SHORT XOTJCES OF BOOKS. 
/ 3 
thrown at the reader, hut almost living things, as beautiful, 
many of them, as flowers. There is a charming page where she 
tells of her likes and dislikes among them — how silver, cypress, 
starry, delight her eye, while crate, warehouse, cautious, seem 
ugly and depressing. In another place colours shine as she 
writes : rose-pink and jade-green, china-blue and dusky garnet- 
red, ivory and orange. 
Flowers and words, old-fashioned scents, poems and old 
affectations that were fashionable once but are forgotten now 
— things like these, .Mrs. Fuller Maitland tells us, are not of 
immense importance compared with the great affairs of life. 
But we are grateful to her, nevertheless, that she has not dis- 
dained to write a very charming book about them. 
L. P. S. 
SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
Insect Life, by Fred W. Theobald {London, .Melhuen. Price 2s. 6d.). Into 
the present neat volume Mr. Theobald has succeeded in compressing a consider- 
able amount of information respecting insects in general, and various species of 
injurious insects in particular. Hut the space at his disposal has not been sufficient 
to enable him to deal with the characters and metamorphosis of insects in a suffi- 
ciently compiehensive manner. Thus, he remarks (p. 28), “ The scutellum can 
be well seen between the wing-cases of most beetles, and is also very small ; ” not 
noticing its large size in many insects, as in the Scutelleridit, or shield bugs (as an 
example of which he has represented one of the PenlalomiJa at fig. 46) of which 
he rightly says himself on p. 186, “The meso-thorax is much larger than the pro- 
and meta-thorax together, with the scutellum large or very large, sometimes 
covering the whole of the wings and abdomen.” On page 105 we notice a more 
serious error, where the European Danaus Chrysippus is said to have been “ taken 
a few times in England.” It is not this species, but the North American 
Danaus Archippus, a very different butterfly, which appears to be naturalizing itself 
in England. An index and bibliography is appended to the book, but we regiet 
the absence of a glossary of technical terms, which, as they are numerous and ol 
frequent occurrence, would have made the book more useful to beginners. 
W. F. K. 
In Nature Notes for 1894 (pp. 2S-31), we noticed at some length Sir John 
Lubbock’s large book on the Knoivledge of Seedlings. We are glad to see that 
Messrs. Kegan Paul and Co. have published an epitome of the work in the)r 
International Scientific Series. In this handy and cheap form, which is copiously 
illustrated, Sir John’s interesting observations will be brought within the range 
of many who could not afford the more expensive volumes. For information a.s 
to the scope of the work, we must refer our readers to our previous notice. 
“ Jonathan Dale,” the author of Angling Days, a pretty little book just pub- 
lished at Scarborough and at 143, Strand, is, we believe, none other th.in the 
Rev. I. E. Page, a frequent contributor to Nature Notes. This is sufficient 
guarantee that the subject is treated in a Selbornian spirit, and indeed it may be 
read with pleasure by those who are not fishermen. It contains an excellent 
selection of quotations from standard authors, and some pretty illustrations, and 
being well printed and neatly bound, forms a very attractive volume. Unforti - 
nately the price is not given, so we are unable to communicate that useful piece of 
information to our readers. 
By Tangled Paths (by H. Mead Briggs. F. Warne and Co. , 3s. 6d. ), is a pleasant 
volume of “ Stmy Leaves from Nature’s Byeways,” of the kind of which we have 
