7228 Notices of New Books. 



no respect are the true Sphinges more distinct, more numerous or more 

 important than either of these. 



The numbers of eastern species of the three primary groups or tribes 

 stand thus : — 



Tribe I. Papiliones . . . 595 



Tribe II. Sphinges ... 49 



Tribe III. Bombyces ... 346 



There is every reason to believe that these numbers nearly represent 

 the proportions of the three groups, and it is therefore clear that the 

 Sphinges are not by their numbers entitled to rank as a primary group. 

 Then their larvae are not more different from those of the seven cha- 

 racterised divisions of Bombyces than those are from each other ; 

 there is, in fact, no reason, logical or entomological, why they should 

 rank differently from the other divisions. I therefore take the ascer- 

 tained Bombyces of the East as 395. That the recorded Bombyces 

 should be less in number than the Papiliones is not altogether 

 remarkable when we recollect the attractive appearance and diurnal 

 flight of the latter. It will be admitted on all hands that the Bombyces, 

 with or without the addition of the Sphinges, is a most unsatisfactory 

 group on account of its heterogeneous contents; not one of those cha- 

 racters by which we are accustomed to disintegrate the Lepidoptera 

 can possibly be applied to it. 



Turning our attention to the Lepidoptera at present untouched by 

 the authors whose labours I am noticing, we find two groups numeric- 

 ally enormous, yet singularly homogeneous in their contents, and 

 singularly distinct from each other ; these are the Geometrae and the 

 Noctuae. They differ essentially both in the larva and imago states ; 

 the larvae of Geometrae have but four claspers, those of the Noctuae 

 ten ; the hind wings of Geometrae have the same pattern or disposition 

 of colours as the fore wings, the hind wings of the Noctuae have a 

 different pattern from the fore wings ; there is no similarity between 

 Ihem. Then we have a group less compact and satisfactory than 

 either of these, composed of the Deltoides, the Pyralites, the Ptero- 

 phorites. And having eliminated all these, — that is the Diurnes, the 

 Nocturnes, the Geometrae and the Noctuae, and lastly the compound 

 but unnamed group of which Pyralis is the type, — we have still 

 left on our hands that mass of moths which are now associated 

 from their minute size and usually called Micro-Lepidoptera, but 

 which are probably far more numerous, certainly more diverse, than 

 any of those divisions to which I have alluded ; and we have also left 



