irp 



s 1. 





2. 





3. 





4. 





5. 





6. 





7. 





8. 



Notices of New Books, 1221 



name Bombyces, which are divided by characters of the larva into 

 eight Stirps, as follows : — 



Larvas sph in gi formes. 



„ fasciculatae. 



„ ursinse. 



„ cuspidatae. 



„ verticillatsB. 



„ limaciformes. 



„ pilosi. 



„ lignivorae. 



The first of these Stirps includes: — 1st. Those xylophagous larvae 

 with heliophilous imagos, which form the tribe Sesiae of Laspeyres, 

 the genus Sesia of Guenee and Doubleday. 2nd. The Zygaenidae. 

 3rd. The Lithosiidae and several Indian forms, which have only lately 

 received names in Mr. Walker's 'Catalogue of the Lepidopterous Insects 

 in the British Museum.' It therefore appears that in this first Stirps, 

 although professedly associated on the larval principle, cryptophagous 

 and phanerophagous genera are mixed up together, and the larval 

 principle is thus abandoned as soon as proposed. In any natural 

 arrangement the Sesiae, being emphatically internal feeders, must be 

 classed with the eighth Stirps, Lignivorae, comprising Hepialus, Zeu- 

 zera and Cossus. The learned author is fully aware of the heteroge- 

 neous nature of this first Stirps, and alludes to it somewhat apolo- 

 getically. As it is impossible to separate Sesia from the other 

 Lignivorae, so is it unnatural to divorce Eusemia from Callimorpha 

 and Chelonia; and Zygaena, Eusemia, Lithosia, Callimorpha and Che- 

 Ionia must therefore either constitute two proximate groups running 

 parallel with each other, or be fused together into a somewhat un- 

 manageable whole. 



In the second Stirps, Fasciculatae, the beautifully distinguishing 

 character of the hairy pupa is not rigidly adhered to ; and this has 

 led to the introduction of genera which, it appears to me, ought to be 

 excluded. The other Stirps are much in accordance with those 

 now generally adopted. 



This question, however, remains. Seeing that the unnatural combi- 

 nation called Sphinx by Linneus is thus broken up, why should the 

 true Sphinges, reduced in the East to the small number of forty-nine 

 species, constitute a separate primary division of Lepidoptera ? Their 

 larvae are beautifully distinct and characteristic, but then so also are 

 those of the Fasciculatae, Lignivorae, Ursinae, Cuspidatae, &c. ; and in 



