Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/257

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NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
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common cognitions? The perusal of this book, with its altogether charming illustrations, must tend to lead to a better understanding. One remark expresses the keystone to much modern speculation: "No wild animal dies of old age. Its life has soon or late a tragic end. It is only a question of how long it can hold out against its foes."


Report of Observations of Injurious Insects and Common Farm Pests during the years 1897 and 1898. By Eleanor A. Ormerod, F.R.Met.Soc., &c.Two Parts.Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Limited.

Since we noticed the Report for 1896, two more of these annual contributions to economic entomology have appeared. They are written with the same care and thoroughness as distinguished their predecessors, and exhibit the same voluntary and enthusiastic devotion to the study which is likely, in a material sense, to reward readers and students rather than authoress. Two welcome announcements are made. A general index to the long series of reports which have now been published—twenty-two in all—will shortly be issued; and Miss Ormerod has now secured the co-operation of Mr. Robert Newstead, of the Grosvenor Museum, Chester, whose power of microscopic observation and delineation, with a special knowledge of the Coccidæ, must prove of a helpful character.

The work of Miss Ormerod is not confined to the publication of these Reports, but is also engaged in the management of what may be called a private consulting economic bureau on insect pests and their depredations. In 1897, we read that the correspondence "amounted approximately to about three thousand letters received"; and as these may be considered as mostly in the nature of enquiries, this scientific enterprise pursued privately by one lady is probably unique.

The Forest Fly (Hippobosca equina), the pernicious Horse pest, whose presence up to 1895 was considered in this country to be wholly confined to the New Forest or its vicinity, has now been only too clearly demonstrated to have established itself in the south of South Wales. Hay imported from South America contains very frequently specimens of the Migratory Locust