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Art. V. — Synopsis of North American Sphingidce. 



By Brackenridge Clemens, M. D. 



I. CLASSIFICATION. 



The arrangement of the family Sphingidae, as presented in the present paper, is 

 doubtless defective in many respects. It is systematic, however, and its errors will 

 become obvious when we acquire that information respecting species, on which the 

 construction of a natural system depends. This latter does not contemplate merely 

 isolated characters of perfected beings, in the endeavor to reproduce the order and 

 harmony of creation. It cannot be said that the intrinsic value of external characters 

 in Lepidoptera has been yet philosophically determined ; still it is obvious, that each 

 individual at its maturity must be the representative of its family, its genus and 

 species, and bears with it the characters peculiar to each of these groups. There is 

 nothing in the structure of the perfect lepidopterous insect that reveals to us the 

 peculiarities of its anterior specific history, and in studying its characteristics in a 

 state of maturity, we view the climax of its organic perfection, contemplate it as 

 having reached the end of its biography, and can systematize it according to the 

 method that may be used for this purpose, but with no surety that its position 

 represents those natural relations that every system should endeavor to display, as 

 long as the diagnostic characters of groups of perfect beings have indefinite and 

 undetermined values, or as long as the particulars of its embryonic life are unascer- 

 tained. The imago is usually spoken of as the species, whereas it is simply part of 

 the existence of species, which has had an inception, an embryonic life, a youth and 

 conditions of growth, during which it has maintained special relations to inanimate 

 agencies and to other beings. 



Classification is not arbitrary or objectless. It seeks by convenient general- 

 izations of our own creation to reproduce to view that order established in the 

 beginning, and to represent the analogies and affinities existing between different 

 groups and the individuals of which they are composed. A natural system is simply 

 a representation of natural bodies with all their relationships ascertained, and its 

 peculiar office is to develope the concealed idea pertaining to every group, by which 

 it is characteristically designated, and the thought, of which every being is but the 



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