OF WASHINGTON, VOLUME XVI, 1914 47 



The large Pyralid group has a quite separate origin from, and 

 cannot properly be associated with, the rest of the Microlepidop- 

 tera, in the last century's sense. It has also been found that the 

 ^Egeridse and the Cossidae, which were originally classed as 

 Macros, have their affinities with the Micros. But with these 

 and a few other minor subtractions and additions the group be- 

 comes an undisputed natural one, and it seems unwise altogether 

 to abandon such a long established, commonly used, descriptive 

 name, which conveys a generally understood, even if not sharply 

 denned conception. The term may conveniently be retained, if 

 restricted to denote collectively the natural group of superfamilies 

 considered in the present paper. This conception does not coin- 

 cide with the term as used by Stainton and the other old authors, 

 nor does it coincide with Hampson's and Dyar's superfamily 

 Tineoidse, differing from both mainly in the exclusion of the 

 Pyralidse, together with the smaller families of Pyralid origin. 



The systematic arrangement of the Microlepidoptera has pro- 

 gressed along much the same lines as that of the other groups of 

 insects from the -time of Linnaeus to the present day. It has 

 developed from a system founded on external, easily observed 

 characters, such as color and outline, to one founded on structure. 



From Linnaeus up through the illustrious series of old world 

 scientists who worked with this group of insects, Fabricius, Schif- 

 fermiiller, Ochsenheimer, Treitschke, Hiibner, Haworth, Curtis, 

 Stephens, Latreille, Duponchel, Guenee, and others, color and 

 pattern, together with the form of wings, antenna? and palpi, were 

 the main characters used for generic differentiation. 



Herrich-Schaffer was the first to realize the systematic value 

 of wing venation and his monumental work, Die Schmetterlinge 

 von Europa, must be regarded as the cornerstone for the modem 

 classification of Lepidoptera. So far in advance of its period 

 was this work that very few contemporaneous and subsequent 

 students realized it as anything but a laborious curiosity. There 

 was a certain wondering admiration for it, but no actual belief in 

 its practical value and no desire to go to the trouble of using it. 

 Even such an enthusiastic student as Stainton took no pains to 

 go into the subject, though he probably realized its eventual value. 

 He had his artist make most careful plates of wing venation for 

 his Insecta Britannica, but neither here nor in his later works, 

 did he ever use the venation in his generic tables of definition. 



Neither did Zeller and Walker take much advantage of Horrid i- 

 Schaffer's good work, but continued to make genera on "obvious" 

 characters; among which they and others naturally included 

 secondary male sexual characters, a procedure which has unfor- 

 tunately been followed up to a quite recent time. 



