1870.} YS) 
minute was afraid that the sparrows had been breakfasting off its 
tenants, but in another minute my eye caught the mother running on 
a leaf-stalk, and presently I could count up all the young ones, just 
setting off on their travels, and scattered about in fours and fives all 
over the branching twig, on which their leaf grew: they seemed busy 
exploring, and the mother ran from place to place feeling for them 
with her antenne. 
This I may say is virtually the end of my observations ; for, although 
at this point I tried to see more, by bringing the twig, with the whole 
family on it, indoors, and enclosing it with a glass cylinder, yet, save 
that the young seemed to get some food from the sticky exudations 
on the birch-catkins, I saw nothing to reward my watching that I had 
not seen before. And besides, the young bugs would get into the water 
bottle, and drown themselves, notwithstanding I had plugged up its 
mouth as closely asI could; and the mother seemed to get disheartened 
and weary, till at last I sent her and four surviving young ones, with 
the dead bodies of six or seven more, to Mr. Douglas ; but the bottom 
of the box unfortunately getting loose in its transit, he could find in it 
no more than the mother, and two dead young ones. I wish I could 
have ended my story more pleasantly, for I do not know that in all my 
life I was ever more interested in anything, than I was in watching 
this quaint little family ; however, I understand there is good hope 
that someone else, better qualified to write about bugs, is to have the 
opportunity to see, and, let us hope, describe more accurately such a 
scene as I have tried to depict. 
Exeter: 12th July, 1870. 
THE GENERA OF HESPERID IN THE COLLECTION OF THE 
BRITISH MUSEUM. 
BY ARTHUR G. BUTLER, F.LS., &c. 
IT am indebted to Mr. W. F. Kirby for enabling me for the first 
time to compare Herrich-Schiffer’s Classification of the Hesperide in 
his “ Prodromus Systematis Lepidopterorum ” with my own arrange- 
ment of this family in the National Collection, and I am surprised to 
find how nearly the two arrangements agree. I have a bone or two, 
however, which I must pick with Dr. Herrich-Schiffer with regard to 
some of the genera rejected by him; as to his new species, nobody 
could make them out if he tried from the line or two of description, 
without a locality in any case to lessen his bewilderment. I doubt not 
(as I sincerely hope) that Lepidopterists generally, will agree to omit 
them in their lists of species until they have been more clearly defined ; 
if not, every Hesperidian Monograph will terminate in a kite-tail of 
undetermined species. 
