insect Book. By \V'. Percival Westell. Illustrated with photographs by 
R. B. Imisson. 6j x 4J in. Pp. 120. John Lane. Price 3s. net. 
This attractive booklet is of a very different character to the last-mentioned 
work. It is one of Mr. Lane’s tasteful “Country Handbooks,” and the author 
makes no pretence to a scientific or exhaustive treatment of his subject. He 
gives us chapters on the insect-life of the garden, the waterside, the woodland, 
meadows, heaths, lanes and , houses, illustrated by thirty-six excellent photo- 
graphs. The book is calculated to serve as a suitable introduction to such works 
as Professor G. H. Carpenter’s or Mr. Oswald Latter’s. 
Wood: A Manual of the Natttral History and Industrial Applications of the 
Timbers of Commerce. By G. S. Boulger. Second Edition. With 48 
plates and other illustrations. 8|^ x 5|^ in. Pp. 348. Edward Arnold. 
Price I 2 S. fid. net. 
This is a revised and enlarged edition, entirely re-set, of a work which we 
reviewed in November, 1902. Some 300 species have been added to tbe descrip- 
tive portion, bringing tne number of woods dealt with up to about a thousand. 
Another new feature is the series of full-page plates, giving transverse sections 
of typical woods, uniformly magnified to 30 diameters. The specimen which we 
are permitted by the publisher to reproduce represents portions of three annual 
