6 B.C. ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Speaking of entomological literature reminds me that I would like 

 to say a few words regarding two Monographs recently published in the 

 State of Illinois. The first was issued in July, 1915, by the University 

 of Illinois, and is the work of Stanley B. Fracker. It is entitled "The 

 Classification of Lepidopterous Larvae," and carries to a successful 

 conclusion the preliminary work done by Dr. Dyar and others. It is 

 a very clever piece of work and wonderfully well thought out. The 

 chief structures of value in the classification of the larvae, are the posi- 

 tion of the setae, the shape of the spiracles, the number of prolegs and 

 the arrangements of the crochets they bear. 



The other Monograph was published by the Illinois State Laboratory 

 in March, 1916, and is entitled "The Classification of the Lepidoptera 

 based on Pupal Characters," by Dr. Edna Mosher, and is a really 

 important addition to entomological literature, as previous to this 

 publication very little had been done in this particular line of research. 

 Some of the chief characters used for determining the phylogeny of the 

 order are the number of movable segments, the freedom of the append- 

 ages, the number of sutures present in the head, and the relative length 

 of the body segments. It has been found in some orders that the 

 only good taxonomic characters available are found in the pupal stage 

 of the insect. These two publications, taken together, afford much food 

 for thought both to systematic and economic entomologists. 



It is of special interest to the economic entomologist, as he early 

 realizes the value of being able to recognize the immature stages, for in 

 many orders of insects the larval stages alone are responsible for a 

 great deal of the damage done to crops and orchards. 



At present, in many cases, he has to content himself with rearing 

 the adult forms to determine the species, and thereby possibly losing a 

 lot of valuable time. To those of us that are systematists, it is very 

 evident that the classification of Lepidoptera based upon characters that 

 are only present in the adult forms, must necessarily be arbitrary and 

 artificial, and that to get a natural classification we shall have to study 

 in conjunction characters that appear in the larval and pupal stages as 

 well as those in the adult insects, and also the inter-relationships of one 

 to the other. 



The new check list of North American Lepidoptera issued by Drs. 

 Barnes and McDunnough, which we have all been waiting for, was 

 published last week. There are a large number of additions and a great 

 many changes in nomenclature. The arrangement of genera is also 

 entirely different to what we have been accustomed. I must say that, 

 on a cursory glance through its pages, the numerous shiftings of species 

 into different genera is a great improvement on previous lists, and that 

 the arrangement in general seems to me to be a great step towards a 

 more natural arrangement of the species. 



