440 
Notices of Books. 
[June, 
government. The animal species are carefully figured in their 
natural colours, and the descriptions of their characteristics, 
general structure, habits, and locality are full and apparently 
accurate. The first three plates are devoted to three of the 
moft dangerous snakes of the province — the black snake ( Pseud - 
echys porphyriacus), the copper-head ( Hopioceplialus superbus), 
and the tiger-snake ( H . curtus). Concerning these species there 
prevails some confusion of nomenclature, which tends to render 
accounts of the effeCt of their bite and of the value of antidotes 
untrustworthy. Thus in Tasmania the tiger-snake is known as 
“ carpet-snake,” a name given on the mainland to an innocent 
species. In the same island the black snake has received the 
name of “ diamond-snake,” which properly belongs to a harm- 
less species of New South Wales. As regards the bites of these 
Australian “death-snakes,” ammonia taken internally or injeCted 
into a vein has in some cases at least proved successful, whilst 
for the bite of the Indian cobra it appears to be invariably use- 
less. This important distinction suggests some questions 
weighty at once from a speculative and from a practical point of 
view. Do the poisons of different serpents differ merely in con- 
centration, or are they chemically distinct, requiring consequently 
a distinCt line of treatment ? If so, do we find identity, or at 
least close relation, among the venoms derived from snakes of 
the same family, just as in the vegetable kingdom we find allied 
groups of alkaloids pervading certain families, as in the Cincho 
naceae, the Strychnaceae, &c. The chemists, and no less the 
biologists, of Australia have here a most enviable field for re- 
search laid before them. 
Plate VII. is devoted to Megascolides Australis, the giant earth- 
worm, which, when fully extended, is about 6 feet long. The 
remaining three plates represent Lepidopterous inseCts. One of 
these, Agarista glycine, a day-flying moth of the curious family 
Alraniidae, is remarkable for the change of habits it has under- 
gone. Its original food was the common weed Gnaphalium 
luteo-album. But since the planting of vineyards it has com- 
pletely abandoned its former food, and devours the leaves of the 
vine, occasioning enormous injury. How the female moth could 
learn that a foreign plant having no structural resemblance to 
the Gnaphalium would yet afford suitable nourishment to her 
future brood is one of the many “ nuces zoological ” which our 
successors may some day crack. Certainly she could not in 
this case be guided by “ hereditary habit.” Fowls will not eat 
them, and the Indian minah — introduced into the colony as a 
vermin-killer- — has developed a taste for grapes instead of de- 
vouring the larvae. Thyca Harpalyce and Aganippe are butter- 
flies resembling our “ whites,” but with rich red spots on the 
under side of the posterior wings. In the former, the angularity 
of the tip of the upper wing varies in different individuals of the 
same brood. 
