INSECTS: THEIR STRUCTURE AND LIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2401, 8 March 1900, Page 63

INSECTS: THEIR STRUCTURE AND LIFE.

(By George H. Carpextee, B.Sc, Lond.)

London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1899.

Within the four hundred pages of this Volume, which its author too modestly calls a " Primer," an astonishingly large quantity of accurate description, verbal, pictorial, and diagrammatic, is contained. During the closing years of the century many excellent zoological books have seen the light, but I do not remember any one work dealing with the entire insect world that can at all compare with this one. Something in the quality of Mr Carpenter's work makes me incline to believe him a disciple of Professor Miall, and if it be so he could not have chosen a better master. However that may be there can be no gainsaying the fact that Avhile the present volume is a work of encyclopediac comprehensiveness it is written so well and planned so wisely chat it contains not a dull or confused passage from first page to last. Until quite recently evolutionary workers in natural history lay under the just reproach of having produced but few books incorporating in an adequate minner the newer, and better ideals of the Darwinian era. Sir John Lubbock, J. A. Thomson, Miall, and others have deprived that reproach of its sting, and among the newer comers to do yeoman service in the same way I am glad to welcome the author of "Insects: Their Structure and Life." It is ■ a book full of good points — for twenty years or thereby I have '' dabbled in a dilettante manner " in this subject, and waited all that time for many of the drawings herein included. Many of the illustrations are original, but a large number have been derived from the super-excellent, but not easily accessible, Bullelins of the United >Statas Department o* Agriculture. Thus, while it is pleasant not to bs confronted once again with the hackneyed old diagrams, it is doubly so to find in profusion illustration?! that really illustrate the text, and that the text itself is worth this.

The author leaves nothing out. I have searched for sins of omission, but failed to find any. Wherever they are required brief passages explanatory of modern philosophic views are giver?, in clear terms and in a truly impartial spirit. About the origin of species he says : "We have seen that it is impossible strictly to define a .'species' from a 'variety.' There is the strongest presumption that the marked and definite distinctions to- which the former term is applied have their origin in varietal differences. The problem of the evolution of distinct, species from varieties has now to' be faced. The difficulty of this problem was felt to be so great that until 40 years ago belief in the fixity of species prevailed generally among" naturalists, who thought variation must be kept within such strict limits by the action of heredity that species must ever be and must always have been distinct. A necessary consequence of this" belief would be that all kinds of animals originated independently of one another by a process which one cannot even try to explain. This view was abandoned by naturalists, and belief in evolution was adopted mainly through the influence of Darwin, who suggested that species became differentiated from each other by the process to which he gave the name of natural selection." The passages immsdiately following convey a very able presentment of the "newer views."

As illustrative of the"* traps that Native has set to catch the too hasty systematist the case of certain small British butterflies is cited. The South of England has one " species " and Scotland has anothei — at least so it was thought until someone found inhabiting the North of England several varieties of the same butterfly. These varieties are now recognised by authorities as being not merely identical with the southern form, but as true links connecting the Scottish species with their English relatives, all being but varied members of a single species. Had these intermediate varieties — as often happens in Nature — become lost, this readjustment in classification would have been mach more difficult, yet many so-called "species" have no better claim to be designated than these various little groups of British butterflies. The use of such terms, then, must depend on the knowledge and opinion of the naturalist, and can only be recognised as of valid service in a kind of classificatory sliding scale.

A commendable feature of the volume is the frequency with which common names are used ; not that the scientific names are ever absent, this being a strictly scientific book, but it is a great comfort to the ordinary reader to have bugs, cockroaches, caddis-flies, etc., called by their familiar names. The -six chapters into which the book is divided deal respectively with The Forms of Insects; Their Life History; Classification ; Orders ; Surroundings and Habits; and Pedigree. What appears, to me to be a very copious bibliography of the subject, herewith appended, 5s described by the author as " only a very small selection from the vast mass of literature on insects." There are many passages I would like to quote did space permit. About insect "royalties" we are told that "The use of the terms 'king' and 'queen' for the fertile male and female members of insect communities has led to the erroneous idea that the government of these communities is monarchical. As a matter of fact it is republican. The queen bee or termite is indeed carefully tended and guorded by the workers, but her actions are, at the same time, restricted by them, and the management of the colony is altogether under their control. No single individual in authority directs the operations of the myriad inhabitants of a ne&t, yet each works for the good of the whole community." It seems to me that a kind of genuine democracy as applying to our best political aspirations is contained in that passage. In a hive, none is for a party, but all are for the state.

'Alluding to the antiquity of insects in his losing jßaragraph, the author b»x s ± "Wo

often take mountains as emblems of age, and speak of the 'everlasting hills.' The ' most advanced orders of insects are older ' than the chalk of the southern English 1 ' downs, while the early winged insects flitted by the shores of the lakes wherein the grits and sandstones of the Kerry Reeks gathered fragment by fragment, in the primitive wingless insects we must look at least to the time when by accumulation of coral, and the ash and lava of old volcanos, the rocks of Snowdon were being slowly formed on the bed of the Primary Sea. And the oldest rocks of the Western Highlands of Scotland will hardly carry u,s ' back to the primeval anthropods. We walk over the hills, rousing the bee from the flower, or the dragon-fly from the rushes. The life of each individual insect , lasts but for a few days, or months, or years. Yet these creatures are the latest ' links in a long chain of life which reaches back to a time before the mountain whereon they dwell was brought forth. To unobservant eyes the landscape seems enduring, | but study of its features shows that it j ' changes from age to age, changes even i more rapidly than the insect t3"pes which ! adorn it. Yet through the long periods , of the earth's history the insects have been ! ! changing too ; and the form of their bodies "and the history of their growth teach us \ i how to trace in some degree the wondrous ! unfolding of their branch of the great tree ; jof life." Clearly printed on good paper, ! • and handsomely got up in every way, this j volume does credit to the technical capa- j bilities and taste of its publishers.

DINORNIS