Abstract
WE opened this book with lively expectations of something good. Though there has been considerable activity among American entomologists during the last ten years, our knowledge of the life histories of American insects is still very defective, and there is urgent need of more labourers, especially of such as bend their minds to the solution of really important questions. Not only the title of the book, but the printing and the figures are attractive, and we began the first chapter with high hopes, only to draw a blank. The author had nothing particular to say about Belostoma. Chauliodes came next—nothing of the slightest importance here. Then came the tiger- beetles and their larvæ—again nothing new. The rest of the book is of the same slight texture. Nothing is worked out with any completeness; we have merely scraps of information, mostly from printed sources. The author's use of books is uncritical. Thus Dr. Le Conte is quoted for the explanation of the leaping of the clickbeetle, and Prof. Comstock for the description of the sonorous file of the cricket, though these authors did not discover the facts for which they are cited. Let us hope that Prof. Weed or some one else will before long give us a book which is really entitled to bear the name of “Life Histories of American Insects.”
Life Histories of American Insects.
By C. M. Weed, Professor of Zoology and Entomology, New Hampshire College. Pp. xii + 272. Woodcuts. (New York: The Macmillan Co. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1897.)
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M., L. Life Histories of American Insects. Nature 57, 99 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/057099a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/057099a0
