788 The American Naturalist. [September, 
OF A NEW CLASSIFICATION OF THE LEPIDOPTERA. 
By A. S. PACKARD. 
(Continued from page 647). 
Remarks on the Family Hepialidey—This group is assigned 
by Comstock, from the venation alone, to a position at the bot- 
tom of the Lepidopterous scale, even below the Micropterygi- 
de. By Chapman it is more correctly placed above the latter 
group. He even places it above the Nepticulide, Adelidæ and 
Tischeria. 
Since receiving and studying Chapman’s paper, it has be- 
come very plain to me that Hepialus and its allies are simply 
colossal Tineoids, and that Speyer was right in 1870 in sug- 
gesting that the Hepialidæ stand very near to the Tineids.’ 
These views arrived at independently by these authors are 
confirmed by the trunk characters, and also by the larval 
characters, as pointed out by Dyar,’ and which I have been 
able to confirm by an examination of the freshly hatched 
larva of Hepialus mustelinus, and fully grown larve of the Aus- 
tralian Oncopera intricata Walk., as well as Hepialus humuli and 
H. hectus of Europe. 
In 1863 I pointed out? the similarity in the head and thorax 
of Hepialus (Stenopis) argenteomaculatus to those of the neurop- 
1Tn his suggestive paper (Ent. Zeit. Stettin, 1870), Speyer refers to the similar- 
ity of the venation of Hepialide and Cosside and remarks that they resemble 
the Trichoptera no less than the Micropterygide, though the Hepialide exhibit 
other close analogies to the Trichoptera. He adds that the middle cell of the 
wing in the Phryganeide is not fundamentally different from that of the Hepiali- 
dæ, Cosside, and Micropteryx, also the hind wings of Pychide. On p. 221 he 
associates the Zygenide with the Cossinæ, Cochliopodide, Heterogynide, 
Psychide and Hepialidæ, and remarks that all these families are isolated among 
the Macros; the Cochliopodide and Zygænidæ alike in the pupa state by the 
delicate integument and the partially loose sheaths, the groups standing nearest 
to the Tineide with complete maxillary palpi, forming the oldest branch of the 
lepidopterous stem, and having been developed earlier than the Macros. 
2 A classificationof Lepidopterous larvee. Annals N. Y. Acad. Sci. viii, 1894, 
p. 196. ; 
