582 Dr. Thomas Algernon Chapman on the 



The Notodonta eg^ is dense, dull-surfaced, opaque, and 

 is a hemisphere laid on its flat side. N. hncephala has a 

 spherical acr^ very like Liparids. Cerura erniinea shows 

 the capability of the Notodontid egg to become very 

 depressed. 



The Notodontids are a lower family than the other 

 three typical ones, and it is interesting to find that as the 

 JS'octiife are parallel in egg specialisation to the Plero- 

 nijmpdialids, so the Notodontids are parallel with the 

 llesperids, the forms being very similar. 



Notodontids have been placed in more varied positions 

 in classification (always, however, within the Macros) 

 than almost any other family, and have especially been 

 supposed to be on the way up to Sphinges, etc. 



It seems to me impossible to intercalate a group like 

 Notodonta between any two families with flat eggs, or even 

 to make it a terminal branch (as in one sense all families are) 

 from a flat-egged stirps. The chin-glands of the larva are 

 a very strong item also. Mr. Dyar's researches on ihe 

 larvas do not seem to me to indicate with any certainty 

 in which of the three great divisions of the Macro- 

 heterocera it should be placed. He places it, however, 

 with the Noctua3. Mr. Meyrick places it with Geometrae, 

 between the£'itpfero/i'(Za3 and the Sphinges (both Bombyces), 

 apparently entirely on the evidence of the neuration. 



Now it is unquestionable that the neuration of the 

 Noctita?, Arcfiidii, and Liparids is of a different character 

 from the mass of the Notodontids, especially as I'egards 

 vein 5j but this does not appear to disagree with the 

 position to which I assign them, viz., in the Noctuid 

 stem, some way below its final division into the three 

 (with other exotic) highest families. In this lower position 

 the venation is less specialised but more variable than in 

 them ; now the typical Notodontid venation is less 

 specialised than in Noctua, but it varies more, in some 

 instances into quite a Noctuid form, in others vein 5 is 

 practically absent, and in some few forms there is even so 

 definite a trace of a lowlier origin as indications of veins 

 within the cell. 



When we come to the pupn, we meet with the same 

 difficulty that affects all the Macro-heterocera, viz., that 

 the difleiences lietvveen different families are often less 

 than between different genera or even species within the 

 same genus. 



