Abstract
MR. CARPENTER, Assistant Naturalist in the Science and Art Museum in Dublin, is favourably known to entomologists by numerous valuable papers on Lepidoptera, Odonata, cave-insects, economic entomology, & c.; and we are very pleased to welcome a useful introductory manual of entomology from his pen. It is compiled from a variety of sources, special use having been made, in the chapters on the form and life-history of insects, of the well-known work on the cockroach by Profs. Miall and Denny. These chapters will be found very useful, especially as the names attached to the various parts of insects are clearly and carefully explained. Classification and the principal orders and families of insects are then dealt with as fully as the space at the author's disposal would allow; and chapters on insects and their surroundings and on the pedigree of insects close the body of the book, which concludes with a short bibliography and a good index. Perhaps Chapter v., on insects and their surroundings, will be found most interesting to the general reader; for it treats of such subjects as cave-insects, fresh-water insects, marine insects, geographical distribution, mimicry, & c. Mr. Carpenter usually expresses himself very cautiously, but when he says that the number of described species of insects amounts to a quarter of a million, and that there are probably two millions of species still unde-scribed, we are inclined to think that both his estimates are very much below the mark. The number of described species of insects cannot be less than 300,000 at present, and many entomologists think that the late Prof. Riley's estimate of the number of existing species of insects as ten millions is by no means to be regarded as extravagant. Mr. Carpenter's remarks on the various subjects connected with evolution are very well expressed and reasoned out.
Insects: their Structure and Life. A Primer of Entomology.
By George H. Carpenter (Lond.). Pp. xi + 404. (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1899.)
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K., W. Insects: their Structure and Life A Primer of Entomology. Nature 60, 315 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/060315a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/060315a0