
LEPIDOPTERA IN RELATION TO FLOWERS. 359 
With the Crambi, Tortrices, and Tinee I shall not attempt to 
deal. I have found species of each division on flower-heads, but 
the probability is that the great majority pass their lives in the 
winged state without honey. 
It is an axiom in biology that when an organ remains long 
unused it becomes atrophied, and this is strikingly exemplified 
in the table I have given. In the most of the Bombyces 
the tongue is very much degraded. In Arctia and its allies 
it is still in evidence, but it is almost quite obsolete in the 
true Bombyces, as in the typical species, Bombyx quercus, 
Linn., and B. rubi, Linn. The position of the group formerly 
known as the Cuspidates, tells the same story; in the genus 
Cilix, for instance, the tongue has quite disappeared. Many 
of the Geometers are rapidly going the same road, and this is 
specially evident in those species which have wingless females. In 
Nyssia zonaria, Schiff, and most of the species of the genus 
Hybernia, the tongue is either obsolete or rapidly becoming so. 
Most of the species of the latter genus make their appearance in 
the winter time, when no flowers are to be found, so that absten- 
tion must have been forced upon them. Hybernia progemmaria, 
Hiib., which appears in the spring, has been recorded as occurring 
at Sallow blossom. 
On the whole, it may be said that those families of the 
Lepidoptera which are slow of flight, show the least predilection 
for flowers, whilst the swifter species, which are continually on the 
wing, are the most frequent visitors to the honey providers, The 
males of many of the Bombyces are exceedingly swift, but as a 
rule they remain on the wing only for a short time. The one 
object in the life of these insects is the reproduction of the species. 
The Geometers are for the most part slow, and as they are, on the 
- whole, denizens of woods, never wandering far from their place of 
birth, abstemiousness may have been with them more a matter of 
necessity than choice. 
Even in the families which I have placed on the other side we 
find great differences. Among the Rhopalocera, or Butterflies, all 
the species are not alike constant in their attention to flowers. 
The Pieride and Vanesside spend practically the whole of their 
time courting and nectar-imbibing. Nay, the daytime does not 
seem sufficient for these indulging insects. Pieris napi, Linn., has 
