The Moth Book: A Popular Guide to a Knowledge of the Moths of North America. W.J. Holland. Edited by A.E. Brower. New York: Dover Publications, 1968. xxiv, 479 pp. 48 colored plates. $5.00.

Excerpt: Despite its obvious limitations, Holland\u27s Moth Book has been the standard amateur guide to the Heterocera of the United States since its original publication in 1903. Its remarkable popularity has largely been due to its colored plates, which illustrate a good selection of American moths, including a large proportion of such widely collected families as the Sphingidae and Saturniidae, as well as many of the Noctuidae. Holland\u27s work has been the great standby of young collectors for many years, although the text could not really pass muster in 1903, and is so badly out of date in 1968 that republication of the work furnishes a two-edged sword to amateur lepidopterists

Theories on the Nature of Life. Giovanni Blandino, New York: Philosophical Library, 1969. xiv, 374 pp. $6.00.

In a short span, this encyclopedic work summarizes the historical problems of the nature of life. Blandino conducts his narrative in a condensed and highly-packed form that assumes the nature of an outline. His own ideas are explained in the second part of the book. In the author\u27s words, his conception is that vegetative biological phenomena (1) are material deterministic phenomena and therefore, in order to produce them, fixed laws inherent in matter are both necessary and sufficient..

Invertebrata Pacifica. (1903-7). Edited by C. F. Baker. Hampton, Middlesex, England: E. W. Classey, 1969. [ii], 197 pp. $10.80.

Excerpt: Charles Fuller Baker (1872-1927) was born in Lansing, Michigan, and received his undergraduate degree from Michigan Agricultural College [now Michigan State University) in 1892. While on the faculty of the Colorado Agricultural College he collected extensively in the West, specializing in the Homoptera. After a decade of varied employment, ranging from service as botanist on the H. H. Smith expedition to Colombia (1898-99) to teaching high school in St. Louis, he returned to academic life and obtained his M.S. at Stanford in 1903

George Starkey, an Early Seventeenth-Century American Entomologist

Between the earliest known North American entomological observations made by John White (Wilkinson, 1973a) and Thomas Hariot, and the beginning of more systematic investigations by John Banister (Ewan and Ewan, 1970) and other collectors in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially those promoted by the London apothecary and naturalist James Petiver (Stearns, 1952; Wilkinson, 1966), a number of persons wrote about insects observed in British America. However, their remarks were usually very brief, and confined to notices of one or two species. Only a few seventeenth-century investigators actually studied North American insects and related forms in situ with any diligence. The earliest of these appears to have been George Starkey (1627 or 1628-1665)

Newsletter of the Association of Minnesota Entomologists. Edi ted by John H. Ma s t e r s . Vol. 1, No. 1. [~ctober?1]9 66; No. 2 , not received; No. 3, Feb. 1967; No. 4, Aug. 1967. Free to members of the A.M.E., who pay 2.75ayearforactiveand2.75 a y e a r f o r active and 1.75 for corresponding memberships, which are open to all by contacting John T. Sorensen, 5309 37th Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minn. 55417.

Excerpt: Our brothers in Minnesota have long taken advantage of this good fortune, but only recently has a newsletter appeared to document their activities. It is a folded 24-page silk-screen mimeograph production with heavy stock covers. The inexpensive for math as the usual drawback of muddy type, but a definite improvement can be seen through the course of publication, due to the utilization of better materials. The newsletter accepts contributions on any aspect of entomology in any part of the world, but priority in publication will be given to papers of the North Central Region and to papers by members of the Association

The Genesis of A.R. Grote\u27s Collecting Noctuidae by Lake Erie

Since its serial publication in The Entomologist\u27s Record during 1895, Augustus Radcliffe Grote\u27s Collecting Noctuidae by Lake Erie has become a minor classic of entomological literature. This brief but compelling reminiscence of two and a half months under canvas has long been considered one of the finest of the many accounts which have been written about the pursuit of Lepidoptera, and it is especially treasured by those collectors who, like Grote at Lake Erie, have used the method of \u27sugaring\u27 to capture moths. Surely much of the essay\u27s appeal is due to Grote\u27s facile and unusually colorful literary style; as P. B. M. Allan (1948) has observed, it is given to but few of us to paint like that

January Collecting in Central Michigan

Excerpt: To the uninitiated reader, searching for adult insects in mid-winter might seem a fruitless task at best. Yet as the List of Michigan Insects and Related Arthropods takes shape, L\u27off-season collecting records are urgently needed by the compilers. Many species of insects thrive when we might wish to stay indoors; the Collembola are good examples, as are the species of Chionea (Diptera: Tipulidae), a genus of wingless crane-flies. We should like to know much more about the distribution of many hardy winter insects, and only increased collecting will enable this

Fluidic Momentum Controller

Large angular control moments and torques are developed by controllably circulating a relatively small mass of liquid through small diameter pipes describing a large diameter loop. The loop, by generating and storing angular momentum, can thereby provide efficient cancellation of periodic, non-accumulating, externally induced rotational disturbances. The loop is preferably located on or near the periphery of a structure which is to be stabilized

The Source of Townend Glover\u27s American Moth Trap

(excerpt) In an earlier paper (Wilkinson, 1969) I suggested that Townend Glover (1 81 3-83), the fust United States Entomologist, was the Mr. Glover credited with the invention of the first known portable light trap for the collection of study specimens, announced in the English Entomologist\u27s Monthly Magazine (Knaggs, 1866). The history of the well-known American Moth Trap was traced in my 1969 paper. but I had not then discovered the obvious antecedent of Glover\u27s device

Hewitson on Butterflies 1867-1877. William C. Hewitson. Hampton, Middlesex: E. W. Classey, 1972. [246] pp; various paginations. $12.50. Distributed exclusively in North America by Entomological Reprint Specialists, Los Angeles, California.

The English naturalist William C. Hewitson (1806-78) was trained as a surveyor, but various good fortunes enabled him to retire at an early age and devote his attention to the pursuit of natural history. His chief interests were entomology and ornithology, the classic British Oology (183342) being his major contribution to the latter field