122 BKITISH LEPIDOPTERA. 



in various ways on neurational characters that elsewhere might divide 

 families. Why one neurational vagary, viz., " hindwings with 7 and 8 

 united by a cross nervure " should separate one lot from another, one 

 can hardly understand. Oiketicus wants the bar and so is a Taleporia /" 

 (in litt.)* 



Packard fully supports this view and writes (Bombycine Cloths of 

 America, pp. 67 ctseq.) : " The Talaeporiidae (Solenobia and Talaeporia) 

 are the direct ancestors of the broad-winged Psychidae. . . . The 

 imagines have, according to Stainton, no maxillary palpi, and the 

 tongue is wanting, while the females are wingless. The head is broad, 

 and we have, so to speak, in this group, Tineid-Bombyces. The 

 neuration is generalised Tineid, and it is evident from a long abode in 

 cases that the features which separate the family so widely from the 

 Tineidae are the result of disuse and resulting adaptation. The family 

 had diverged considerably from the Tineid source along a path which 

 unmistakably ends in the Psychidae. . . . The pupa of Talaeporia 

 pseudobomlycella has a broad head with distinct paraclypeal pieces and 

 glazed-eye sutures. The maxillary palpi are large and well-developed, 

 extending under the eye from the antennas to the labial palpi, which 

 are large, but short and very broad. The maxillae are present but 

 small. The abdomen bears no cremaster, but there are two terminal 

 small spines which may be the homologues of the anal leg hooks of 

 the pupae of Psychidae. The scars of the four pairs of anterior abdo- 

 minal prolegs are present as in Psychidae. In T. conspurcatella the 

 maxillae are much more rudimentary, and, before exuviation, concealed 

 by the long labial palpi ; the maxillary palpi are large and triangular. 

 In the pupa of Solenobia icalshella, the maxillae have undergone less 

 reduction than in Talaeporia, as they are well-developed, but the 

 European species, S. pineti, has outstripped the American one in the 

 process of degeneration and modification, and the maxillae are very 

 much shorter and smaller, though the maxillary palpi are of the same 

 shape and size. In this genus, the abdomen has no cremaster and no 

 terminal hooked spines, the pupa, in exuviation, being fastened to the 

 sides of the cocoon by numerous hooked setae. The transition from 

 the Talaeporiidae to the Psychidae is a most natural one, whether we 

 compare the pupa or imago. In Fumea, the wingless females! have 

 legs and antennae, while in Psyche they are wanting and they never 

 leave their case, or, when the female of Fumea ' escapes from the 

 pupa, it emerges from the case and sits on the outside ' (Stainton). 

 . . . It is evident from this that the line of development from the 

 narrow Tineid-winged Talaeporiidae to the broad-winged Psychidae was 

 nearly direct. Perhaps the slight changes in neuration and much 

 greater breadth of the wings and the pectinated antennae are the result 

 of adaptation to the stationary mode of life of the females, the males 

 acquiring greater power of extended flight, and a more "acute sense of 

 smell in order to discover the presence of the females. In comparing 

 the pupae of different genera of Psychidae with those of the Talae- 

 poriidae, the resemblance is most striking and naturally suggests the 

 direct evolution of the Psychids from the latter group. The head is 



* Since the above was written Chapman has argued out this subject at length 

 in a paper entitled " On the Unity of the PsychidEe," Ent liecord, xi., no. 8. 

 t There are traces of wings in ? Fumea, as also in LuJ/ia (Bacot^. 



