206 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



a result as Jack attained from his bean-stalk. To draw such a tree may be 

 pardonable, but to believe in it afterwards, as representing real succession, 

 is an infirmity of the scholar's mind. Who can tell the real succession in 

 time and place ? There may be assumed a certain progression in the 

 development of form, but beyond this there is nothing to justify our pre- 

 tence that we are classifying our Lepidoptera according to real descent. 

 Nature or natural selection deals with individuals ; if the type persists, it 

 is represented by species. 



It may be that certain species of tropical Papilio are more recent 

 evolutions, newer species, than many Nyviphalidce; but the four-footed 

 butterfly must have come, one would think, from a six-footed ancestor. 

 Hence, in a linear series, we may commence reasonably with the Nym- 

 phalidce. Again, the habits of the larvse of these latter are very complex, 

 and seem to have been slowly modified and acquired. Mr. Edwards has 

 told us much about them. The larvae themselves are most curious 

 objects, leaving the usual range of larval forms. In certain genera from 

 South America are curious horns attached to the head, reaching back- 

 wards and reminding us of the flower spurs of Aquilegia. The larvae of 

 the Fapilionidce, as I have elsewhere said, are not without resemblances 

 to the Hawk moths. As to pupation, it may be assumed that cocoon- 

 making, or spinning, is older than its disuse. Almost all the " higher " 

 groups, that is, groups which may have issued from a former complex, 

 show some modification of this habit in the direction of its disuse. Thus 

 the Hawk moths, which may have come from a common ancestry with 

 the Ceratocampiiice, probably first passing through a type analogous to 

 existing SmerinthituE, have very generally discarded cocoon-making. In 

 discussing all these matters, we must be careful not to put the cart before 

 the horse, as the Chippeways did, who held the pretty notion that the 

 butterfly made the south wind, and not the south wind the butterfly. 



The Fapilionidce, in the consistency and form of the body, in its 

 hairiness, in the dark and bright contrasting colors, in the tailing and 

 structure of the secondaries, show certain approximations to the ffesperidce, 

 so that our placing them at the end of the true butterflies does not do 

 violence to their structure. And as they are six-legged butterflies, we 

 should naturally finish with them. The departure, which probably exists 

 as a tendency in the group, is here not expressed, and they are like the 

 Hesperidce in this respect. But we must no,t look upon the Fapilionidce 



