We have purposely mentioned the publishers rather than the author as the originators of this work, because the resources of the former are far more evident than those of the latter. Probably no one but the publishers could have produced so handsome and entertaining a volume at so small an expense, while almost any one might have been the author of it. We have also designedly made the plates occupy the first place in our commendation. It is evident that the book was made to order from a large stock in hand. We do not wish to disparage the work at all, or any more than is necessary to let the public know exactly what it is. Such a book would not be written except to order, and could not be so good unless there were a large stock of material on hand. Such books have a definite use, and this particular book is good of its kind. It is, as it professes to be, an 'adaptation of M. Emile Blanchard's work.' If the author had done for his own work what he has done for M. Blanchard, _i.e._, 'eliminated large portions which, although very interesting, do not refer directly to the phenomena of metamorphosis,' we should have been deprived of half the volume; and as the illustrations could hardly have been crowded more closely together, we should have lost them also, and this would have been a great pity. That the letter-press is but accessory, and sometimes hardly accessory, to the pictures is abundantly manifest. Thus, at p. 366, we have a beautiful engraving representing the transformations of _Cicada fraxini_--an insect belonging to, and even the type of, the homopterous division of the order 'Hemiptera'--incorporated, without reference to it, into the chapter on the 'Neuroptera;' while, in the chapter on the 'Hemiptera,' the metamorphosis of the same species is described without reference to the engraving.