The horse flies of Europe (Diptera: Tabanidae)

Three authors expert in different regions have together produced a book which is unique in covering the distribution of the Tabanidae over a wide area, from Portugal to the U.S.S.R. It will be of great value as a handbook for field and laboratory taxonomy, bringing together information published in widely separated regions, and summarizing the many changes in nomenclature which have recently been introduced. This volume will be in great demand from veterinary and medical entomologists. It is a pity that at the price ( pounds-sterling 9) an attempt was made to include so many general chapters (e.g. on collecting techniques) at the expense of sufficient detail in other sections; the chapter ’Medical and economic importance of Tabanidae’ is only a summarized list of diseases with no reference to sources to enable the student to follow further the interesting cases mentioned. Again, after the detailed descriptions of each species the notes of distribution records do not carry references; this is offset a little by the brief chapter giving recent key works for each country included, by which a number of the original records could be traced. Illustrations are vital to a work of this kind, and the line drawings of each species are conscientiously drawn, although all the illustrations are entirely without a scale indication, and one would expect more colour plates in a work dealing with this readily recognized group. Perhaps this deficiency, and various grammatical shortcomings can be corrected in later versions, which deserve a larger format than 500 pages to make maximum use of the valuable assimilation of information which has contributed to this reference book.