1898] CLASSIFICATION OF THE DAY BUTTERFLIES 21 



spinniug might tend to crystallise and be sedulously followed, it 

 would no less be liable to give way on occasion to change, to adapt 

 itself to new circumstance, even to break more or less suddenly with 

 custom, and this quite independent of the modifications of the butter- 

 fly. Undoubtedly, the mode of spinning has its story to tell, and 

 we should be at the pains of reading it rightly, and use the infor- 

 mation as a help to a phylogenetic classification ; but, from its very 

 nature, the character cannot be drawn out to the extravagant ex- 

 tent attempted by Mr Scudder. What, for example, are we to think 

 of the Geometrid or the Plume which suspends its chrysalis after 

 the fashion of a day butterfly ? Mr Scudder can only answer : ' It 

 is not a butterfly,' and dismiss the case. But we tliink that it is 

 rather time to discard the use of Boisduval's terms of Suspensi and 

 Succincti and Involuti as designating natural groups, and cease to rely 

 upon the characters drawn from these assemblages as affording us 

 a key to the phylogenetic classification of the butterflies. 



Beyond this, we can show that Mr Scudder's estimate of Oeneis 

 takes no account of the structure of this butterfly's wings. From 

 these organs it appears clear that Oeneis is not a specialised form, 

 one in any way remarkable above its fellows. The most specialised 

 Satyrids I have yet examined in the European fauna appear to be 

 Pararge aegeria and Lasiomriiata inegaera. In these vein IV3 of 

 the hind wing has eflected its complete junction with the cubitus, 

 reproducing a character normal with the Nymphalidae proper. 

 Now Oeneis has not this character at all ; here, as in all Agapetinae, 

 to which sub-family group it belongs, vein IV3 springs still from the 

 cross-vein. Oeneis is plainly allied to Erehia, even a little more 

 generalised, as shown by its completely confined median cells, the 

 space between the veins more equidistant, vein IV3 a little further 

 from Vi, the fusion of II and III hardly so extended. Among the 

 members of its family we have in Oeneis by no means a ' high,' 

 rather a comparatively ' low ' butterfly ; so that it seems absurd to 

 place such a butterfly ' at the head ' of the whole system, because it 

 proceeds from a nearly silkless chrysalis. And w^e may conclude, 

 with Hume, that when any opinion leads to absurdity it is certainly 

 false. 



In Mr Scudder's paper on the " Classification of Butterflies, with 

 special reference to the position of the Equites or Swallowtails," 

 Philadelphia, June 1877, we find a variety of reasons assigned to 

 justify the deposition of Pajoilio. Those upon which Mr Scudder 

 seems to lay most stress, we notice here : " But perhaps the most 

 striking point of affinity between these two groups (i.e., ' Swallow- 

 tails ' and ' Skippers ') lies in the possession, on the front tibiae, of 

 the characteristic foliate epiphysis which is wanting in all other 

 butterflies" {I.e. 77). Xow, did this character occur only in these 



