FORBES: LEPIDOPTERA 545 



The Rothschild and Jordan revision, published as a supplement to the Novitates Zoologicae 

 in 1903, was a turning point, for it first put the classification on a solid basis, with keys 

 as well as short descriptions for the whole world, and proper consideration of the geni- 

 talia. However, his names were applied according to an odd code of his own; when his 

 use of an older name agreed with either tradition or later rules, it was pure coincidence. 

 Early stages were also practically neglected and have never yet been studied from the 

 world point of view. I studied the larval characters in 1911 (Ann. Entom. Soc. Amer., 

 4:261-280) under the encouragement of Beutenmuller, who had got together a good many 

 specimens for a study of his own, then abandoned. Later I saw a few of them again in a 

 most unexpected place. The only scientific approach to the pupae is by Mosher (Ann. 

 Entom. Soc. Amer., 11:403-442, 1918). The beautiful and detailed figures of Moss and of 

 Bell and Scott ("Sphingidae of Peru," Trans. Zool. Soc. London, 20:65-118, 1912; Nov. 

 Zool, 27:333-424, 1920; Fauna of British India, "Moths," Vol. 5, 1937) give us a rich but 

 superficial view of the exotic fauna. 



Since, Beutenmiiller's work on the adults has been mainly a modification of Rothschild 

 and Jordan; but B. P. Clark's series of papers in the Proceedings of the New England Zoo- 

 logical Cluh have some important data on races in the United States, and have added a few, 

 but very striking, species to our knowledge of other parts of the world. At the moment we 

 have a fuller and sounder knowledge of the Sphingidae than of any other family of moths, 

 yet scientifically the early stages are almost a blank, there being only those two hurried 

 papers mentioned above. Miss Edna Mosher's on the pupae and mine on the larvae, each 

 limited to a partial sample of the Holarctic fauna. 



saturxioidea: Next to the sphinges, the saturnids are probably the most popular 

 group of moths, but their discussion more properly belongs under biology rather than 

 taxonomy, for knowledge of their early stages and biology has always anticipated their 

 classification. In 1853 I suppose most people in the East knew them through Harris' 

 Insects Injurious to Vegetation; and Boisduval supplied two California species from 

 Lorquin's collecting. Clemens' revision in Morris' Synoi)sis then became the authority, 

 and the four genera recognized by them (Saturnia and Attacus, Ceratocampa and Dryo- 

 campa) were the names familiar to amateurs until Holland's Moth Book came out in 

 1903. In fact, the saturnids were almost a specialty for amateurs and dealers, who knew 

 how to find the cocoons, and who published some of the life histories in great detail. My 

 own authorities "before Holland" were Harris' Insects Injurious, Mrs. Ballard's Among 

 the Moths and Butterflies (1890), Mary Dickerson's Moths and Butterflies (1901) and 

 Eliot and Soule's Caterpillars and Their Moths (1902). What Westerners did, I have no 

 idea. But when Holland came out, we had colored figures of everything for the country, 

 though we still used the four amateur authorities for biological data. 



On the scientific side, the classification has never come properly into focus. Packard's 

 revision for the National Academy was unfinished when he died. In its final publication 

 it was rich on early stages, but fragmentary in classification. In Europe the picture was 

 similar: plenty of material in the hands of dealers, including early stages, plenty of 

 figures, and very little classification. Only this year have we at last a world classification 

 (Michener, "The Saturniidae (Lepidoptera) of the Western Hemisphere," Amer. Mus. 

 Nat. Hist. Bull.. Vol. 98, art. 5), which actually ties in most of the Eurasian types and 

 leaves only the Africans incomplete. But still little has been done to work up the rich 

 and significant larval and pupal characters. One might add that, in general, the family 

 limits have been clearly understood for Europe and North America; South America, 

 however, seems to have been a problem for many earlier authors, including Kirby in the 

 Catalogue of Lepidoptera Heterocera (1892) who included most of the relatives of the 

 lo moth in the Lasiocampidae, along with members of several other very distinct families. 



BOMBYCEs: That array of unrelated but similar families known colloquially as the 

 bombyces have had too complex a history to follow in detail. In America the authority, 

 as the century opened, was Morris; in Europe the second volume of Herrich-Schaeffer 

 (1845) was available, and this was soon supplemented by Heinemann's Schmetterlinge 

 Deutschlands und der Schiveiz (1859), but during the whole period in Europe picture 

 books have dominated the more serious classifications. In America the publication of 



