INSECT LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 20, 23 July 1927, Page 21

INSECT LIFE

DR. TILLYARD'S I<\lNE AYORK "The Insects of Australia and New Zealand," by E. I. Tillyanl, M.A.Sc. (Cantab.), F.E.S., F.L.S., Entomologist and Chief of the Biological Department, Cawthrou Institute, Nelson, New Zealand, is warmly commended to booksellers by "The Publishers' Cir-julnr " London. The work is a royal Bvo, ami the price, 42s net. In addition to 44 plates, of which, eight are admirably done in colour by P. Tillyard, M.A., there are hundreds of excellent illustrations in the text. "We want to em phasise the fact that this work, entirely produced at th Antipodes, would do credit to any country, and for a work of this character it would be in the first class at ai>y exhibition of printing " states the "Circular." "The present volume is intended primarily as a text-book for use by students of entomology in Australia and New Zealand (remarks the author in his preface); secondarily, for those who have a general interest in the insect life of theso countries. Of many good arguments in favour of dealing with the insects of Australia and New Zealand in a single volume, the chief seems to meto bo that the New Zealand fauna is in itself so incomplete, that a book on it alone would not give the student a fair knowledge of the extent and variety of insect life that exists in most parts of the world. In Australia, on the other hand, all the principal groups are well represented. Thus the New Zealand /student can learn from this book, not only the large number of important types of insect missing from his own fauna, but also the relationship that exists between the Australian and New Zealand species *f families common to both; while the Australian student will have his interest stimulated in a related fauna of which he knows at present all too little, and at the same time may gather something of the effect of this introduction of a considerable number of Australian insect? into New Zealand." The frontispiece of this work is an illustration of what musi bo the largest moth in the world, Coscinoscera hercules, a female, shown "two-thirds the natural size"—so this motto has wings some nine inches in length. In big" things in insects Australia can boast that it possesses the finest Hepialid in the world (Leto stacyi Sc), the most beautiful Pyraloid (Hypsidea erythropsalis Both), the most remarkable Skipper Butterfly (Euschemon rafflesia W. & S.M., in which the male has a frenulum), the heaviest-bodied moth (Syleotes boisduvati H.Sch. fam Cossidao), and the moth with the greatest wing area (Coscinocova liercules, Misk, fam Satumidae). The index, in double columns, extends to nearly fifty pages. The book contains in. all SGO pages.