Groups of the Lepidoptera. 325 
(as in the Vienna Catalogue and Hiibner’s “ Verzeich- 
niss”’”). The first of his sections of Phalenide is also 
Semi-Noctuales. His order is Bombycide, Noctuide, 
Phalenide, Pyralide. 
M. Guenée, in 1837, contributed to the Annals of the 
Entom. Soc. of France, the first of a series of papers on 
the classification of the Noctuélides; and as everyone 
would expect, he makes the group, if I may use the 
expression, “ face towards” the Bombyces at the begin- 
ning, and towards the Geometre at the end. He places 
first the tribe Bombycoidi to illustrate the affinity to 
Bombyz, and last the tribe Noctuo-Phalenidi to illustrate 
the affinity to Geometra (or Phalena), both names being 
the names of Dr. Boisduval—an arrangement which in 
1841, indeed, when he contributed a revision of his 
classifications, M. Guenée confirmed and re-published. 
Thus up to the year 1840, at all events, we have found 
no trace of a disposition to alter the place of the Bombyces, 
Noctuce, or Geometre. On the contrary, all the writers 
have preserved the three groups in their original order, 
and we have found German, English, and French authors 
fortifymg this arrangement, and supplying in their 
nomenclature additional illustrations of its propriety. 
Two authors also, as if to secure by anticipation the 
recognition of certain species as Bombyces, have named 
those Bombyces “vere” and “ legitime,” which it is now 
sought to call ‘‘ Pseudo-” Bombyces. 
We shall still find (starting from the year 1840) that 
no matter where the divisions were made, the order 
. observed was, for some time, substantially the same. 
One of the best known methodical lists is Boisduval’s 
“‘ Genera et Index Methodicus Europzeorum Lepidopte- 
rorum.” The second edition of this work was published 
in 1840. His arrangement is very simple, and his division 
of the Lepidoptera into Rhopalocera and Heterocera is 
known everywhere. Boisduval separates the three first 
groups of the Heterocera into tribes, and it is in his 
arrangement that we first miss the use of the appellations 
Sphine and Bombyx as the names of groups, a feature 
which distinguishes also the new arrangement. To the 
families constituting these groups he gives, it seems, no 
collective name, merely heading the division “ Larve 
