the other group, even if there is sometimes a great resemblance between the 

 families of different groups in regard to the development of a single organ as 

 {. i. that of the veins in the wings. Moreover, the study of the early stages 

 of the Nymphalidae clearly shows that this family must have sprung from that 

 of the Satyridae. 



The Pieridae are an old family of Rhopalocera. Of the Miocene age a 

 Pierid has been preserved, which, generically, does not seem to differ from 

 the butterflies of this family that now exist. 



The caterpillars of the Java Pieridae give no occasion for considerations of 

 a general character, but the pupas do. 



Among the Rhopalocera an evolutional process unmistakably reveals itself, 

 the nature of which is to reduce more and more the use of their spinning-power. 

 By some seemingly old forms of Papilionidae, as f. i. in the genus Parnassius, 

 much spinning-thread is still used for pupating; by the Hesperidae also pretty 

 much, but in the genus Papilio, and further also in several families, to which 

 belongs also that of the Pieridae, the spinning-instinct has been reduced to that 

 which forms the fastening of the tail-part of the pupa as well as the silken girth. 

 Therefore these pupas have been called succindae, and in those of several other 

 families, among which f. i. the Danaidae and the Nymphalidae, this silken girth 

 has also disappeared, for which reason those pupas have been called suspensae. 

 Now in some pupas of Java Pieridae, viz. suspensae, we may distinctly observe 

 a tendencv to turn into succinctae and this seems important enough, £is a 

 confirmation of that evolutional character for me to draw attention to it. Indeed, 

 until now, I have never found this mentioned. 



The pupae of the genus Pier is, like those of the Papilio's are fastened as 

 a rule perpendicularly against some vertical object. This is also the case in 

 the genus Thyca, though these, being fastened on the upper-side of leaves which 

 do not always hang, but often lie more or less flat, also lie on them horizontally, 

 when this is the case. But it is not right to say, as Bingham does, that this 

 perpendicular position is taken by all the Pierid pupae. In several Papilionidae 

 pupae the head is distinctly seen to diverge from the vertical direction, and 

 this is also sometimes particularly the case in the pupa of Euchloe (Antocharis) 

 Cardamines L., as is shown by a figure in the well-known work by Rosel 

 VON RosENHOFF. Among the Java Pieridae, the pupae are often fastened to 

 the under-side of stems and branches that grow in a very slanting direction, 

 and they are often of a strongly bent shape, with the result that the head hangs 

 downwards, prevented by the silken girth only from resembling the stispensae. 

 The pupa could, indeed, do without this silken girth and this has probably led 

 to the arising of the suspensae, to which the said pupae form a transition. 



