MEMOIES OP THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 



71 



and limbless. It is very plain that tliey are au offshoot from the Tiueoids, and especially from 

 the Tala'poridu', which luive no tongue and whose females are wingless and sack-bearers. 



Remarks on tliv Family llepiaJida'. — This group is assigned bj^ Comstock, from the venation 

 alone, to a position at the bottom of the lepidoiiterons scale, even below the Micropterygidae. 

 By Chapman it is more correctly placed above the latter group. He even i)laces it above 

 the Nepticulida-, Adelida", and Tisclieria. The family evidently branched off from tineid like 

 forms. 



Since receiving and studying Cliapman's paper it has become very plain to me that Ilepialus 

 and its allies are simply colossal Tineoids, and that 

 Speyer was right in 1870 in suggesting that the 

 Hepialidaj stand very near to the tineids.' 



These views, arrived at iudejiendently by these 

 authors, are confirmed by the trunlc characters and 

 also by the larval characters, as pointed out by Dyar,-' 

 and which I have been able to confirm by an examina- 

 tion of the freshly hatched larva o{ Ilepialus musfe- 

 linus and fully grown larva^ of the Australian Oncopeni 

 iniricata Walk., as M'ell as those of Ilepialus liumuli 

 and H. hcvtus of Europe. 



In 18G3 ' I pointed out tlie similarity in the head 

 and thorax of Hepialus {Stlienopis) argenteo-maculatiis to 

 those of the neuroi)terous Polystoechotes, and referred 

 to the elongated thorax of Hepialus, especially "the 

 iiunatural length of the metathorax, accompanying 

 which is the enlarged i)air of wings, a character 

 essentially ueuropterons." Eeference was also made 

 to the metascutum, whicli is divided into two halves, 

 being' separated widely bj^ the very large triangular 

 scutellum. I also drew attention to the transverse 

 venule or spur of the costal vein and to the great 

 irregularity in the arrangement of the branches of 

 the cubital nervnre, also to the elongated abdomen, 

 and finally I remarked, -'the Hepiali are the lowest 

 subfamily of the Bombyces." But in those days I did 

 not fully i>erceive the taxonomic value of these gen- 

 eralized characters, which have so well been proved 

 by Chapman from imaginal and ]iupal characters to 

 be such as to place the Hepialida' at or near the base 

 of the Tiueoid series. Chapman, unaware of the 

 existence of mine and of Speyer's paper, says: 



The metathoracic structure of Ilepialus came as a very 

 unexpected confirmation of the idea that of the Tortricoid group 

 it was the nearest to the lower Adclids. and despite its special- 

 ization was near the line by which Tortrix was derived from 

 some Adelid form (p. 11.3). 



Fig. 30.— Pupil of i£etrua elonjatc; mx', labial palpi. 



' In his suggestive paper (Ent. Zeit. Stettin. 1870), Speyer refers to the similarity of the venation of HepialidiB 

 and Cossidse, and remarks that they resemble the Trichoptera no less than the Jlicroptorygid.T, though the Hepialida 

 exhibit other close analogies to the Trichoptera. He adds that the middle cell of the wing in the Phryganeid.e is 

 not fundamentally diftVrent from that of the Hepialida>, Cossida-, and Microptcryx, also the hind wings of Psychidie. 

 On i)age221he.associ.atps the Zygaeniibe with the Cossidfc, C'ochliopodid:e, Heterogynida', Psychid;e, and Hepialidie, 

 and remarks that all these families .are isolated among the Macros; the Cochliopodida^ and Zygaenid* alike in the 

 pupa state by the delicate integument and the partially loose sheath, these groups standing nearest to the TiueidjB 

 with complete maxillary palpi, forming the oldest branch of the Icpidopterous stem, and having been developed 

 earlier than the Macros. 



"A classification of lepidopterous l.arva'. Ann.als N. Y. Acad. Sci., viii, 1894, p. 196. 



' On "Synthetic types in insects," Boston Jour, of Nat. Hist., 1863, pp. 590-603. 



