18981 CLASSIFICATION OF THE DAY BUTTERFLIES 17 



active larva for the protection of the quiescent chrysalis. When we 

 admit that the habit of spinning a ' shroud ' within the cocoon by 

 Hcsioeria may represent a stage preparatory to an abandonment of 

 the making of a cocoon altogether, we make Mr Scudder a very amph; 

 admission. Yet upon this basis Mr Scudder proceeds, ignoring 

 striking and important difl'erences in structure, to place the Hes- 

 periadae next to the Papilionidae, implying that the papilionid 

 chrysalis is the immediate phylogenetic successor of the hesperid, 

 and, consequently, that HcHpcria represents the next ancestral form 

 of Papilio. Granting that the hesperid cocoon represents an ances- 

 tral, generalised stage, one which may have led to the waist-tied 

 chrysalis, there is no reason why the papilionid waist-tied chrysalis 

 should be the successor, seeing that there are other Succincti to be 

 considered. But, for Mr Scudder and his system, this is not an ob- 

 jection, because both demand that all waist-tied chrysalids should 

 be thrown together in one category. Now, the hesperid cocoon may 

 as well have preceded the lycaenid waist-tied chrysalis, and here 

 there are other and good reasons for believing that this may have 

 been tlie actual sequence. For the character which induced Bois- 

 duval to class the Papilionidae and Lycaenidae together as Succincti, 

 is, when we compare it with other characters, seen to be secondary 

 only, one of convergence in habit, one not in itself by any means 

 synchronous, one, finally, evidently reached upon entirely differing 

 phylogenetic lines. The structural gap between Papilio and Lycacna, 

 is one of the widest among the day butterflies. The utmost we can 

 grant to Mr Scudder is, then, this : that the mode of attachment in 

 Hesperia may represent a stage by which the cocoon-making larva 

 prepared itself to abandon the habit. To make more of the obser- 

 vation than this, is to trifle, to exaggerate. And, in itself, the 

 view that the waist-tied chrysalis is a further and necessary stage 

 between the cocoon and the suspended chrysalis seems erroneous, 

 inasmuch as the former relapses sometimes into the cocoon, as in 

 Parnassms. Elsewhere, in the Lepidoptera, the cocoon is apparently 

 abandoned without giving birth either to the waist-tied or the sus- 

 pended form. There exists, then, no such necessary series of 

 changes as Mr Scudder's system should be able to fall back upon to 

 give it stability. 



Now, in Zcrynthia or Thais, the girdle of the waist-tied chrysalis 

 has slipped up to the head of the chrysalis, to the ' nosehorn,' as 

 stated by Dr Chapman ; so that if it went up any further, the pupa 

 must fall over and, being then only fastened by the tail, would hang 

 down and turn, so to speak, from a Succinctid into a Suspensid. 

 But the girdle, in this case, although slipped over the head, would still 

 be there, while useless as a support, and the general question would 

 still remain of how the girdle had been gotten rid of to enable the 



