1885.] 
Analyses of Books. 
681 
Our Insect Enemies. By Theodore Wood. London: Society 
for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 
We have here a little book full of most useful information con- 
cerning that very numerous class of beings, insedt pests. It 
will, we hope, help to teach John Bull the lesson which Brother 
Jonathan has already learned, viz., that insedts and their study 
are not to be despised, since among their ranks we find the most 
formidable of our animal enemies, with which we cannot hope to 
grapple successfully so long as we choose to remain in ignorance 
of their life history. Without endorsing all the author’s specula- 
tive views upon the possible utilities of certain insedts, we think 
he has done good service by pointing out the many im- 
portant problems in their economy which still await solution. 
To take some of these in hand will surely be a more honourable 
and useful way of studying entomology than that we too often 
see, i.e., capturing or buying an assortment of “British” 
Lepidoptera and pinning them, in fantastic patterns, in a glass 
case. 
We notice in the introdudtion a statement referring to an 
obsolescent order of things : the Cochineal insedt, as a source of 
scarlet and crimson dyes, is fast becoming a thing of the past. 
Mr. Wood’s remarks on the inestimable services rendered us 
by carnivorous insedts and insedtivorous birds are well timed. 
We often slaughter our allies out of ignorance or prejudice. 
But we are unable to accept his pleadings in favour of the 
sparrow. Not only is it, during the greater part of its life, a 
destroyer of grain, fruits, and blossoms, but, by its too often 
successful persecution of the martin and the swallow, our great 
safeguard against the multiplication of gnats, it inflidts on us 
a serious injury. Where the extirpation of sparrows in any 
locality has been followed by the increase of caterpillars, &c., 
we believe it will be found that the mischief has a very different 
cause. The truly insedtivorous birds have been scared away 
by the clumsy methods taken for the slaughter of the sparrows. 
This much is certain, that wherever the sparrow has been 
introduced, in America, Australia, and New Zealand, it has 
been pronounced an unmitigated nuisance by a majority both 
of naturalists and of farmers and gardeners. Sparrows have 
been shot and the contents of their crops carefully examined 
under the microscope, with the result that insedts do not form 
one-tenth of the diet of these depredators. 
Amongst the enemies of the Aphides one, or rather a group, 
is here overlooked. The beetles of the genus Telephorus, 
popularly known as “ soldiers and sailors,” and several of their 
near allies, are indefatigable devourers of the Aphis. Spiders, 
also, especially of the genus Epeira, ensnare a legion of plant- 
lice when in their winged state. 
VOL. VII. (THIRD SERIES). 2 Y 
