The Moths and Butterflies 



439 



Fig. 5) is the most abundant Eastern species, although H. diffinis, with 

 bright-yellow hairs in place of brownish yellow on thorax and abdomen, is 

 common. In Colorado and Utah is found a smaller species, H. brucei, 

 with yellowish thorax and abdominal band, and in California are one or two 

 varieties of H. diffinis. The larva of H. diffinis (Fig. 631) feeds on honey- 

 suckle and snowberry-bush and is pale green above, darker green on the 

 sides, with three brown stripes on the under side; the caudal horn is yellow 

 with blue-black tip; some of the caterpillars, as is common among the larvae 

 of this family, are brown instead of green. It is two-brooded. Moths just 

 issued from the chrysalid have scales over all of the wing surface, but these 

 scales are so loosely attached on the discal area that the first few flights 

 dislodge them, so that the "clear-wing" comes about. The larvae of 

 H. thysbe feed on viburnum, snowberry, and hawthorn. 



BUTTERFLIES. 



Taken all in all the butterflies are the most familiar and attractive insects 

 to people in general; their size, beautiful color-patterns, and daytime flight 



"FiG. 633. The Parnassian butterfly, Parnassius smintheus, which lives in the Rocky 

 Mountains and Sierra Nevada at an altitude of 5000 feet and more. (Natural size.) 



chiefly account for this. Six hundred and fifty butterfly species (compare 

 with the six thousand species of moths) are accredited to this country in 

 the latest authoritative catalogue of North American Lepidoptera. These 

 represent, according to this catalogue, thirteen families; a more usual classi- 

 fication, however, groups all these species into six families. As this latter 

 arrangement is in use in most of the insect manuals, it will be adopted in this. 

 Comstock, who has given the classification of the Lepidoptera much attention, 

 gives the following key to families: 



