74 THE BUTTERFLIES OF NEW ENGLAND. 



which gives them a peculiar lappet-like appearance. They are quite use- 

 less, and in the Satyrinae are reduced to the extremest degree. 



When we remember that the small size of the prothorax is one of the 

 most striking and massive features by which the Lepidoptera are distin- 

 guished from the lower heterometabolic orders, — the Neuroptera, Orthop- 

 tera, Hemiptera and Coleoptera, — any atrophy of its parts in the higher 

 members of the order is especially significant. It is an excess, so to 

 speak, of this aristocratic distinction, and such rank as could be expected 

 between the members of a single order might surely be indicated by it. 

 Nevertheless, however important or unimportant this may appear, there is 

 the series, which can in no way be disputed, leading from the Hesperidae 

 in a direct and unbroken course through the Papilioninae, Pierinae, Ly- 

 caeninae, Lemoniinae to the Nymphalidae, and culminating in the Satyr- 

 inae, a series which takes an identical course with that of the phenomena of 

 pupation, through Hesperidae, Papilionidae, Lycaenidae and Nymphalidae. 



Now Avhat have the supporters of the high rank of the Papilionidae to 

 offer as against such series ? No series whatever ; no gradation of charac- 

 ters whatever. No one of them claims it. The only characters for which 

 they maintain the supremacy of the Papilionidae are drawn exclusively 

 from one-half the family, the Papihoninae.* These are 1st, the "appar- 

 ently four-branched median nervule" of the fore wing, 2d, the spur on 

 the anterior tibiae, and 3d, the osmateria of the larva. As to the 1st, it 

 is a character of definition at the most, of a character easily paralleled 

 among other groups of butterflies, having no claim to superiority on any 

 conceivable ground, and a mark indeed, of inferiority, since it is shared by 

 the Hesperidae and by them only, as is also the two-branched subcostal ner- 

 vure of the hind wing, as Spangberg points out. As to the 2d, it is again a 

 mark of low rank, as it too is shared by many of the Hesperidae, and among 

 butterflies only by them, but is well developed in many moths and especially 

 in the Bombycidae and Phalaenidae. And as to the 3d, so seductively put 

 forward by Wallace, it has more than its match in the abdominal caruncles 

 of the Lycaenidae (not to mention those of many moths) which are double 

 in character, and the more prominent ones more complicated in structure and 

 paired. The osmateria are even said by Boisduval to be exactly repeated 

 in the larva of Urania. The features, therefore, by which the naturalist 

 would claim high rank for the Papilionidae are utterly insuflficient. They 

 may indicate their low rank, or at the most form special distinctive features 

 with no token of high character about them. When any characters can be 

 shown in the Papilionidae with any mark of superiority about them, or, 

 characters common to all buttei-flies which lead from the Hesperidae in a 

 regular progression through the other groups to find their culmination in 



* It is of no consequence that many hold always has to be associated with the Papilion- 

 the Pierinae as a group of family rank ; it iuae as its very next neighbor. 



