80 t^P"'' 



hibernate in the perfect state, the biggest of them, Scotoaia diibitata, 

 to my own knowledge in large numbers. The wings of winter 

 Geometers Dr. Wood tells us " would be an encumbrance and impedi- 

 ment because, there being no leaves on the trees, they would not ])e able 

 to find sheher, small chinks and crannies not being available for them 

 with their ample wings," &c. As the males certainly seem to find no 

 inconvenience from this cause, why should the females? But there 

 are leaves in winter, any quantity of them, right on rmtil spring, not 

 on the trees, but dead and dry on the ground, many of them large stiff 

 fronds of ferns, &c., and they afford shelter for the winter moths just 

 as satisfactorily as do the living leaves on the trees in summer, and the 

 wings do not get any more frayed or tattered. As an instance, during 

 the past autumn Hybernia defoliaria and ff. auraritiaria were very 

 abundant in this district, and one afternoon over fifty females of these 

 two species were counted on the trunk of a single tree. The males were 

 not on the trunks, but imder the dead leaves and fern f'-onds on the 

 ground, where numbers were detected by the tip of the wing extending 

 beyond the margin of the leaf. Probably the males seen in this way, 

 numerous as they were, formed only a tithe of those which were entirely 

 covei'ed by the leaves. And for hibernating species, when bats can find 

 holes and crevices in trees in woods big enough for them to winter in, 

 Geometers would have no difficulty in doing so. Moreover, when did 

 the supposed laziness of these females, which Dr. "Wood tells us has 

 resulted in the loss of their wings, commence ? If they always had it, 

 why should we suppose that they ever had any wings at all. Dr. Wood's 

 " most striking instance " of the stay-at-home habit of certain species 

 is surely an unfortunate one for his theory, for if Coleo;phora inuli^ has 

 always been so sluggish why has it not lost its wings, not only in the 

 female but in the male also ? The fact is we have no strong evidence 

 that these wingless females ever possessed wings at all. We believe they 

 probably did, l>ut the belief is entirely because it agrees with our 

 theories, formed, and no doubt largely justified, in that our studies of 

 analagous conditions in other branches of science strongly confirm 

 it. But, so far as we know, the (|uite apterous females of Geometers 

 have not possessed even the rudiments of wings, and in the semi-apterous 

 species the abbreviated wings have not decreased in size one atom since 

 the earliest time in which entomologists took any interest in Lejndoptera. 



Dr. Wood further tells us that as trees live to a great age, one of 

 them would afford a permanent home for these apterous moths, and 

 would not be prejudicial to its welfare. Few will probably assent to 



