Orneodes. Leach strangely, in 1815, selected Pterophorus and 

 Alucita to represent these groups, and, until Walsingham and Meyrick 

 rightly protested against this misuse of the names, they were thus 

 generally used in England. There appears to be no doubt that the 

 true plumes should be known as the Alucitides and the " many 

 plumes " as Orneodides. 



Thus much to show why I now call the plumes Alucitids and 

 not Pterophorids. The change matters less because, during the last 

 sixty years, a great many genera have been created to satisfy the 

 increased knowledge that students have slowly and laboriously 

 accumulated. During the last fifteen years I have spent a great 

 deal of time on the natural history of this group. During part of 

 this time I have received the greatest help from Dr. Chapman, 

 Mr. Bacot, Mr. Bankes, Mr. Sich, and others, and the comparative 

 studies of the various species have led to one overwhelming con- 

 clusion, viz., that, small as the superfamily is compared with many 

 other superfamilies, there lies within it as much variation and as 

 many subdivisions and groups as lie within such superfamilies as, 

 say, the Noctuides, the Papilionides, or Geometrides. It follows, there- 

 fore, that Stainton's grouping into three genera really was merely the 

 subdivision of the whole of the plumes into their constituent main 

 divisions — Agdistides, Alucitides, and Orneodides — and that, just 

 as in the early days of entomology, Scopoli made his first genera of 

 butterflies by the markings of the wing, and put iris and pamphilus 

 and everything else with spotted wings into one genus, machaon and 

 priori and everything else with tails into another genus, so Meyrick's 

 grouping of all the white plumes in one genus, brown ones in 

 another, etc., although based on the apparently scientific generalisa- 

 tions of structure present in the neuration, are, when the early stages 

 are studied, just as unnatural. It is, of course, shocking that we, 

 who have been taught that the five white British species — spilodactyla, 

 galactodactyla, pentadactyla, tridactyla, and niveidactyla — come into a 

 large genus of white-coloured plumes from all parts of the world, and 

 are, therefore, most naturally united by their colour, should learn by 

 actual investigation that, in essential items of larval and pupal struc- 

 ture, they are really very separate from each other, that galactodactyla 

 is nearer, for example, to septodactyla (lienigianus) and tephradactyla, 

 and is exceedingly specialised, that the white pentadactyla is closely 

 allied to the black brachydactyla, and that spilodactyla, again, is very 

 different from tridactyla and niveidactyla (baiiodactyta), and, although 

 all on one side of the Alucitid stirps, represent the most generalised 

 genera on that side, but such is the difference. Still more amazing 

 are the structural differences of Meyrick's Alucita, which comprises 

 species whose larvae and pupas exhibit nearly tribal differences, whilst 

 still more farcical is the old genus Leioptilus, in which grey and 

 yellow species were placed, and where very different types of larval 

 and pupal structure found themselves in one genus — to wit, mono- 

 dactyla, lithodactyla, tephradactyla, ostcodaclyla, and distinctus. I 

 hope, if I live long enough to bring out the volume on hand of this 



