156 The Classification of Insects 



Order. — But all these insects, though referred to 

 two or three different families, are Butterflies. All 

 agree in the essential points of structure. The 

 mandibles are reduced to the merest vestiges, while 

 the blades of the first maxillse are absent and the 

 hoods are greatly lengthened and form a tubular 

 sucking organ, capable of being spirally rolled up 

 beneath the head or stretched out into the corolla 

 of a flower or other desirable feeding-place. The 

 wings are densely clothed with scales, and the neura- 

 tion (except for the discocellulars when present) is 

 entirely made up of longitudinal nervures radiating 

 from the base towards the margins and angles of the 

 wing ; there is no network of nervures as in the 

 wings of the cockroach. The larvse of these butter- 

 flies, though differing in shape and appearance, are 

 all creeping caterpillars with several pairs of prolegs 

 on the hind-body in addition to the three pairs of 

 thoracic legs. Their pups are all passive and obtect. 

 Agreeing as they do in these features, the Lycsnidx, 

 Nymphalidae, and Satyrids are classed together with 

 the many other families of butterflies and moths, most 

 of which differ far more from these families than 

 they do from one another in the single Order of the 

 Lepidoptera or scale-winged insects One family of 

 very small moths (Micropterygids), on account of the 

 presence of fairly developed mandibles, and of blades 

 to the first maxillse — characters unknown throughout 

 the rest of the order — is placed by some naturalists 

 in a separate Sub-order (Lacimata), all the other moths 

 and butterflies forming another sub-order {Haustellata). 

 In several of the orders it is convenient thus to 

 segregate the families into sub-orders. And it is of 

 great interest to note that the limits of orders, like 

 those of species, genera and families, are often un- 

 certain. This sub-order Laciniata shows in its 



