348 Bibliographical Notices. former, the main trunks affect a bilateral position, those of the latter are dorso-abdominal ; that, with one doubtful exception, the blood system is closed, while the tracheal system always (that of a few aquatic larvae excepted) communicates by means of spiracles with the external atmosphere. 7. That the tracheal and blood systems of Insects come into conjunction onhj at the peripheric segments, — the main trunks of each observing separate courses. 8. That the periphery of the circulating fluid system of In-sects is constructed in exact conformity with the Crustacean model, the blood flowing in imparietal channels, in and through which the capillary tracheae are conducted, floating in the nutri-tive fluid. I remain. Gentlemen, Your obedient Servant, Thomas Williams, M.D. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. Insecta Maderensia; being an Account of the Insects of the Islands of the Madeiran Group. By T. Vernon Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. London : 4to, pp. 634, plates 13. Some persons are singularly qualified for producing a work on the natural history of a country. To give one instance : — Otho Fabricius, a Danish clergyman, spent some years of his life in Greenland, and thus acquired an intimate knowledge of that Arctic land, which modern discovery begins to show must be an immense archipelago bound by one great band of ice. When he left Denmark, with but little knowledge of natural science, but ardently desirous of stu-dying the works of Him, whose word " ut Missionarius ordinatuSy ab honor atissimo Collegio de cursu Evangelii promovendo^^ it was his calling to proclaim, Fabricius took with him, in 1 768, that na-tural-history cyclopsedia of the time, the ' Sy sterna Naturae' of Lin-naeus, and, urged by those who ordained him, to study Arctic natural history at his leisure hours, he returned in six years with great materials for a Physical, Geographical and Historical History of Greenland. In May 1779 he wrote the preface of a portion of this work, the ' Fauna Grcenlandica,' which was accordingly published next year, and the character of which may be best given in the words of Ciivier : *' Ouvrage precieux par 1' extreme exactitude des descrip-tions.*' It is the work of a diligent, observing man, limited by climate to a highly interesting, but comparatively narrow, field. He has but few books to distract him, and but few bibliographical re-searches to make. Mr. Wollaston, though he went to a tropical climate, was singularly happy in having such an atmosphere as envelopes an ocean-girt island of hmited size, 250 miles distant from a continent
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