34 GROTE — SPECIALIZATIONS OF LEPIDOPTEROUS WING. [Jan. 21, 



In all these the little vein iiis^.^ remains distinct and has not been 

 lost. Evidently Pieris represents the ancestral form of Mancipium 

 and has perhaps been thrown off before the specialization of Pieris 

 has progressed so far. Notwithstanding the similarity of the orna- 

 mentation I am not sure that P. rapce is on the direct line of 

 descent. As between rapcedXi^ napi I incline to considerthe latter 

 at present the more specialized. Aporia cratcegi is evidently a 

 more generalized form, standing a little apart. Vein iii3^4 is quite 

 a long furcation, and measures its distance from Pieris. The skele- 

 ton of the wing is more powerfully built and vein viii of primaries 

 stronger than in Pieris, in which it seems little better than a scar. 

 The gradation by which this vein, which appears usually like a loop, 

 strap or support to vii at the base, passes into obliteration is so 

 entire that the exact statement of its condition is often difficult 

 either to correctly grasp or record. The ''tubular" character dis- 

 appears by minute gradations ; the ''scar" aspect and the "tubu- 

 lar" shape are easy to detect, but where the one commences and 

 the other ends it is often hard for me to say. In the holarctic fauna 

 I do not find any form to represent the probably actual five- 

 branched condition of Pieris, but here several types are wanting to 

 me which I should like to have examined. In the genealogical tree 

 of the holarctic butterflies the more generalized Anthocharini must 

 take the place of the common five-branched ancestor of the whole 

 Pierinae. But this seems to me to stand upon a separate immediate 

 phylogenetic line of its own, notwithstanding some common fea- 

 tures of color and marking. With this Anthocharid line we must 

 now in concluding concern ourselves. 



Among the Anthocharini, or what we may call the " non-typical 

 Whites," we have, in Poniia daplidice, the attainment of the three- 

 branched condition. This butterfly appears to me to have no 

 immediate connection with the "typical Whites," but to be a 

 descendant of Anthocharid ancestry. It is true that Mr. Meyrick 

 refers it without comment to the genus Pieris {Handbook, 353), but 

 it is also true that Mr. Meyrick, in the same publication, precedes 

 Pieris by Leptidia (Leucophasia) and this again by Euchloe, and, 

 to make the mixture complete, Gonepteryx (Colias). This sort of 

 work appears to me to prove that Mr. Meyrick's studies are not yet 

 sufficiently "correlated" with the actual facts of structure. If, 

 indeed, the picture which Mr. Meyrick has received of the neuration 

 at all resembles the figures with which his publications are adorned. 



