432 



II. 



DOES THE FORM-RELATIONSHIP OF THK LARVA 

 COINCIDE WITH THAT OF THE IMAGO ? 



HAVING thus established the independence in 

 the variability of the individual stages of meta- 

 morphosis, I will now turn to the consideration 

 of the question as to how far a parallelism is 

 displayed in the phyletic development of these 

 stages. Is there a complete congruence of form- 

 relationship between larvae on the one hand and 

 imagines on the other ? does the classification 

 founded on the morphology of the imagines agree 

 with that based on the morphology of the larvae 

 or not ? 



If, according to Claus, 1 we divide the order 

 Lepidoptera into six great groups of families, it is 

 at once seen that these groups, which were 

 originally founded exclusively on imaginal charac- 

 ters, cannot by any means be so clearly and 

 sharply defined by the larval characters. 



This is certainly the case with the Geometrce, 

 of which the larvae possess only ten legs, and on 



1 " Grundziige der Zoologie," 1875. * 



