1898] CLASSIFICATION OF THE DAY BUTTEBFLIFS 97 



the independent specialisations of the other body parts, the retained 

 common features of neuration seem to show that the two series 

 have a common phylogeny, and that their ancient progenitors, dis- 

 playing no such disparities in head, feet, and antennae, as we find 

 to separate them to-day, flew together over unremembered pastures 

 — consanguineous. The ' Least Skipper,' Ancyloxypha numitor, 

 lacking the recurved hooks to the tips of the antennae, may help us 

 here, as this little butterfly has aided us to see the inapplicability 

 of such a great term as ' Grypocera.' Since the furcations of the 

 veins are the result of absorptions, those species, for instance, 

 having a long bifurcation of III4 with III5 (i.e., Charaxcs) cannot 

 have been thrown off by forms in which the fork is short, as is 

 now the case with the mass of holarctic Nymphalids in which the 

 absorption is in an advanced condition. The long forks precede 

 the short. To find relatives of Charaxes, forms in which the long 

 furcation is likewise retained, we have even to go to South America, 

 to butterflies like Hypna dytemnestra and Consul hipi^ona. The 

 general condition of the neuration in Charaxes iason, is a nearest 

 approach to that we find in the separated veins of the Hesperiadae. 

 Now, it may be assumed, that in former geological periods the 

 grouping of the butterflies was laxer than it is to-day, and, therefore, 

 that many of the family groups we seem now able to separate, more 

 or less clearly, were probably at one time so interconnected, by 

 forms which have since dropped out, that their separation was not 

 possible. Or, the characters we now apprehend had not then 

 assumed their apparent importance and fixity. At that time the 

 ancestors of the brush-footed butterflies may well have been con- 

 nected with the main line of the six-footed butterflies, and possibly 

 intermediate grades, showing also the more or less gradual acquire- 

 ment of brush-footed character, may well have existed, since even 

 now there is no uniformity in the exhibition of the aborted front 

 feet. From small and specialised groups we can hardly expect the 

 birth of such a feature, rather from large assemblages seeking fresh 

 advantages, thus with a proneness to change, and already presenting 

 a wide range of other structural modification. Such an assemblage 

 may have existed in the ancestors of the Pieridae, since we have 

 here the testimony of Leptidia to make it probable. The abyss 

 separating Leptidia from the rest of the ' Whites ' is profound, and 

 this butterfly (Lcueophasia sinapis) appears now as an isolated and 

 probably relatively specialised survivor of what was possibly once a 

 more or less extended group of the Pierids. So different is it, that 

 Leptidia is excluded under Comstock's definition of the Pieridae 

 (Manual, 375) so that either the diagnosis must be changed or the 

 genus must form a new family. In the Papilionides vein IVg is 

 central or cubital ; in the Hesperiades it is central or radial, except 



