307 



arbitrary the groups may come to be looked upon, or however nuuierous the iuter. 

 mediate gradations. 



Families should, I think, be made as comprehensive as possible, and not unduly 

 multiplied; and in considering aberrant forms, the objects of classilicatiou are best 

 subserved by retaining them in whatever division can chxim the balance of characters. 

 It is better to widen than to restrict in the higher groups. Le Conte does better 

 service in bringing Platypsylla among the Coleoptera than does Westwood in creat- 

 ing a new order — Achreioptera — for it. Phylloxera, in Homoptera, is much more 

 wisely retained in the Aphididte than made the type of a new family. 



Platypsyllus, therefore, is a good Coleopteron, and in all the characters 

 in which it so strongly approaches the Mallophaga it offers merely an 

 illustration of modification due to food habit and environment. In this 

 particular it is, however, of very great interest as one of the most strik- 

 ing illustrations we have of variation in similar lines through the in- 

 fluence of purely external or dynamical conditions, and where genetic 

 connection smd heredity play no part whatever. It is at the same time 

 interesting because of its synthetic characteristics, being evidently an 

 ancient type from which we get a very good idea of the connection in the 

 past of some of the present well-defined orders of insects. 



Westwood, though now an octogenarian, may safely be called Eng- 

 land's most eminent entomologist by virtue of the character and volume 

 of the work which he has accomplished. Dr. Le Conte was facile 

 princeps, America's leading coleopterist. I do not know that any greater 

 tribute could be added to the sound Judgment and deep knowledge 

 possessed by that late distinguished member of the Academy than the 

 confirmation of his views as opposed to the views of Westwood and 

 other European authorities which the discovery of this larva now gives 

 us. 



STRIDULATION IN VANESSA ANTIOPA. 



By A. H. SwiNTON, Bedford, England. 



Although the sound made by this butterfly without doubt is the ex- 

 pression of certain emotions, be it of anger or of love, since it is not made 

 by the emission of the breath, we can not, I think, consider it more than 

 elementary voice, and in the present instance a singularly erratic de- 

 velopment of its elements. It may be that 



" In Loraine tber notis be 



Full swetir than in this centre," 



for English entomologists are, I believe, generally of opinion that the 

 sound which butterflies make is caused by their rubbing their wings 

 together in their ardor. In the Entomologisfs Monthly Magazine for 

 February, 1877, page 208, I find the following notice : 



In 1872 a female antiopa came into my possession in a hibernating condition, and 

 in that state she would, when disturbed, partially expand her wings, and at the same 

 time was produced a grating sound, which seemed to come from the base of the 

 wings. — A. H. Jones, Shrublands, Eltham, 



