NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 43 



and some Papilios, and the analogously spiniferous tibiae in the 

 two groups. DeGeer deduced this affinity from the analogous 

 configuration of the wings, and from the internal conformation of 

 the larva?; Kirby from resemblances in the buccal apparatus, and 

 Reaumur from general considerations upon insect analogies. 



The Phryganidse are an intermediate group to the Neuroptera 

 and Lepidoptera, as the most satisfactory evidence, backed up by 

 the well-balanced judgments of competent authorities, so amply 

 and ably testifies. The Ephemerids, though a somewhat distant 

 kin of the Phryganidee., in the Triassic Bphemeron referred to 

 above, is it not a plausible hypothesis that we have the progenitor, 

 though very remotely, of the Jurassic sphinx? Future dis- 

 coveries may reveal to us, when these formations are more tho- 

 roughly known, the intermediate links by which the Sphinges 

 were reached from an Ephemerid-like neuropter, through a Tri- 

 chopterous form allied to our present Caddice flies, thence through 

 certain extinct species of Noctuidee and Bombycidse, doubtless 

 having characters which relate them somewhat intimately to ex. 

 isting types. That the passage of the Sphinges proper has not 

 been through the Zygsenidse, amounts to a conviction in my mind. 

 There are reasons of a morphological character, and others that 

 favor such a pre-conception. Among existing Bombycids there 

 are forms that resemble, both in the larval and imago states, our 

 Sphinges proper, Notodonta Galifornica, Stretch, is a good illus- 

 tration. The larvae, in general form, and in having a horn upon 

 its anal segment, according to Dr. Behr, would be taken as a 

 Sphinx, and doubtless would be described as such in the absence 

 of an}' knowledge concerning its early stages. The imago pre. 

 sents, in the general contour of the body, in the attenuated form 

 of the anterior wings, in being decidedly chalinopterous, and in the 

 characteristic shape of the posterior alar appendages, a very close 

 alliance to some Sphinges with which I am familiar. I do not 

 assert the belief that this species is identical in the aggregate of 

 its characters with the Bombycid, from which the Jurassic Sphinx 

 sprang, but that it can be taken as a fair sample of the proximate 

 ancestor of the latter. 



As before remarked, there is some resemblance upon the part of 

 Phryganea to the genus Psyche among moths, and the Papilios 

 among butterflies ; from which it might be argued that the Bom- 

 bycids, if they have come from the Phryganese, must have ])assed 



