254 



AN ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY. 



butterflies on the flowers which they frequent during the middle 

 of the day. Mr. Hubbard has suggested shooting them with 

 cartridges loaded with sand, and that can easily be done during 

 mid-day from a veranda or other shelter when the butterflies 

 hover around the flowers near by. 



The ' ' skippers, ' ' or HesperidcE, differ from all the preceding 

 by the broad head, clothed with bristly hair, and by the widely 

 separated antennae, or feelers, the club being also terminated by 

 a more or less marked and recurved slender booklet. They are 

 small or moderate in size, and get the common name from their 

 jerky habits of flight, usually along roads, and practically con- 

 fined to low herbage. There are two rather well-marked, though 

 by no means sharply limited sections, distinguished by color, the 

 first containing dark, blackish or sombre brown types, and the 



other tawny yellow forms. 

 Fig. 273. The former is represented 



by the species of Nison- 

 iades and its immediate 

 allies, and the latter by 

 the genus Pamphila and 

 allies. In this latter se- 

 ries the fore-wings are 

 much more pointed than 



Pampinia ethiius. in the Other, and the body 



is proportionately more 

 robust. None of the species, so far as I am aware, are of eco- 

 nomic importance, though our largest species, Megathyvius 

 yucccE, does some injury by occasionally boring into the roots of 

 the yucca plant. These insects have been considered intermedi- 

 ate between the butterflies and moths, and many species have 

 the habit of elevating the front wings only, the hind wings being 

 held horizontally. 



The first of the Heterocera to be considered here are the 

 SphiyigidcB, or "hawk-moths," and these obtain the common 

 name from their habit of hovering about flowers, and their rapid, 

 darting motions. Most of them fly just about dusk, visiting 

 deep flowers like the "evening primrose," "petunia," or even 

 " Jimson weed," and they succeed in reaching the very bottom 

 of these by means of an unusually well-developed tongue. They 



