1899.] GEOTE — SPECIALIZATIONS OF LEPIDOPTEUuL'S WIXG. 13 



but this condition is not constant in the Nymphalidce, and is aban- 

 doned in the Satyrids and Libythea. On the other hand, the differ- 

 ences between the Papilionides and NymphalidcTe are numerous. 

 Vein ivo, the middle branch of the media, becomes radial in the 

 latter, in the former cubital, in specialization. Vein ivg also leaves 

 the lower outer corner of the cell in the Papilionidae, and, 

 although this position is abandoned in the higher genera of the 

 Parnassiidas, still it may have been a primitive one, since it occurs 

 now with the more generalized forms. The peculiarities of the 

 papilionid wang are very strong, and notwithstanding the discovery 

 of a remnant of the cubital cross-vein in Aiiosia (Danaus) by 

 Mr. Quail, and by myself in Heliconius, I cannot find evidence 

 sufficiently weighty to connect the groups from the neuration. But 

 while the coincidences allow of some comparison of the Pa- 

 pilionides with the Pieri-Nymphalidce, although an affinity appears 

 to me to be illusory, it is impossible to consider them as represent- 

 ing in any nearer w^ay an ancestral form of the Lycaeni-Hesperiadae. 



Upon the generalized condition of Hesperia too much stress has, 

 perhaps, been laid in literature. All the forms of which I have ex- 

 amined the neuration seem relatively specialized upon their pecu- 

 liar plan of venation, of which the more modern and advanced 

 outgrowths are to be found in the Lyc^nidae, culminating in 

 Thecla. But all the butterflies belonging to the Lycaenid-Hes- 

 perid phylum seem relatively too specialized as to represent ade- 

 quately the primitive form of the diurnals. Whatever the primitive 

 form was like, the only character in which it may have resembled 

 Hesperia, or the primitive form of the Charaxinae, is that of the 

 separation of the longitudinal veins. The primitive butterfly 

 may have had separated veins, together with cubital cross-veins, of 

 which we find a trace in the Heliconians and Limnads, and an 

 anal vein, like the Papilionides, on the primaries. And, perhaps, 

 by conjuring up a creature rejoicing in apparently residual fea- 

 tures, we might attain to a picture in somewhat like manner as 

 Gabriel Max has painted Haeckel's Pithecanthropus alalus eirropcBus. 

 But the muse of morphology, as I am now able to understand her, 

 abandons me at this juncture, with the unconnected threads of the 

 groups A and B, the Papilionides and Hesperiades, dangling down- 

 wards into the abyss of Time, kept apart by the presence of vein ix 

 of primaries in the one and its absence in the other. 



The object of my communications upon the wings of butterflies, 



