326 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



An Attempt to Correlate the Results Arrived at in Recent 



Papers on the Classification of Lepidoptera. By James 



William Tutt, F. E. S. 



This paper very instructively and readably puts together the con- 

 clusions attained by Comstock. Dyar, Chapman and Hampson on the 

 subject, which is one which has lately received gratifying attention. It 

 positively rains classifications ! Hardly have I mailed off the Systema 

 when Dr. Packard sends me a "New Classification," and it must be con- 

 fessed that printers' ink has not been spared at the birth of the New 

 Lepidopterology. Therefore this paper, in the Trans. Ent. Soc, of 

 London, Pt. III., for Sept., 1895, by Mr. Tutt, comes opportunely and 

 affords useful reading. Mr. Tutt states at the outset, that this paper is 

 not offered in a spirit of adverse criticism to any one of the particular lines 

 indicated and worked out at length by these various authors. But, on 

 the whole, the neurationists come off a little the worse and for the appar- 

 ent reason that their use of a single organ, with a limited field for the 

 expression of its development, is open to the fatal objection that the 

 same peculiarities are offered along different lines of descent. That this 

 is actually the case appears from the result which Dyar, on occasion, 

 obtains from the larval tubercles as compared with that obtained by 

 Comstock from the wings. Undoubtedly the wings show evolution and 

 indicate phylogenetic lines, but ultimate peculiarities of venation are not 

 decisive of affinity in all cases. The time has perhaps gone by when a 

 moth is excluded or admitted into a family on the sole ground that the 

 costal vein merges with the subcostal, or springs free from base of the 

 wing, or is separate a little way and then touches the subcostal at a cer- 

 tain point. " It is also evident," says Mr. Tutt, " that the results of the 

 various systems, whether based on larval, pupal, or imaginal characters, 

 must be compared, and the sum total of evidence brought together, if a 

 satisfactory result is to be obtained." Towards the comprehension of the 

 points of the various systems, Mr. Tutt's digest will certainly contribute. 



Dr. Packard's New Classification seems, on reflection, exclusive of 

 Prof Comstock's. Upon the mouth parts of a smaller moth, referred not 

 long ago to the genus Micropteryx, Dr. Packard founds a suborder, Lepi- 

 doptera laciniata, and refers Micropteryx and Hepialus into the other sub- 

 order, Lepidoptera glossata, which contains thus so nearly the whole of 

 the order that it might be almost as well to refer the Eriocephalid^ to the 



