53 



were busy in sorting and naming their material, without a thought but that they were 

 arranging organisms patterned after the original designs of the Creator. Oken, indeed, 

 made the statement that every insect begins its life as a worm, continues it as a crustacean 

 and finishes it as a perfect insect, but the full significance of this progression, which can 

 be observed in the lifetime of a single individual, was for a long time neglected. It 

 furnished at first only material for a kind of metaphysical Natural History, in which 

 certain fossils, standing in a certain structural relation to existing animals, were called 

 " prophetic types," and Biblical and figurative language was fashionably enployed to 

 obscure the fact of direct descent. Butterflies and moths, next perhaps to plants, have 

 always succeeded in eliciting much attention from naturalists, and it is owing primarily 

 to his study of them that the English entomologist, Wallace, then (February, 1855) col- 

 lecting in Borneo, wrote his celebrated article on the law regulating the introduction of 

 new species. This paper endeavored to show that every species has come into existence 

 coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species. In further 

 communications Mr. Wallace explained the protective resemblances between animals on 

 the theory of mimicry, and everywhere throughout his valuable contributions butterflies 

 and moths illustrate his remarks and suggest his ideas. Afterwards Mr. Darwin's cele- 

 brated book fully and completely showed the action of the law of Natural Selection 

 throughout organic nature, and here also many important results are drawn from studies 

 of the Lepidoptera. 



The study of the literature of butterflies and moths since 1758 is necessary to the 

 student who is emulous of describing new species or adding to our stock of information. 

 A brief sketch of that branch which treats of the moths of North America may therefore 



Fig. 26. 



be given here. The descriptional works of Linnasus were followed in England by the 

 publication of the illustrated works of Drury (1773), in which good figures of a number of 

 our species are given, all of which are, I believe, recognized, and the names taken into our 

 lists. As his species are all redescribed and figured in modern literature, his original 



