42 



British insects, immediately between Sesia and Cossus.* This is 

 the first of a series of the most beautiful instances of approach, or 

 rather, of what ought to be termed relations of analogy, that any 

 system has ever previously disclosed. As a few words will again 

 be necessary on this subject, I refrain from any further obser- 

 vation here, than merely requesting the reader to examine how 

 minutely the Sphinx characters are appropriated by a true ligni- 

 vorous Phalsena, which cannot be said, in any of its prior and 

 principal states, to have the most distant approach to Sphinx. 

 A third genus is, probably, the strange and paradoxical exotic 

 Oiketicos, which has been minutely described in the Linncean 

 Transactions ; and a fourth is Hepialus.f This genus has some 

 slight points in which it differs from the others of the order 

 already known, the larva being radicivorous only, seldom or never 

 ascending internally the stems of plants : it changes in the earth. 

 Natural Order — Notodontce. The larva is naked, has sixteen 

 feet, and is, in different genera, furnished with excrescences, and 

 apparent distortions in various parts of the body. The eighth or 

 last pair of feet, and three last segments of the abdomen, are 

 elevated ; when the insect is at rest, the head and first segment 

 are raised in a similar manner. In one genus (containing Came- 

 lina) the head and extremity of the abdomen nearly meet over 

 the back, when raised in this singular manner. The posterior 

 feet are frequently useless in walking ; in some genera, entirely 

 obsolete. The pupa is smooth, in a cocoon, mostly among dead 

 leaves on the surface of the ground : sometimes it is glutinous, 

 and interspersed with fragments of wood, like the last. I confess 

 I am exceedingly puzzled both with the contents and extent of 

 this order ; but this arises from my having seen so few of the 

 species in the larva state. Ptilophora plumigera, figured by 

 Mr. Curtis,;}; I had always considered a Notodonta ; but the larva 

 evidently excludes it from the order, and, I should imagine, 

 places it among the Noctuse ; where among them I know not, for 

 I have not the slightest idea of any congeners, either of the larva 



* It is a most singular chance that these genera should have been placed so 

 naturally, as the cause of this proximity has never before been even hinted at. 

 f Another type of Hepialus is figured in Drury, Vol. II. pi. xiii. 2. 

 + British Entomology, pi, 328. 



