

95 



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ON THE MORPHOLOGY AND SYSTEMATIC POSITION 

 OF THE FAMILY MICROPTERYGIDJZ (Sens. Lat.). 



Introduction and Part i. (The Wings). 



By R J. Tillyard, M.A., DSc, F.L.S., F.E.S., Linnkan 

 Macleay Fellow of the Society in Zoology. 



(Plate iii. and fourteen Text-figures). 



In carrying out my researches on the Panorpoid Complex(9, 10), 

 it was necessary to study very carefully the remarkable family 

 of archaic Moths known as the Micropterygidce, since these are 

 supposed to represent the oldest existing types of Lepidoptera. 

 The results obtained would, under ordinary circumstances, have 

 been included, piece by piece, in the various parts of my work 

 on the Panorpoid Complex, and would have been used simply as 

 part of the evidence in the more general problem of the relation- 

 ships of the Orders composing the Complex. 



However, during the last year, two events have occurred which 

 appear to me to make it essential that a more exhaustive study 

 of this interesting family should be undertaken, with the special 

 object of determining, as exactly as possible, its true relation- 

 ships and systematic position. These events are: firstly, the 

 receipt of a paper by Dr. T. A. Chapman, M.D., F.R.S., in 

 which (2) he definitely removes the genus Micropteryx itself from 

 the rest of the MicropterygidcB, and proposes for it a new Order 

 Zeugloptera: and, secondly, the receipt of Professor Comstock's 

 new book on the Wings of Insects (3), in which he removes the 

 whole family Micropteryyidai from the Lepidoptera, and places 

 them in the Trichoptera as a new Suborder, the Micropterygina 

 or Terrestrial Trichoptera, of equal value with the Phryganeina 

 or Aquatic Trichoptera, which includes all the Trichoptera as 

 usually understood by entomologists. 



My own research, in which the presence of the frenulum in 



