Insects at Home. By the Rev. J. G. Wood. (Longmans.)—This
very handsome volume is one which we must content ourselves with describing rather than reviewing. It is, to borrow from the title-page, "a popular account of British insects, their structure, habits, and transformations." Mr. Wood, as our readers are well aware, is a dili- gent student of nature as well as of books, and has a genuine, even an enthusiastic, fondness for his subject, which ensures him a thorough mastery of it. Throughout the book we are continually coming across the results of personal observations, and it is needless to say how much the interest of the whole is enhanced by them. By a very rude classification we might divide the subjects of Mr. Wood's investigations and descriptions into "beetles," "flies," and "fleas." Which of the three is the more interesting it is difficult to say. Even the ant (which is normally a fly) or the bee is scarcely more interesting than the " burying " or "sexton" beetle (Necrophorus). The book is a stout volume of between six and seven hundred pages, and is furnished with more than seven hundred illustrations. One has a natural hankering after colour in these, but Mr. Wood makes an excellent suggestion that young students should colour for themselves.
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