Abstract
THE last of the many recent additions, superficial and profound, to the stock of books on British Lepidoptera, is essentially a book for the beginner, but one which challenges consideration as an attempt “to deal with our moths on lines which the study of the last twenty-five years has convinced all true naturalists are the correct ones.” The points by which this claim is redeemed consist mainly in the substitution of an arrangement based on Dr. Chapman's division of the Lepidoptera by pupal characters for the old order so long accepted, and by numerous statements of phylogenetic relationship. Supported as they are by very little in the way of explanation to make them intelligible, these innovations are not so much an improvement as a snare; it is of no use to talk glibly in a beginner's book about “Obtectæ and Incompletæ,” “offshoots from a Pyralid stirps,” and the like, unless these things are fully and clearly explained. Much of the phylogeny so confidently put forward is not that accepted by other recent writers on Lepidoptera and is unfit matter for dogmatic assertion, especially as first impressions thus acquired are hard to unlearn. Neither is the writer consistent, for the Hepialidæ, Micropterygidæ, and Eriocephalidæ are separated from each other by numerous families, although the position, remote from all other Lepidoptera, that has been assigned to the three is one of the most important and widely-accepted of recent changes. Turning to those parts of the book which have no special claim to novelty of treatment, we find, as is to be expected from so competent a lepidopterist, that his statements are accurate and often valuable. But far too much space is taken up, particularly in the Noctuæ, with brief remarks on species which convey no real information. In spite of another claim put forward in the preface, it is only here and there that a species is described in recognisable terms. If all perfunctory mention of species had been excluded, and the work confined, as a book of limited scope may well be, to such moths only as are common and of wide distribution, space could have been gained for an adequately-full treatment of the species retained. The coloured illustrations are fairly good; there is but one diagram of neuration, and that is incorrect.
British Moths.
By J. W. Tutt. Pp. xii + 368. Illustrated. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1896.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
B., W. British Moths. Nature 53, 486 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/053486a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053486a0