Abstract
THE inquiry often made by beginners for a small book giving trustworthy, if elementary, information about the common insects of our countryside may be safely answered by a recommendation of this handy little volume. After a short introductory chapter on the general characters of the Insecta and some of the varieties in life-history to be observed among them, the author takes a survey of the orders in ascending series, describing the leading structural features, the transformations, and the habits of the principal families as illustrated. by their commoner and more conspicuous genera and species. The book contains a relatively large amount of information on systematic entomology, but Mr. Bastin has so much of interest to tell about the mode of life of many of the creatures which he mentions that the effect is far from that of the dry, catalogue-like summary which might easily have been the result of an attempt to survey the whole class of insects in little more than a hundred pages. The book is illustrated with twelve photographic plates, on each of which five or six figures are printed with admirable definition and softness. The frenulum and retinaculum of a hawk-moth's wings on plate ix. may be mentioped as treated with special success.
British Insects and How to Know Them.
By Harold Bastin. Pp. ix + 129. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1917.) Price 1s. 6d. net.
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C., G. British Insects and How to Know Them . Nature 99, 404 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/099404a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/099404a0