Abstract
THE text contains the substance of ten lectures delivered for the Institute of Agriculture. At p. 7 there is an italicised remark to the effect that “insects always begin life by being produced by a female.” This may be regarded as an indication of the presumably ultra-ignorant class for whose benefit the lectures were prepared. But we prefer to think that far too low an estimate of the knowledge possessed by our agriculturists has been made, and doubt not that, by a majority of them, the remark will be taken as the reverse of complimentary. The book is exceedingly well got up, and in a very attractive style, and will no doubt become popular (on account of the multitude of illustrations. For the agriculturist purely, it seems to us that it goes either not far enough or too far; it is too “showy” for practical purposes, and often, unwittingly, too abstruse. The copious illustrations are mostly excellent, and many of them are original (among the very few very indifferent figures, that of the “Bee-parasite” may be cited). But the necessity for many of the figures in a book apparently intended for the agricultural class may be doubted, and some have evidently been introduced for effect. That American bogey (or “fraud”) the “Colorado Beetle,” is honoured by the reproduction of his portrait, and the Phylloxera is dismissed with only dishonourable mention. The general information is sound, but occasionally vague, as in the definitions of the terms “larva” and “pupa,” and in the apparent assumption that respiration is exclusively effected by the external air being conveyed to the tracheæ by means of spiracles. The “Glossary” will no doubt be found very useful to the majority of the readers of the book, but some terms (e.g. “Telum”) appear wonderfully abstruse, as used in a work in which it was necessary to explain that “insects always begin life by being produced by a female.”
Guide to Methods of Insect Life, and Prevention and Remedy of Insect Ravage.
By Eleanor A. Ormerod. Pp. 1–167, 8vo. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1884.)
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Our Book Shelf . Nature 29, 308 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/029308a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/029308a0