MACKO-PSYCHINA. 275 



robustness of the species, but it is questionable whether the divisions 

 so denned have any real natural value, although they are obviously 

 very convenient. Viewed from the neuration standpoint only, the 

 Pupicolae are the most generalised of the higher Psychidae (excluding 

 Oiketicids, &c.) ; the Acanthopsychid neuration is also somewhat 

 generalised, less so, however, than that of the Pupicolae, but the 

 Acanthopsychids still possess the anterior tibial spurs (an ancestral 

 character probably derived with the Oiketicids from a Fumeid base). 

 In both characters the Pupifugae are more specialised, having a very 

 modified form of neuration and having also lost the anterior tibial 

 spurs. Our own impression, therefore, based on such characters as we 

 have dismissed, is to separate the Oiketicidae from the Psychidae, and 

 to subdivide the latter into the three* subfamilies : 



(1) Acanthopsychinae (Pachythelia, Canephora, Acanthopsyche, &c). 



(2) Empedopsychinae (or Psychinae) (Sterrhopterix, Stenophanes, &c). 



(3) Okeopsychinae (Oreopsyche, Hyalina, Scioptera, &c). 



The higher Psychids present much variety in nervure 1 of the fore- 

 wings, which develops sundry new branches, clearly an effort to 

 strengthen the inner margin of the wing against any violence to which 

 it may be subjected against the margin of the ? case in pairing, and 

 is, therefore, adaptive to this purpose, just as is the loss of the pos- 

 terior tibial spurs. It reaches its highest point of elaboration in the 

 Oiketicids, where, also, it is usual for the hindwing to be diminished 

 in size, as being in the way under the same circumstances. The long 

 f orewing of the Oiketicids is probably an adaptation to this modification 

 of the lower one, at least as much as an inheritance from such forms 

 as Lufjia, Proutia and Dissoctena. 



We have already dealt with the main characters presented by the 

 Macro-Psychids in our general remarks on the superfamily. The 

 eggs are so delicate and usually so massed together that the slightest 

 touch ruptures them, and they are laid in the empty pupa-case, the 

 skin of which is so delicate that if it be removed from the 

 puparium when full of eggs one might almost suspect one had the 

 slightly dried body of the female. The larvae are remarkable for their 

 strong true legs, their short prolegs and the peculiar migration of the 

 posterior tubercles (ii) towards, or the anterior (i) from, the medio-dorsal 

 line. The male pupae are characterised by the peculiar intersegmental 

 hooks (or spines), and the ventro-anal hooks that homologise with the 

 anal larval prolegs, whilst the female pupa exhibits, in the mouth-parts 

 and appendages, strong indications of the great modifications that have 

 taken place in the female imago, in which the whole animal is essen- 

 tially specialised to become a mere egg-producing mass, all structures 

 not directly connected with reproduction being reduced to the most 

 rudimentary condition. The larval case serves as a puparium, and the 

 female of the Macro-Psychids (excluding the Proutiids and Fumeids) 

 never leaves it until egg-laying is finished, and then only to die. The 

 male pupa, on the contrary, protrudes the greater part of its body in 

 the manner common to the male (and female) Micro-Psychids before 



* We have not considered the Apteroninae and Animulinae, the first of which 

 would also probably fall into this group. The second is more doubtful. Chapman 

 notes Animula ephemeraeformis as being an Oiketicid, but Kirby places this species 

 in the genus Thyridopteryx, and restricts Animula to hubneri, Westd., nigrescens, 

 Dbldy., herrichii, Westd., dichroa, H.-Sch., and the allied species. 



B 2 



