The Moths and Butterflies 



373 



in color, being grayish, yellowish brown, and reddish brown, with a few 



silvery-whitish irregular streaks on the upper 

 wing surface. They fly swiftly and are said to 

 prefer twilight. The males of some species give 

 olT a strong scent to attract the females. Others 

 seem to show off their silvery spots by hovering 

 for some time in the air at twilight, being con- 

 spicuous, despite the semi-darkness and the 



^'^- ^^^:7•'^^'i clothes-moth, -gj general coloration of the moth, by a pale 

 Tinea peliionella; larva, larva to > j r 



in case, and adult. (After silvery appearance. Females have been seen 

 Howard and Marlatt; twice to fly directly to the ghostly hovering males 

 natural size.) . ' , ' , rr^, , ,., , 



as if strongly attracted. The grub-like larvae 



feed in the roots of various plants, as ferns and others, or in the trunk-wood 

 of various shrubs and trees, and live for two or three years. Slhenopis 

 argenteo-maculatus feeds first in the roots of alder, later going into the 

 stems. It cither pupates in its burrow or in a loose cocoon in the soil. 

 The pupa; are provided with certain short spiny teeth, and can wriggle so 

 strongly that they are able to move about in the burrows or soil, and when 

 ready to transform work their way to the surface of the ground. 



The Jugata; are looked on by Comstock as equivalent in ranking to all 

 the other moths and all the butterflies combined which are given the sub- 

 ordinal name Frenata.'. That is, this scant dozen of persisting represen- 

 tatives of the ancient moth type, or rather 

 of immediate offshoots from the ancestral 

 type, are to be distinguished subordinally 

 from all other living Lepidoptera, however 

 more striking may appear the differences 

 between some of these, as the obscure 

 clothes-moths and the regal Cecropias, or the 

 dull moth-millers and the brilliant day-fly- 

 ing butterflies. The Frenate Lepidoptera 

 include all those forms which have the vena- 

 tion of the hind wings reduced (branches 

 less in number than in the fore wings) 

 and whose wings are tied together by a 

 frenulum (Fig. 533) or by the expanded 

 humeral angle of the hind wing overlapping 

 the base of the fore w'ng, or by no more 

 elaborate means than the simple overlap[)ing 

 of front margin of hind wing and hind 

 margin of fore wing, but never by a jugum, 

 the caddis-fly-like method common to the Micropterygids and Hepialids, 



Fig. 528. — Larva of the palmer- 

 worm, ypiolophiis ponuilellus, 

 lying under its web spun on a 

 leaf (.^fter Lowe; natural length 

 J inch.) 



