Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/107

Rh are now seven series, this volume being a translation of the first.

To entomologists the work is, or should be, quite familiar, but it addresses a wider audience; to all who study bionomics it inculcates a method of painstaking observation which is almost unique. M. Fabre is an entomological Sherlock Holmes, as far as those insects are concerned which he has watched or "shadowed." He knows their whole proceedings, to some of which the terms murder and assassination are, we think, too frequently applied. Could a hymenopteron be heard in reply, it would probably retort that our slaughter of a sheep was in nowise different from their action of obtaining living provender for the sustenance of their young. When we read of the war waged by insect upon insect, we marvel more at the conclusions of some of the advanced school of mimickists, who would ascribe all colour for protection against larger but lesser foes.

M. Fabre claims to have exploded one error concerning the balls of dung so frequently seen rolled along by the Dung-beetles (Scarabæidæ). These globular masses were always supposed to contain an egg, but it appears they are the material for banqueting in subterraneous palaces, and that the large ball which does contain the egg is never rolled to the hole, but is constructed in it.

The book is very nicely illustrated; but we are quite sure that had its pages been submitted to Dr. Sharp, who wrote the preface, several entomological gaucheries would have been absent. We trust that the remaining series of the 'Souvenirs' may also soon appear in this translated and illustrated form.

text-book of zoology in these days of rapid publication should exhibit another method in treatment, even if new facts are hardly procurable. This volume certainly exhibits a considerable difference in the treatment of its subject to many other handbooks, and Mr. Mudge has produced a book which will probably be more useful to the zoological student than to