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Volume 27, Number 4
309
streaks at a glance, and for the rank beginner or general naturalist, what distinguishes the Grizzled and Dingy Skippers? Confusion of these last resulted in several incorrect records, now expunged, in the Provisional Atlas. The schoolboy (or schoolgirl, if she is liberated enough to enter this male preserve) might well forego this book till his pockets are larger, and find a second-hand copy of A Butterfly Book for the Pocket by Sandars, which despite its amateur illustrations and frankly surrealist distribution maps, did come close to the Peterson identification system. For the visiting American collector, who will already be familiar with some of the species, the choice is between the Houghton-Mifflin Field Guide to the European butterflies, and this new work. Outside Britain, one must have the more extensive Guide, but "South" will give him far better service on a stay in Britain, for he will not be repeatedly tracking down his specimen to something found only in the Balkans (though in "South" beware the pictures of spectacular rare aberrations). And then there are those detailed maps, which could nearly double one's number of species. Irish and Scottish Americans visiting their homelands should get a set of distribution report cards from the Nature Conservancy as well; the data are badly needed!
And of course, if you have a library of standard works on the world's butterflies, add this one. It is worth every decimalised penny.
John R. G. Turner, Department of Ecology and Evolution, Division of Biological Sciences, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11790.
An Index to the Described Life Histories, Early Stages and Hosts of the Macrolepidoptera of the Continental United States and Canada, by Harrison M. Tietz, 1972. v + 1041 p. in 2 volumes, cloth bound. Allyn Museum of Entomology, Sarasota, Florida. $25.00. Distributed by Entomological Reprint Specialists, P.O. Box 77971, Dockweiler Station, Los Angeles, California 90007.
This large work of compilation by Harrison Morton Tietz (1895-1963) was intended to provide references to all published information on the early stages of macrolepidoptera for America north of Mexico, being the only index of this nature to appear since Henry Edwards' "Bibliographic Catalogue of the Described Transformations of North American Lepidoptera" (1889, Bull. U.S. Natl. Mus. 35.). Its coverage appears to be reasonably thorough to about 1950, when the author left off his search of the literature to prepare the manuscript. Negotiation with the Smithsonian Institution to publish the work continued for a time thereafter, but final arrangements concerning changes in format, etc., were never completed. The text as now issued is just as it was left by Tietz, although retyped. With the exception of a 2-page introduction by William D. Field and J. F. Gates Clarke, which has the appearance of letterpress printing, the text was reproduced from typed copy by photo offset. The 2 volumes have good quality buckram bindings which in themselves are worth a large part of the purchase price.
The work is divided into two major parts (which do not coincide with the bound volumes). Part 1 contains a list of entomological publications consulted (23 p.), a list of common names of Lepidoptera (33 p.), and the most important section, the list of references to published life history information, indexed alphabetically by species with hosts listed for each (636 p.). Part 2 contains an index of common and scientific names of food plants listed by common names (101 p.), and an index of hosts listed mainly by scientific names, each with a listing of all the species of macrolepidoptera reported to feed on it (221 p.). The work ends with a 12-page list of changes in nomenclature for plant names, giving the old name and the corrected equivalent used in the host index of part 2.
The nomenclature follows rigidly that of the McDunnough check list of 1938, and no effort was made to correct names or revise the manuscript in any way. Admittedly, the up-dating of so large a work would have been a demanding and thankless task for anyone not credited with authorship and would have further
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Journal of the Lepidopterists* Society
delayed publication, perhaps indefinitely. The Lepidoptera species index includes synonyms and subspecies names, under each of which the reader is referred to the applicable species name. Inclusion of all such names seems unnecessary or even confusing, because life history information was only occasionally published under the synonymic name, and references cited may or may not apply to the subspecies listed.
Sometimes the bibliographic references under a species name are missing; e.g., for Apaecasia atropunctata (p. 123), Eupithecia bradorata (p. 145), Septis castanea (p. 169), Elaphria chalcedonia (p. 181), and Catocala subnata (p. 620—no hosts or references). In a few instances the food plant list includes unlikely hosts not mentioned in any reference given; e.g., under Carsia paludata (p. 505) 7 hosts are listed, although in the one reference cited only Vaccinium is mentioned. The hosts of Apaecasia subaequaria (p. 617) are given as ferns and grasses, but neither of the references mentions grasses (Rupert, 1949, specified braken fern).
The casual transliteration of plant names can be tricky, and I noticed one instance where this led to an obvious mistake. The eastern skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus (L.), is listed in error as one of the food plants of Arzama obliqua (p. 480). The host actually reported in the literature (Guppy, 1948) was Lysichiton (sic) kamtschatcense Schott, a different member of the Araceae that is known as skunk cabbage on the Pacific Coast.
Throughout the work there are numerous typographic errors, especially in the spelling of scientific names, such as atlanta for atalanta (p. 119), Catabens for Catabena (p. 273), focosa for fucosa (p. 301), idalis for idalia (p. 342), uo for io (p. 363), lutea for luteata (p. 409), maculatz for maculata (p. 413), radicans for radians (p. 563), rockesi for ruckesi (p. 580), Agertum for Ageratum (p. 674), and curimacula for curvimacula (p. 809). I do not know whether these misspellings date from the final retyping or were reproduced verbatim from Tietz's original copy.
I noted the following errors of collation which owners of these volumes should carefully mark. They cannot be detected by the page numbering, which is uninterrupted.
(1) Pages 147 and 148 are transposed (giving the false impression that poplar and willow are the food plants for Papilio brevicauda, instead of for Catocala briseis which begins at the bottom of p. 148).
(2) Page 220 is misplaced and belongs between pages 210 and 211.
(3) The left column on page 207 does not refer to Callophrys comstocki as it reads, but to Everes comyntas, the name of which does not appear at all. Possibly a page is missing here but I have not found it.
(4) Pages 264 and 265 are transposed.
Although my criticism may seem lengthy, this is an important reference work of over 1,000 pages, promising a greatly simplified means of access to the literature of the first 150 years of research on the early stages of North American macro-lepidoptera. Despite its faults and lack of coverage for the last two decades, the work will undoubtedly be extremely useful. Few entomologists concerned with life history information on Lepidoptera can afford to ignore it.
Douglas C. Ferguson, Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USD A, c/o U.S. National Museum, Washington, D.C. 20560.
Butterflies of Australia, by I. F. B. Common and D. F. Waterhouse. 1972. Angus and Robertson (Publishers) Pty. Ltd., Sydney, Australia, etc. 498 p., 41 plates (26 in color), 25 figs., 366 maps. Price: $37.50 (U.S.). Distributed exclusively in the United States by Entomological Reprint Specialists, P.O. Box 77224, Dockweiler Station, Los Angeles, California 90007.
Australian lepidopterists are a fortunate breed: in the space of two years three fine books on their butterfly fauna have appeared. From a scientific viewpoint the