OBSERVATIONS ON THE FAMILY COLEOPHORIDES 



131 



" Patrie : l'ile de Naxos (Olivier, Col. Chevr., type), le Grece con- 

 tinentale (Latreille, Coll. Dejean) ; l'orient, le Bengale (Hope, Perroud, 

 Westermann, etc.)." 



I have found no other record nearer than Greece for this 

 aberration. 



Observations on the Family Coleophorides. — Descent and Ovum. 



By ALFRED SICH, F.E.S. 

 Perhaps among the Palaearctic Tineina no group of species offers 

 to the student a wider and more interesting field of observation than 

 the extensive and apparently indivisible genus Coleophora. Very little 

 of this field has yet been surveyed. Something is known of the 

 imagines of this genus, less of the larvae and their complete cases, 

 comparatively nothing of the pupae, the early larval stages, 

 and the ova. Dr. Chapman and the late Mr. Tutt, in their phylo- 

 genetic tree, have placed the Coleophorides in the Geometro-Erio- 

 craniid stirps, making them with other families branch off the main 

 stem above the Adelides. This bough soon throws off the Tineides, 

 and later divides into two branches, one carrying the Lithocolletides 

 and the Gracilariides, the other, which rises higher, bears the Coleo- 

 phorides only (Tutt, Brit. Lep., vol. i., pi. i.). Dr. Chapman further 

 points out that the Coleophorids are derived from the Adelids, the 

 presence of the large dorsal head plate, and the narrowness of the 

 prothoiaeic plate in the pupa, are other characters indicating such an 

 origin, while the ovipositor of some species, though not formed for 

 cutting but for searching for a nidus for the egg, resembles that of 

 Adelids (Chapman, Trans. Ent. Soc. Loud., 1896). Both are case 

 bearers in the larval stage, and though the Adelid has been content 

 with a flat case, while the other has adopted a more or less cylindrical 

 habitation, the initial formation of many Coleophorid cases shows 

 simply a flat case composed of two pieces of mined leaf laid one on the 

 other like the first Adelid case. The crotchets on the larval prolegs 

 are arranged in two rows, resembling those of Incurvaria. The loss of 

 prolegs on the sixth abdominal segment, which occurs in many Coleo- 

 phorid larvae, seems to point back to ancestors common to them and to 

 Gvacilaria. The obtect pupa of Coleophora, Dr. Chapman states, has 

 only the fifth and sixth abdominal segments free in both sexes, and so 

 has gone up higher than Gvacilaria, whose pupa still retains the free- 

 dom of the seventh segment in the male, aud comes partly out of the 

 cocoon on the emergence of the imago. I have briefly mentioned 

 these particulars because in the study of a family some conception of 

 its origin affords one of the foundation stones on which to build, and 

 is also very helpful in the interpretation of the characteristics and 

 habits of its members. There is one south European member of the 

 Adelides, Crinopteryx familiella, whose larval habits are too interesting 

 to omit here. Dr. Chapman, who reared many specimens, observed 

 that the larva at first mines in the leaves of Cistus, and after reaching 

 the penultimate stage cuts out a case and lives exactly like a, Coleo- 

 phora, fastening its case beneath the leaf, and making a hole and a 

 blotch precisely like a Coleophora" (Ent. Mo. Mag., 1902, p. 94). Here 

 Ive see at least a habit now obtaining in the two families, and probably 

 we may recognise in the habit the outcome of a tendency to make this 

 particular kind of mine in some of the early ancestors of both families. 



