Notices of Boohs. 
1877.] 
129 
woods he will find that some of them have, to speak popularly, 
an almost uninterrupted series of feet, sixteen in number, from 
head to tail, and when creeping always keep their bodies in close 
contadl with the leaf or branch upon which they are supported. 
Others, of which the well-known gooseberry caterpillar ( Abraxas 
grossulariata ) have merely ten feet, arranged in two groups, one 
at the anterior and the other at the posterior extremity. When 
crawling they grasp the leaf or other objecft firmly with their 
fore feet, and then bring the hind feet close up to the former, so 
as to bend the body into a kind of loop, and thus advance by a 
kind of striding or spanning movement. The moths developed 
from such caterpillars are called Geometridas : they are a very 
numerous family, though, not being remarkable either for size or 
from brilliant coloration, they are often overlooked. In Europe 
eight hundred species have been enumerated. In the work 
before us between three and four hundred species are described, 
but the author is so far from thinking his subjedl exhausted that 
he considers a thousand species may be found in the North- 
American continent. His region agrees with Mr. Sclater’s 
Neardtic province, — in other words, all North America beyond 
the tropic of Cancer. 
Commencing with a history of the family as characterised and 
subdivided by entomological authorities, he passes on to the 
comparative anatomy of the various groups, and thence to the 
description of species. The geographical distribution of the 
Geometridas of the United States is finally considered. Unlike 
Mr. Sclater and Mr. Wallace, he subdivides the region not into 
four, but two provinces, the Arctic and the North Temperate 
Realm. Tables are given of the species peculiar to Greenland 
and Labrador ; of the subarctic species common to Eastern 
and Western America, and to Europe and Asia ; of the species 
inhabiting the eastern province of the north-temperate realm ; of 
those found in the limits of the Alleghanian and Carolinian 
faunas ; of those occurring south of the isothermal of 60% the 
territory corresponding to Le Conte’s Southern province ; and 
those of the Western province. 
The author calls attention to two features of interest in the 
distribution of the insects of the Pacific slope, viz., the absence 
of forms characteristic of China and Japan, and the presence of 
some European types which do not occur in the Atlantic pro- 
vince, — features which may be traced in other Lepidopterous 
families, in other orders of insects. In order to illustrate the 
relations between the Geometridae of different regions, he gives 
tables of the species (18 in number) common to temperate 
America and Europe, of the species common to the Eastern and 
Western provinces of North America, of those peculiar to 
North and South America, of those occurring in Central and 
South America— the Neotropical region, and of European genera 
not as yet discovered in the United States. 
VOL, VII. (N.S,) 
K 
