1899.] GROTE — GENEALOGICAL TREES OF BUTTERFLIES. 153 



and the correctness of which receives constantly fresh proof as the 

 results of closer studies are published. 



When Comstock uses the word "butterfly,'' he means all the 

 diurnals except the Skippers, the family Hesperiadcz. Thus he con- 

 nects the Papilionides with the other diurnals, including the Blues, 

 and merely regards them as thrown off at an early period. The 

 Papilionides are thus placed at the base of his " butterfly" system, 

 and the Lycaenids and Hesperids are divorced, as in Mr. Scudder's 

 arrangement. My course is the very opposite of this. I unite the 

 Skippers with the Blues and connect both with the Nymphalids and 

 Whites (the affinity of which two groups is pointed out by Chap- 

 man) under the name Hesperiades, and I show that this distinct 

 stem of the Lepidoptera is open to the moths. I then separate the 

 Papilionides as a closed group, having great analogy but no affinity 

 with the rest of the diurnals. The Skippers (^<'j/^r/^^/?) are really 

 what they appear to be on the surface, an intermediate type between 

 the Lycaenids and the moths, assisting in keeping the phylogenetic 

 line open in that direction. But they represent an old and now 

 specialized type, and their proper characters have been made of 

 undue importance by anxious classificators, who have then called 

 them by hard and peculiar names. I try to show that the Skippers 

 are an offshoot of the same main stem which gives us the brush- footed 

 butterflies and the Pierids, from which groups they are not excluded 

 by any character of primary value. 



The reversal of the generic arrangement within the group of Papi- 

 lionides is based on neurational features, which prove to me that 

 the Parnassians are more specialized and younger forms. A mere 

 general survey of the group seems to show that this view is reason- 

 able. It must be admitted that Ornithoptera is an unusual and 

 original-looking type, compared with the bulk of the diurnals, and 

 one still rich in species in the Australian area. It seems incredible 

 that such a local type should be the offshoot of widely disseminated 

 and more specialized forms of Papilio, to say nothing of the Par- 

 nassians. On the other hand, it appears not unreasonable to assume 

 that Ornithoptera-like butterflies should have thrown off the forms 

 of Papilio, many of which retain ornithopteran traits, and to believe 

 that, through dispersal, the suffering of geographic and geologic 

 (climatic) change, the Parnassian types should at length appear. So 

 like the Pierids do the associating Parnassians become, that Mr. 

 Reuter welds them with a nomenclatorial clamp, and Dr. Spuler 



