MEMOIES OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



71 



and limbless. It is very plain that they are an ofi'shoot from the Tineoids, and especially from 

 the Tahi'porida', which have no tongue and whose females are wingless and sack-bearers. 



licnuirks on the Family Ilejnalida'. — This group is assigned by Comstock, from the venaticm 

 alone, to a position at the bottom of the lepidopterous scale, even beh)W the Microjiterygidte. 

 By Chapman it is more coi-rectly jdaced above tlie latter grou]). He even jdaces it above 

 the Nepticulida', Adelidte, and Tischeria. The I'amily e^■identlJf branched off from tineid-like 

 forms. 



Since receiving and studying Chapman's pa]ier it lias become very i>lain to me that Ilepiahis 

 and its allies are simjily colossal Tineoids, and that 

 Speyer was right in ISTd in suggesting that the 

 Hepiali<be stand very near to the tineids.' 



These views, arrived at indeiiendently by these 

 authors, are confirmed by the trunk characters and 

 also by the larval characters, as ]iointed out by Dyar,- 

 and whicli I have been able to contirm by an examina- 

 tion of the freshly hatched larva of Hcpialus muste- 

 liiius and fully grown larva of the Australian Oiicopera 

 intricata Walk., as well as those of Uephdus humiiU 

 and H. liectKs of Europe. 



In 1863^ I pointed out tlie similarity in the head 

 and thorax of Hepialus (Sfhenoi)is) argenteo-maculatiis to 

 those of the neurojiterons Polystoechotes, and referred 

 to the elongated thorax of Hepialus, especially "the 

 unnatural length of the metathorax, accompanying 

 which is the enlarged pair of wings, a character 

 essentially neuropterous." Reference was also made 

 to the metascutum, which is divided into two halves, 

 being separated widely by the very large triangular 

 scutellum. I also drew attention to the transverse 

 venule or spur of the costal vein and to the great 

 irregularity in the arrangement of the branches of 

 the cubital nervure, also to the elongated abdomen, 

 and finally I remarked, ••the Ilepiali are the lowest 

 subfamily of the Bombyces." But in those days I did 

 not fully perceive the taxonomic value of these gen- 

 eralized characters, which have so well been proved 

 by Chapman from imaginal and pupal characters to 

 be such as to place the Hepialida' at or near the base 

 of the Tineoid series. Chapman, unaware of the 

 existence of mine and of Speyer's paper, says: 



The metathomoic structure of Hepialus came as a very 

 "unexpected contirmatinn of the idea tliat of the Tortricoid group 

 it was the nearest to tlie lower Adelids. and despite its special- 

 ization ^as near the line liy which Tortris was derived from 

 some Adelid form (p. 113). 



Fig. 30. — Pupa of Zletrua elongate; mx\ labial palp?. 



1 In his suggestive paper (ICnt. Zeit. Stettin, 1870), Speyer refers to the similarity of the venation of HepialidiB 

 and Cossida'.and remarks that they resemble the Trichoptera no less than the Jlicroptorygidre, though the Hepialida? 

 eshiljit other close analogies to the Trichoptera. He adds that the middle cell of the wing in the Phryganeiil.e is 

 not fundamentally different from that of the Hepi.ilid.ii, Cossidie, and Micropteryx, also the hind wings of I'sychid.-e. 

 On page 221 he associates the Zygaenida' with the C'ossidiP, C'ochliopodid;e, Heterogyuidie, Psychida^, and Hepialidiie, 

 ami remarks that all these families are isolated among the Macros; the Cochliopodidie and Zygaenida; alike in the 

 pupa state by the delicate integument and the partially loose sheath, these groups standing nearest to the Tineidae 

 with complete maxillary palpi, forming the oldest branch of the lepidopterous stem, and having been developed 

 earlier than the Jlacros. 



-A classification of lepidopterous larvii". Annals N. Y. Acad. Sci., viii, 1891, p. 196. 



' On "Synthetic types in insects," Boston Jour, of Nat. Hist., 1863, pp. 590-«G03. 



