254 
NATURE NOTES. 
science has arrived. A number of useful illustrations, with plans and maps, and 
an excellent index, complete the attractiveness and usefulness of the book. 
The Story of a Red Deer, by the Hon. J. W. Fortescue (Macmillan, 4s. 6d.), 
was written, as the author tells us in a delightfully quaint dedication, at the 
request of a “ kinsman ” of nine years old. It is one of the class of animal 
stories which, unless children’s tastes have entirely changed during the last forty 
years, are always acceptable to young readers ; but — and this may be the result of 
a critical age — it has far more pretensions to literary style than could be claimed 
for our own early favourites — “ Bob, the Spotted Terrier,” “ Captain,” “ The 
Robins,” and the like. The .simple, graphic, child-like (which is by no means 
the same as childA//:) style is most attractive, and Mr. Fortescue’s book will find 
a welcome in many a liome this Christmas. The following extract from the 
preface will commend itself to Selbornians : — 
“ Though I would have you love the stories of great men and take delight in 
the reading of good books, yet I would have you take no less delight in the birds 
and the beasts that share with you your home, and in the observance of their 
goings out and their comings in, of their friends and of their enemies, of their 
prosperities and of their perils ; whereby you will gain not only that which the 
great Mr. Milton (in his -Tract on Education) hath called the helpful experiences 
of hunters, fowlers, and fishermen, but such a love of God’s creatures as will 
make the world the fuller of joy for you because the fuller of friends ; and this 
not in one wise only, for I have ever noticed that they who be fondest of dumb 
creatures are given to be tenderest to their fellow-men.” 
AMERICAN INSECTS.- 
The old exclusiveness of British entomologists has been breaking down for 
many years, and it would probably be difficult to find many entomologists now 
who were totally unacquainted with any other insects than those of Britain ; but 
the publication of a popular book on the insects of the United States, in London 
as well as in America, is a somewhat new departure, and is therefore to be 
welcomed as extending the popular information respecting insects to those of 
another continent. It is also an advantage that a book of this nature deals with 
the fauna of the Northern United States, for although this is a limited Temperate 
fauna, and the subtropical forms are not very numerous, yet their representatives 
are spread over the whole country, as common and conspicuous insects, side by 
side with the Temperate fauna ; whereas in Europe really subtropical forms are 
almost exclusively Mediterranean, and therefore somewhat beyond the observation 
of the entomologists of Northern or Central Europe. 
Thus, in the present volume, side by side with insects comparable with well- 
known British forms, such as tiger-beetles, crickets, l.ady-birds, &c., we find 
such conspicuous and unfamiliar forms as the giant water-bugs (Belostoimv), the 
stick insects, the Cecropia, Emperor Moth, and the Monarch Butterfly, the last of 
which, indeed, is struggling to obtain a footing as a colonist in England, though 
whether it will succeed is as yet uncertain. The illustrations, as a rule, are fairly 
good, though one or two are jtoor, and others have come out badly in printing 
from perhaps worn blocks. 
Insects are .so much more numerous and destructive in North America than 
in England that the importance of the study of economic entomology and the 
appointment of regular professors of entomology is fully recognized there, and 
America is far before any European country in this respect. \Vhat has hitherto 
been done towards the public recognition of agricultural entomology in England 
is almost nothing, just as we should seek in vain in England (the Imperial Insti- 
* Life Histories of American Imects. By Clarence Morris Weed, D.Sc. 
With 21 full page plates, and many figures in the text. Macmillan, New York 
and London : 1897. 8vo, pp. xii., 272. I’rice 6s. 
