46 THE entomologist's record. 



quite contrary to the phylogenetic tables in the Revision, which regard 

 all these forms as specialised by reduction. That, some of them cer- 

 tainly are, in several directions, but some things that the Revision 

 regards as reductions are more probably ancestral, such as the pupal 

 structure of these forms, their wing forms, their unspecialised last 

 antennal joints, etc. 



We have not been able to find anywhere in the volume any hint 

 as to what the authors suppose to be the relations of the Sphinges 

 amongst other families of insects, unless a reference or two to Noto- 

 donta may be so interpreted. But when we come to details of structure 

 we find that they describe the ancestral Sphingid as a very highly 

 evolved Sphin.v. It had a very long proboscis, it had the tassel-end to 

 the antennae, it had the marginal abdominal scales fully developed, and 

 so on. Similarly with regard to the pupa, the highly-evolved Sphingid 

 pupa is regarded as ancestral, this is nowhere definitely said, but we 

 gather it from various remarks here and there, such as that on p. 499, 

 " The Choerocampid pupa of Kephelicae may become reduced, assuming 

 the aspect of Sesiinas by losing the compressed projecting tongue-case. 

 Such Sesiad pupae appear frequently in genera with reduced head and 

 tongue of the imago {Deitlaniia, Darapsa, etc.)." 



Now Achcrontia has unquestionably this reduction of tongue, and 

 the pupa preserves the record of its having once been not only longer, but 

 very long, yet the Sphingid pupa from which it is descended (Asemano- 

 phorid) never has the head thrown far back. The Semanophorids 

 have the head thrown well back in the pupa, and a retreat from this 

 would leave very obvious traces on the pupa. In Deidamia and Dara- 

 psa there is no trace whatever of this. These genera also have the 

 more simple-ended antenna', such as are common in Smerinthids 

 (Ambulicines). The Revision treat? these as specialised from the 

 antenna with a tassel end. Almost certainly they are just the con- 

 trary, a survival of the \)ve- Sphinx antenna that was without the 

 tassel. There are several other characters in these two genera that we 

 regard from quite the opposite point of view from that taken by our 

 authors, and, instead of regarding them as at the top of a division, we 

 regard them as being very near the bottom of the Choerocampids 

 (SemanopJiorae) . 



We think the Sphinges evolved from something that was not a 

 Spltin.r. Doubtless our authors think the same, but some of their 

 conclusions seem very difficult to draw except on the theory that 

 Sphinges began with a well-developed typical Sphingid and thence 

 varied in all directions. 



The ancestral Sphingid began with quite a moderate proboscis. 

 Looking to the fact that the Smerinthid pupa preserves in many ways 

 the most ancestral characters, indisputably in the dorsal suture and 

 in the ventral orientation of the eyes {i.e., position of head), and that 

 throughout the subfamily the proboscis-case reaches to where the 

 wings meet in front, and that this meeting of the wings is practically 

 without exception in the subfamily, there seems very little room to 

 doubt that we have preserved in Smerinthids (Ambulicines) something 

 very like the ancestral Sphingid pupa, with a short, but not very short, 

 proboscis. It is quite arguable that, in the matter of proboscis and 

 wing-cases, the Smerinthids have acquired a new character, viz., the 

 meeting of the wing-cases in front, a character met with commonly in 



