GENERAL INTRODUCTION. S 



Avhole subfamilies to be of much use in identification or 

 classification ; they scarcely mentioned the pupae and habits. 



The Hawk-Moths are essentially a tropical family, the 

 number of species existing in the temperate regions being 

 comparatively small. Very few species extend into the 

 Arctic Regions, and then only as occasional stragglers. Only 

 seventeen species, some of them rare stragglers, occur in 

 the British Isles. With the exception of the Arctic and 

 Antarctic Regions the family is found throughout the world. 



The Hawk-Moths were first classified by Linnaeus in the year 

 1758, under the name " Sphinx," this name having been first 

 used by Reaumur in 1736 for the English Privet Hawk-Moth, 

 on account of the Sphinx -like attitude adopted by the larva 

 when it is alarmed. Linnaeus included in his genus Sphinx 

 forms other than the true Sphtngidje, and Samouelle adopted 

 the name Sphingid^: for the family in 1819. The Sphingid^e 

 of the world and of separate regions have been classified, 

 revised or catalogued by many other authors. 



The Hawk-Moths of India were first classified by Hampson 

 in Blanford, ' Fauna of British India — Moths,' vol. i (1892). 

 In 1904, after the publication of Rothschild and Jordan's 

 * Revision ' of the family, he published papers supplementary 

 to the l Fauna of British India ' volumes, in which he adopted 

 Rothschild and Jordan's classification and applied it to the 

 Hawk-Moths of India (' Journal of the Bombay Natural 

 History Society,' vol. xv, p. 630 (1904). Hampson's original 

 classification of the family, like that of other authors whose 

 works were published before the ' Revision,' was based 

 chiefly on external and easily visible characters. Rothschild and 

 Jordan found that these characters alone could not be relied 

 on for purposes of classification, as some (colour for instance) 

 were so variable individually, and others (shape and venation 

 of wings) so constant among nearly all sphingid forms. 

 Their classification was based on characters revealed by 

 a minute examination of the structure, both external and 

 internal, of practically every Hawk-Moth known to exist 

 when the ' Revision ' was published, and has been accepted 

 by all later authors. 



In 1903, when the " Revision ' was published, there were 

 722 species of Hawk-Moths known throughout the world. 

 In 1911 some 850 species were known, and the number has 

 now risen to over 1,000. Of this total about 250 species, 

 or one quarter, occur in the Oriental Region. 



Hampson (1892) recorded 121 species from India and Ceylon, 

 and in 1904 the number of known species had risen to 163 

 (J. Bombay Nat. Hist, Soc. xv, 1904, p. 630). Omitting 

 two of Hampson's species, Eethera kamarovi and Celerio 

 zygophylli, which occur in Afghanistan but have not been 



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