12 



but the feathers of the hind wings are folded over each other and 

 drawn under the fore wings. 



EARLY STAGES. 



I am not aware that anything is known of the egg-stage of any 

 of our North American plume-moths, and if any thing has been 

 published on this stage, I have overlooked it. In the European 

 species, so far as I have seen any descriptions, they are more or 

 less oval in outline, smooth and of a pale-green color. 



The larvae are short and stout, pale green, with longitudinal 

 stripes of other colors in some species, and one or more coarse or 

 fine hairs arise from tubercles on the segments. The pupae are 

 formed above ground, and attached by the anal extremity. Some 

 species are hairy, while others are naked ; and they sometimes 

 have a pair of prominent tubercles arising from the back. 



It is not known positively whether any of our North American 

 species have more than one generation in a season ; but so little 

 is known about them that we cannot speak with any certainty on 

 this point. Acantlwdactyla and monodactyla are said to have two 

 generations in a year in Europe, and very likely this is true here, 

 at least in some parts of the country. 



SYSTEMATIC POSITION. 



Linnaeus placed these insects at the end of the Lepidoptera, 

 after the Tineina, and he was followed by later writers till a little 

 more than twenty-five years ago, when it began to dawn upon 

 those who were working upon these insects that they were out of 

 place. At first the matter was talked over, but it was some time 

 before any one seemed to be willing to express such an apparent 

 heterodox opinion in print. Dr. Jordan, however, in 1869 (Ent. 

 Mon. Mag., Vol. VI., p. 152), expressed the opinion that these 

 insects form " an aberrant group of the Pyralidae." A few years 

 ago, entomologists, both in this country and England, in making 

 critical studies on the early stages as well as on -the imago of the 

 Lepidoptera, quite revolutionized the order, not only with regard 

 to the position of the families, but also with regard to the names. 

 I am heartily in sympathy with this movement, and, if I do not 

 always adopt the changes at once, it is because I have not had time 

 to study them carefully and convince myself that they are right. 



The genus Chrysocorys has been placed among the Pterophoridae 

 by several of the English entomologists, and Zeller established the 

 genus Scoptonoma for two Texan species, placing it in this family ; 



