Recent Literature.
Psyche 17:37, 1910.

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Recent Literature
RECENT LITERATURE.
INDIAN INSECT LIFE.
By H. Maxwell-Lefroy, Entomologist, Im-
perial Department of Agriculture for India, Assisted by F. M. Howlett. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta & Simla.
1909.
Although this book was primarily intended for the struggling student of entomology in India, it contains much of interest and value to workers throughout the World and American entomologists will find it worthy of a careful reading. Nearly 800 pages, 84 plates principally in color, and 536 figures compose the volume of goodly royal octavo size which is very well printed. The subject matter treats specifically of the insects of the "Plains" or tropical India, an area embracing all the southern part of India except on mountains rising above 2000 feet, which contour line also limits it on the north in the foot-hills of the Himalayas from subtropical India which is not dealt with in the present work. It appears that insects are much less numerous in tropical than in subtropical India, due to the absence of the moist forested slopes and varied types of vegetation which occur on the hills of the latter. Throughout the volume special stress is laid upon economically important insects many of which are close counterparts of related species known to western entomologists and numerous species are discussed which will quite probably enter our own country in the future. Among these are particularly various forms destructive to rice, cotton, corn, cane, tea, etc. A very commendable feature is the illustration of the complete life history of many species. Interspersed among the systematic enumeration of families with their more prominent Indian representatives, are short discussions of topics of more general biological interest, making on the whole a very readable book in spite of its large size and necessarily taxonomic character. The author is certainly to be admired by his more fortu- nate American co-workers for having presented in very well arranged form a summary of the entomology of a country like India where the entomologist must still be a pioneer in his chosen field. c. T. B.




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