256 INSECTS. 



Chap. IV. ; peculiarities in the larvse and pupse of some 

 of the group will be entered into when these groups 

 have been noticed. 



The wings in Lepidoptera are four. They are large, 

 and entirely, or in some cases only partially, covered 

 by minutes scales arranged like the tiles of a house.* 

 In some species the wings are furnished with a sort of 

 spring, consisting of a strong curved bristle on the 

 base of the hind-wing, which plays, during flight, in a 

 socket or semi-loop, formed either of a ridge in the 

 membrane, or of a tuft of hairs on the fore-wing. A 

 curious epaulette-like appendage, called tegula, thickly 

 clothed with hairs, of triangular form and sometimes 

 of a large size, occurs at the insertion of the fore- 

 wing. 



The organs of sight consist of a pair of compound 

 eyes, and frequently of additional simple eyes or ocelli. 



The legs are hairy and spurred, and furnished with 

 two claws of various forms. In some Butterflies the 

 fore-legs are wanting. 



Familiar as these insects are, and popular as they are 

 among young collectors and students, they are rendered 

 peculiarly difficult to treat in a very small space by the 

 immense number of their families, genera, and species ; 

 and the absence of those marked differences of economy 

 in the several families which, corresponding with marked 

 differences of form, give so great an interest to other 

 large orders of insects, as, for instance, to the order 

 Hymenoptera, 



* These scales, which, with other skin-appendages, as the scales of fishee, 

 feathers of birds, &c., are somewhat of the nature of hairs, are, like them, 

 rooted in the skin, and in some species are fixed there with great firmness 

 by a club-like enlargement of their stalk at its insertion. 



