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I. THE ANTENNAE OF BUTTERFLIES. 



(Plates XIV., XV.) 



Although the antennae of Butterflies are made use of in diagnosing the families, 

 subfamilies, and even genera in the handbooks and special articles treating upon 

 these insects, it is generally only the length of the organ, its shape, and especially 

 the outline of the distal thickened portion, the clnb, which are taken into account ; 

 while the special structure of the joints, the sense-organs they bear, and the covering 

 of scaling have never been comjmratively studied to any extent. It is true that 

 the histology of the sense-hairs has often been the subject of research, that the 

 occurrence of special structures of the skeleton of the joints is mentioued l)v many 

 writers, that even attempts have been made to find out how far that which is found 

 to be true in one species holds good in other species of the same familv, and whether 

 there are distinguishing characters between the families in these organs ; but as yet 

 the attempts have been failures. Messrs. Godman & Salvin * have noticed the 

 grooves of the antenna in 'Pieridae, but erroneously attribute four instead of three 

 grooves to a joint in iJismorphiinae ; Moore t gives as a sjiecial feature of the antennae 

 of the Nymphalid genus Charaxes that the club has a slight treble carina on its inner 

 edge, a character not confined to Charaxes, but found in all Nijmphalidae: and 

 similar observations are scattered over the mass of writings on Butterflies. More 

 detailed and extensive remarks we find, of course, in the works on North American 

 Lepidoptera. Thus we read in 8cudder f that " often one or two slender carinae 

 are to be seen upon the under surface and some little dimple-like depressions arranged 

 in a longitudinal row," and notice also valuable remarks on special features of the 

 antennae in the descriptions of the various families, genera, and species. But 

 by far the most extensive researches ever made ou these organs are laid down in a 

 paper by Dr. Bodine in 1S96.§ Here for the first time the antennae of a great 

 number of families (nearly all) of Lepidoptera are studied in detail, and the often 

 remarkable difl'erences in the structure of the joints observed by Dr. Bodine applied 

 to classification. This work has brought our knowledge of the antennae a long step 

 forwards, antl must be recommended heartily for perusal to Lepidopterists in .spite 

 of a few erroneous generalisations. In respect to Butterflies, Bodiue's classificatory 

 results are rather meagre (and in part incorrect, as we shall see later on). He gives 

 the absence of " cones " from the Butterfly antenna as a character by which the 

 Butterflies are distinguished from other Freiiaiae, difterentiates the Hesperiidae by 

 the ventral expansion of tiie distal joints, characterises the antennae of PapiUonidae 

 by the presence of " short hairs or rods," which are (erroneously) said to be absent 

 from other families of Butterflies, the absence of " pits of the usual kind," and 

 the absence of scales (which, however, are present in very many Papilios), and then 

 proceeds to say (Ix. p. 40) that he was " unable to find any definite characters in the 

 antennae themselves which are constant for the separate families, and which will 

 sejiarate the Pieridae, Lycaenidae and Nymphalidac. The Pieridae, however, dlft'er 

 from the Lycaenidae in the insertion of their antennae. . . . The Nymphalidae have 

 the most highly organised antennae of all the butterflies. They are abundantly 



» Biol, t'entr. Avier., IHii'ji. II. p. 173 (1879). 



t Biittcrjlus of India 11. p. 24!l (1K96). 



X Butterjlies of the Etuicrn Uiiitrd Statc» and Canada, ivU?t sj/t'cUil Ri'fcrciice to New Eiujland, 1889, 

 p. 38. 



§ Bodine, " The Taxonomic Value of the Antennae of the Lepidoptera," in Trails. Amer. Bnt, Soc. XXIII. 

 pp. 1—56. t. I.— V. (1896). 



