THe ZooLtocist—JuLy, 1872. $121 
isittotake up. Mr. Dunning, after citing the conflicting opinions, 
—I will not again call them “ crude guesses,” as the epithet seems 
to be unpleasing,—summarises the whole of them, and gives his 
own view thus :— 
“Thus we have a Tineine, a Pyralidine or Crambine, and a Bombycine 
view; and, of course, there is something to be said in favour of each. I 
believe it is not doubted that Micropteryx belongs to the Tineina, and, 
perhaps, of all moths, that genus is the most like the Trichoptera; it 
seems natural, therefore, that Acentropus and Micropteryx should not be 
placed far apart, though, in fact, their technical characters are considerably 
different. Whether Westwood considered Acentropus to connect the 
Tineina and Pterophorina, I do not know; it may be fancy on my part, but 
I do fancy I detect an affinity between Acentropus and Agdistis. The 
approximation to the Hyponomeutide does not appear to me so manifest ; 
I suppose the recurved or drooping palpi are the principal thing relied on; 
but in Knaggs’s ‘ Cabinet List’ the Hyponomeutide are the next family to 
the Micropterygide. Again, there is plausibility in the suggestion of 
relationship between the phryganoid Acentropus and Chimabacche 
phryganella; next to the Epigraphiide or Chimabacchide, the Psychide 
are also placed by those who regard that family as Tineina, and it scarcely 
needs to be added that the Psychide are very like Phryganeina in some 
respects, and have indeed, been classified with Neuroptera; moreover, the 
existence of wingless or but partially-winged females in Acentropus, is a 
feature which that genus possesses in common both with Chimabacche and 
Psyche. So far as I am aware, Brown is the only author who has referred 
the genus to the Bombycina; it is to this group that the Psychide are 
relegated by those who expel them from the Tineina, and Brown would 
place them in the same section of the Bombycina; but the families with 
which he suggests that Acentropus has the nearest affinity are the 
Hepialide and Zenzeride, agreeing with the former ‘in the general shape 
of its larve, in the absence of spines on the legs of the imago, and in the 
substitution for them of hair, in the want of a labrum, and in the almost 
total absence of maxille ;’ and with the Zenzeride ‘in the shape of larva, 
small development of maxille, and general form of the palpi.’ On the 
other hand, the general appearance of the imago is strongly suggestive of a 
Crambus, but the retrorse palpi and the neuration of the wings do not agree 
with those of the Crambide; whilst the aquatic habit of the insect, the 
mode of life, and the metamorphoses, are so plainly indicative of affinity to 
Hydrocampa, that I willingly go with the current of recent opinion, and 
recognize the true place of the Acentropodide to be where Staudinger and 
Wocke have placed them, that is to say, in the Pyralidina, leading up to 
the Chilonid and Crambidx.”—P. 131. 
