Abstract
DR. PACKARD has undertaken in this text-book to review and epitomise the vast literature relating to the structure of insects. For such a task special qualifications are necessary; among the rest, unflinching industry, a sound judgment, and a first-hand, practical knowledge of the subject. These qualifications our author exhibits on every page. He has worked long and hard as an investigator; he has a candid mind; and he has spared no pains either upon the collection or the elucidation of his materials. The critic who tries to be wholly impartial may feel compelled to point out a certain slowness to draw general conclusions, which is particularly evident in the concluding section on the causes of metamorphism. This reserve is natural, perhaps laudable, in the writer of an encyclopædic work. Dr. Packard's book will be of the greatest service to students of insect-anatomy, and almost indispensable to future writers on the subject. It is a great store of well-sifted and carefully arranged information, which will guide the naturalist to many a special research which he might easily have passed by in ignorance of its very existence. We must not leave the impression that Dr. Packard has done nothing but condense into a text-book the work of other men. He has made out for himself many interesting and valuable facts, and in no part of this treatise does he find himself altogether remote from his own published researches. The book before us is handsomely printed, profusely illustrated, and furnished with copious bibliographical lists. Together with the very dissimilar treatise by Dr. Sharp in the “Cambridge Natural History,” it puts the student of scientific entomology into a far better position than he occupied a year or two ago. Dr. Packard's book, like Dr. Sharp's, should find a place in every library which includes comparative, anatomy, and both should be the constant companions of all who occupy themselves with the structure and life-histories of insects.
A Text-Book of Entomology, including the Anatomy, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects, for use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges.
By Prof. Alpheus S. Packard. Pp. xvii + 729. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1898.)
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M., L. [Book Reviews]. Nature 58, 244 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058244b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058244b0