Abstract
THE author of this handy little volume offers something of an apology for adding to the large number of books—“popular, semi-popular, and unpopular”—on insects, but he has produced a general guide to entomology which will prove uniquely valuable to the amateur collector and observer. “I have been governed in the choice of subject-matter,” he writes, “not so much by what I think ought to be in a book on insécts as by what the public seems to want to know.” He gives summarised characters for the discrimination of the various insectan orders, diagnostic tables for the principal families, and in some cases also for the genera, and mentions a number of species—1400 in all —which may be found commonly in the northern United States, naturally paying especial attention to those of economic importance. On the hundred small plates—many of which are effectively coloured—a good selection of these species is clearly figured. The result is that the student can scarcely fail to identify, approximately at least, the insects which he captures during an ordinary country ramble, while he finds in this volume (which would slip easily into a side-pocket) interesting information about their habits and importance.
Field Book of Insects.
By Dr. F. E. Lutz. Pp. ix + 509. (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1918.) Price 12s. 6d. net.
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C., G. Field Book of Insects . Nature 101, 384 (1918). https://doi.org/10.1038/101384a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/101384a0