i6 The Irish Naturalist. January, 



Of great interest and importance is Mr. Tult's section on the "General 

 Biological Characters of the Alucitides." Alike as all the "plumes " are 

 m their general appearance, and few comparatively as are the species, 

 "the divergence exhibited is exceedingly great, and there are few of the 

 largest super-families that exhibit so varied structures in the larval, 

 pupal, and to a less extent, wing characters." Nothing like so full an 

 accoiint of the larvae and pupae ot Pterophorids has ever before been 

 brought into so readilj- accessible a form as in this chapter ; there are 

 few entomologists who will not find here much that is new to them. An 

 elaborate table ot the characters of the last larval instar in some two 

 dozen species of the group will be especially valuable for coniparati^•e 

 purposes ; this table is the work of Mr. Bacot and Dr. Chapman. The 

 pterophorid pupa is of great interest— " incompletely obtect," with the 

 intermediate and hind legs " quite free from the abdominal segments," of 

 which four are movable in the male and three in the female ; it does not 

 move from its resting position before the eclosion of the imago, as 

 " incomplete " lepidopteran pupae usually do, but is " fixed by acremaster 

 that is developed on the eighth and tenth abdominal segments." 

 Further, the "larval tubercles are carried over into the pupal stage." 

 In many genera of the family the pupa is hairy ; it is but rarely enclosed 

 in a cocoon, being usually simpl}' attached by the cremaster to a silken 

 pad. The presence of larval tubercles on the pupa is to be regarded as a 

 specialised feature, probably correlated with the absence of a protective 

 cocoon ; for the insectan pupa is typically much more akin to the imago 

 than to the larva. This is one of the many features dwelt on b}' Mr. Tutt 

 as showing the isolated position of the "Plumes " among the Lepidoptera. 

 Mr. Tutt rejects their usual association with the Pyralides, the obtect 

 pupa of the latter being in his view — shared b}' that high authority Dr. 

 Chapman— a fatal objection to any near relationship. In this contention 

 he is probably right, though, in our opinion, he allows too little weight 

 to those characters of wing-neuration to which other lepidopterologists 

 such as Hampson and Meyrick perhaps allow too much. But in estimat- 

 ing the importance of characters as showing affinity, it must be re- 

 membered that neurational features are usually non-adaptive, and 

 therefore, more reliable than larval characters, which are likelj' to be 

 highly adaptive. On the other hand, the main features of the pupa are 

 perhaps more weighty than any other single set of characters. We 

 cannot follow Mr. Tutt in laying great stress on the form of the ^%^. 



As already mentioned, Mr. Tutt divides the "plumes"— excluding the 

 " multiplumes " [(Orneodidse), which are generally acknowledged to have 

 no close kinship with the Pterophorids — into two super-families, the 

 Agdistides and the Alucitides. The former contains only a single British 

 species — Agdistis (or, as Mr. Tutt prefers to call it, Adaitylus) Bemietfit\ 

 which has not yet been found in Ireland. It differs from the other 

 British plumes by its undivided wings, and its distribution is curiously 

 restricted to eastern England and Holland. 



The Alucitides are divided by Mr. Tutt into two families— the Platy- 

 ptilidce and the Alucitidae. The former have cylindrical larvae that 



