Abstract
IT might be supposed from the title of this book, that it was wholly popular, and that entomologists would find little to attract their attention in it; but this would be a great error, for it is really a collection of thirty-one philosophical essays on butterfly and caterpillar life, reprinted, with additions and modifications, from Dr. Scudder's great work on the “Butterflies of New England.” Many subjects of great interest and importance are touched upon, relative to the modes of protection of butterflies in all their stages: fossil butterflies; the origin of the present butterfly fauna of North America; the habits of butterflies, caterpillars, &c. One of the most interesting chapters is, perhaps, that relating to the butterfly fauna of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where butterflies appear to swarm to an extent which the richest localities in Europe could perhaps hardly parallel in number of individuals. Dr. Scudder does not confine his remarks to American species, however, but has also looked up the European literature bearing on his subject very thoroughly, as, indeed, was only to be expected from an entomologist of his industry and energy. Here and there, however, we may detect a casual oversight, as where Iphiclides podalirius, L., is spoken of as “confined to the Mediterranean region” (p. 247), when it is really found throughout the greater part of Central Europe as well. Occasionally, too, Dr. Scudder's information can be supplemented, as when in speaking of ants attending the larvæ of Lycænidæ, he omits the instances which have been recorded of some Australian species (Hypochrysops delicia, Hewitson, and lalmenus evagoras, Donovan, &c., see Anderson and Spry's “Victorian Butterflies,” pp. 94, 98, 99). Incidentally various subjects of more general interest are remarked upon, as where Dr. Scudder agrees with Desor (p. 250) in attributing the greater intensity, both of butterfly and of human life in America, as compared to Europe, to the much greater vicissitudes of climate in the former country; or when, in more than one passage, he agrees with Wallace and others, among our deeper-thinking naturalists, that the workings of natural selection are incomprehensible unless we regard them as guided by a controlling intelligence.
Frail Children of the Air. Excursions into the World of Butterflies.
By Samuel Hubbard Scudder. Pp. 279. Nine plain plates. (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co. London: Gay and Bird, 1895.)
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K., W. Frail Children of the Air Excursions into the World of Butterflies. Nature 53, 77 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053077b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053077b0