
LEPIDOPTERA IN RELATION TO FLOWERS. 357 
Bee, but a not inconsiderable portion falls to the share of insects 
belonging to the order Lepidoptera. Certain genera of plants, 
like Lychnis and Lonicera, have advanced even beyond the Bee; 
and the long proboscis of the Butterflies and Moths comes into 
play. Had Sir John Lubbock been a lepidopterist, he would 
never have set down the species of Lepidoptera visiting the Rag- 
wort as three in number, nor would he have passed over the Ivy 
with a reference to Flies and Wasps. It is a matter for regret 
that lepidopterists, as a rule, have paid little or no attention to 
this subject. They have been too busy with the great problems of 
variation and distribution to think of others. In giving lists of 
species captured, they will note the geological and geographical 
features of a district, as well as its characteristic plants, but they 
seldom tell us what flowers they found to be frequented by 
insects, far less do they give us a list of the species frequenting 
each flower. When I say this, I of course exclude the working of 
the Sallow and Ivy blossoms, which every lepidopterist tries at 
one time or another during the course of his life. Beyond these 
two, if the plants are mentioned at all, the reference is usually 
indefinite. In going over some volumes of the Entomologist 
recently, I found a very interesting list of species which had 
been taken at the flowers of ‘a kind of vetch,” and a still more 
remarkable list of Moths captured at the flowers of “various 
grasses.” I fancy it would have interested most naturalists to 
know what grasses, so universally set down as wind-fertilised, 
have the power of attracting insects, and what species of Moths 
were attracted to each particular grass. 
Nearly all the great insect orders have their representatives 
among the winged battalions of the evening and night. It is 
then that the great Water Beetles, and the still more noisy Dung 
Beetles, go booming through the air. Over the ponds the Caddis- 
flies keep up, hour after hour, their endless serpentine dance, 
and the whole atmosphere is thick with Gnats, Midges, and other 
two-winged flies. The night-flying species which are attracted to 
flowers belong almost entirely to the Lepidoptera, but there may 
be exceptions. Sirex gigas, Linn., has been known to occur at 
“sugar,” and most insects which go to “sugar” will also go to 
flowers. The reverse hardly holds good. It is, then, with the 
Moths that I have to deal in this paper. 
