MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 925 



In May 1906 we found many of our young trees at Khandalla completely 

 stripped of their bark ; we first suspected hares, but that suspicion was evi- 

 dently unjust as even good-sized trees had their bark eaten off to a height 

 which no hare could have reached without a ladder. My suspicion then 

 naturally fell upon the Crickets which had multiplied in our compound to 

 quite an unprecedented extent and the question was soon settled. I kept a 

 few of them, over night in a glass jar together with some green branches and 

 found the branches next morning gnawed in exactly the same manner as our 

 trees had been. 



The habits of these pests are of course nocturnal. During the day time 

 they hide away not in the holes dug by themselves like other respectable 

 Crickets but in all possible places which they find ready made. They also 

 hide themselves not singly or in pairs but in very large numbers closely packed 

 together. 



They have apparently very few natural enemies to contend with. Two of 

 them would make a very fair meal for a musk-rat but musk-rats are not very 

 numerous at Khandalla and I know of no other animal which might be able 

 and willing to keep down then- numbers. 



F. DBECKMANN, S. J. 

 St. Xavier's College, Bombay, August 1908. 



No. XXX.— CLASSIFICATION OF LEPIDOPTERA. 



With regard to Mr. Comber's query in the Journal as to the modern classifica- 

 tion of Lepidoptera, the following remarks may be of value. 



The most notable work now appearing on Lepidoptera is Sir George 

 Hampson's Catalogue of Lepidoptera Phalamo:, published by the British 

 Museum, of which 6 volumes have been issued. 



Hampsoa therein propounds a new classification of Lepidoptera, based 

 largely on venation, in which he treats the order as a whole ; in his phylogenetic 

 table, the 7 families of butterflies are shown to arise from the Enschemonido 

 and to be connected through the CastinadcB to the moths ; in his key to the 

 families the butterflies are separated as having the " Antennae clubbed or 

 dilated, frenulum absent." The butterflies are in this sense alone regarded 

 as a distinct group and the line of separation between them and the moths is 

 no sharp or clear one ; were the butterflies not day-flying, large and conspi- 

 cuous, it is doubtful if they would ever have been separated at all, as there is 

 no real ground for this separation on phylogenetic grounds. 



If we accept Hampson's views as being the most accurate presentation of the 

 relationships of the groups of Lepidoptera, the old groups such as Bombyces, 

 Noctues, etc., disappear and we have a large series of the highest Lepidoptera 

 represented by Syntomids, Arctiids, Noctuids, Hypsids, Sphingids, Geometrids, 

 Bombycids, Saturniids etc., at one end, the butterflies at the other end, and a 

 number of families between (such as Castniids, Lasio-campids, Limacodids, 



