PSYCHE 



VOL. XXVII APRIL-JUNE, 1920 Nos. 2-3 



A COMPARISON OF THE EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF 



THE LOWER LEPIDOPTERA AND TRICHOPTERA 



FROM THE STANDPOINT OF PHYLOGENY. 



By G. C. Crampton, Ph.D., 

 Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, Mass. 



Dr. August Busck and Dr. Bethune-Baker have very generously 

 furnished the material upon which the following observations on 

 the Lepidoptera were based, and Mr. Nathan Banks has kindly 

 identified the adult Trichopteron described in the following dis- 

 cussion. To these gentlemen I would express my very sincere 

 gratitude and appreciation for their generous assistance which 

 has made this study possible. 



One hundred years ago, that keen observer Leach, 1817 (Zool. 

 Misc., Vol. 3) linked together the orders Trichoptera and Lepi- 

 doptera in a group to which Haeckel, 1896, applied the term 

 "Sorbentia"; and most entomologists since Leach's time have 

 agreed in regarding the orders Lepidoptera and Trichoptera as 

 extremely closely related. Speyer, 1839 (Oken's Isis, 1839, p. 94) 

 was, so far as I am aware, the first to suggest that the lepidopterous 

 "family Micropterygidse " forms a transitional group leading to 

 the Trichoptera, and later in 1870 (Stett. Ent. Zeit., 1870, p. 202), 

 he carried the comparison between the two groups still further. 

 Subsequent investigations have served to confirm Speyer's views, 

 and since the micropterygoids occupy such an important position 

 from the standpoint of the phylogeny of the Lepidoptera, their 

 affinities have been much discussed. 



Chapman, 1894 (Trans. Ent. Soc. London, p. 335) divides the 

 micropterygoids into two families, the Micropterygidaj and Erio- 

 cephalidse. Meyrick, 1912 (Genera Insectorum, Fasc. 132) treats 

 them as a single family, the Micropterygidai, and divides them into 

 three subfamilies, the Mnesarchseinse, Eriocranianse and Microp- 

 teryginae. In the following discussion, these insects (which belong 



