S3 



Whoever will give himself the trouble to examine thoroughly a 

 collection of British Lepidoptera, will find a very great majority 

 of them evincing very evident symptoms of relation to one or 

 other of the following species: — Papilio Machaon, Sphinx Li- 

 gustri, Pyralis verticalis, Tinea pellionella, Noctua pronuba, and 

 Geometra roboraria ; and should any form widely different from 

 either of these occur, it may, if the larva be known, be placed 

 in the centre of a ring formed by the groups, which we will 

 suppose surrounding their six respective types ; or, if its larva 

 be unknown, it must await the discovery of that most unerring 

 stage of its existence. I am persuaded, did entomologists know 

 how much depends on the form, habit, food, and clothing of 

 larvae, they would not be so neglected as they are at present. 

 I have much to regret my own remissness in this respect, for 

 it has seldom happened that I have found the larva of any insect 

 which had not been previously well known, but it has tended 

 to point out some approaches that had never before been thought 

 of, — approaches, even when thus pointed out, totally irrecon- 

 cilable with existing ideas of arrangement and combination of 

 groups, but which now open to my view the most beautiful 

 chains of affinities ; and wonderfully but indubitably prove, that 

 a single individual may be related to three, four, or even more 

 apparently disconnected groups. 



Perhaps no better genus was ever formed than Papilio of Lin- 

 naeus; its diurnal flight, its erect wings, audits clavated antennae, 

 at first bid defiance to the systematist who attempts to bring any 

 other group into contact with it ; indeed, in Britain we have 

 nothing at all that will avail us in this respect, which compels me 

 to have recourse to exotics, an assistance which I shall only 

 avail myself of when I find it quite impracticable to furnish the 

 approaches from indigenous species, the reference to which is 

 attainable by every entomologist. Among foreign Papiliones, espe- 

 cially among those groups which approach our genera, Hesperia, 

 Lycaena, Polyommatus, and Thecla, there appears to be an almost 

 infinite variety of form. Now it is but reasonable to seize on any 

 variations observable in genera or species from the prominent or 

 typical genus or order from which they may be supposed to derive 

 their more conspicuous character, and to employ such variations in 



