SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
95 
rodents by the crow.” The letter concludes with these words : 
“It is clear that the good e.xceeds the bad, and that the 
crow is a friend rather than an enemy of the farmer,” The 
detailed report, it is needless to say, fully bears out these con- 
clusions. It teems with most interesting and instructive matter, 
and its perusal may be strongly recommended to any one 
interested in economic natural history. In every way a model 
of what a report of this kind should be, it really seems disgrace- 
ful that in the old country we should be left in the position of 
wishing we had one like it. 
O. V. A, 
SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
British Moths, by J. W. Tutt, F.E.S. (London, Routledge. 8vo. 5s.). Mr. 
Tutt takes rather an unfavourable view of his predecessors, for he says that there 
are only two books, those of Stainton and .Newman, in which even the species are 
correctly named, and these are now quite out of date, llis own lx)ok is a pleas- 
antly written introduction to British moths, and his classification is less revolu- 
tionary than that lately proposed by Mr. Meyrick, for he commences with the true 
Hawk-moths and the bulk of the old Bombyces, after which he preserves the 
Noctua; and Geometrre intact, though these are followed by the Deltoidae, and the 
old Micro-Lepidoptera and various families included in the old Bombyces are all 
mixed up together. Mr. Tutt’s classification is based on the real or supposed line 
of descent of the Lepidoptera. He completes his review of the British Moths 
with the Proto-Lepidoptera, including the genus Eriocephaia, or Micropteryx, of 
which he says : “ This group is supposed to be the most ancestral of all our moths, 
the mouth being furnished with jaws and other parts more like the biting than the 
sucking insects.” The account given of the representative species discus-sed are 
good, and the tables given of the times of appearance, food-plants, &c. , of the 
British species of the earlier families will also be useful. We regret, however, 
that the coloured plates are by no means up to the mark, and as regards the 
numerous and conflicting systems of classification which have succeeded each other 
so rapidly during the last months, prudent “ collectors” and “ practical entomolo- 
gists ” will hesitate to disarrange their collections until “ scientific entomologists ” 
are more agreed on, at least, the main details of an improved classsification. 
W. F. K. 
In the course of last year the remains of a notable Roman villa were 
excavated alongside the river Daren t a few miles above Hartford. This interest- 
ing discovery has led Mr. Walker Miles — whose admirable series of guide books, 
known under the general title of Field- Path Rambles, have received frequent 
notice in this journal — to turn his attention once more to the perambulation of 
West Kent. In his recently published Down by the Darent (R. E. Taylor and 
Son, 19, Old Street, London, E.C., price is.), he has provided, inter alia, much 
useful information for the benefit of those who are inclined to pay a visit to the 
site of the villa. In addition to a number of cross-country routes between this 
spot and the nearest railway stations, Farningham Road, Dartford, Swanley and 
Gravesend — he has supplied a ground-plan of the structure and a brief sketch of 
what has been unearthed and an explanation of the part that is supposed to have 
been played by the several rooms in the economy of this ancient household. The 
other two sections of the book afford walking routes along the valley of Darent to 
its source at Westerham, and between the latter place and Sevenoaks, a district 
which, with its hop-grounds and commons, offers peculiar attractions for the 
pedestrian in the summer season. Two valuable foot-path maps give a welcome 
