240 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [October, 



CLASSIFICATION OF THE LEPIDOPTERA. 



By J. B. SMITH, New Brunswick, N. J. 



In the September, 1894, number of the ENT. NEWS, Mr. Tutt 

 makes some suggestions on Classification, particularly in refer- 

 ence to the Pterophoridae and Alucitidae. Concerning these 

 families, or whatever else their rank may be, I will venture no 

 opinion; but on the general subject of which Mr. Tutt speaks I 

 believe I am entitled to an opinion, and this, while I do not dis- 

 agree with Mr. Tutt, is not quite entirely in accord with his sug- 

 gestions. For instance, I do not believe for a moment that 

 ' ' There never will be a final authoritative revision of any genus 

 of butterflies until the preparatory stages in every species of it 

 is known," and in the same way I do not believe that it is neces- 

 sary to know all the early stages before making a final classifica- 

 tion of Lepidoptera, based upon characters of the adult only. 

 I would not for a moment suggest the idea that the early stages 

 are not of importance. On the contrary I believe that they are 

 of the highest possible importance, and I believe that no classifi- 

 cation which associates forms which show any real divergence in 

 the structure of any of the early stages can be final. But this 

 proves only the imperfection of the classification, and not that a 

 perfect classification is not possible. I wish to say again, as I 

 have said so frequently, that I do not believe that the present 

 basis for our classification is a correct one. Many of the char- 

 acters in use are valuable and absolute so far as they go, but we 

 must remember that the entire external skeleton of the Lepid- 

 optera has received practically no consideration in classification. 

 We must remember that this very external skeleton affords char- 

 acters of the very highest importance in the Coleoptera and Hy- 

 menoptera as well as in other orders, and we must remember that 

 in those orders the classification as based upon the structure of 

 the adults carries throughout the entire life-history, and in so far 

 as it does, the classification may be considered final. In other 

 words, I believe that there can be no essential variation in the 

 structure or history of any of the early stages, which does not 

 also leave its mark upon the imago, or final stage, and that when 

 we really know the Lepidoptera as we know some of the other 

 orders, notably the Coleoptera, our classification based upon the 

 images will be found to agree perfectly with any reasonable clas- 



