54 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



[March 



deeply into any branch of Entomology, knows full well the difficulty of 

 distinguishing closely allied species, and also knows that throughout any 

 order there exists a general resemblance which may justly be called a 

 family likeness. In a higher and not less true sense, orders and classes 

 are related. Some are well defined ; but many, even amongst existing 

 forms, are connected by intermediate genera, whose structure indicates 

 that they are the slightly modified descendants of forms ancestral to 

 widely-separated modern genera. Of such, Peripatus is an admirable 

 example, and may be called a finger-post on the upward road along 

 which, during an inconceivably vast number of centuries, the army of 

 air-breathing Arthropods has moved. During an almost illimitable past, 

 this great sub-kingdom has gone on multiplying and becoming more and 

 more specialized, till we have now such a wealth both of species and 

 individuals, that no man can possess a complete knowledge of more than 

 a small part of them. 



THE PTEROPHORINA OF BRITAIN. 



BY J. W. TUTT, F.E.S. 



(Continued from page 10.) 



This he agreed to do, and, with Mr. A. J. Hodges, we set out about 9.30 

 a.m. for the scene of action. We had scarcely reached that part of the 

 Downs to which our footsteps had been directed, when Mr. Hodges came 

 back to me with the news that as it was a Micro expedition he had only 

 brought half-a-dozen boxes, and that each of these cuntained a spilodactyla. 

 Hurrying up the lane where I had loitered, and arguing with my friend 

 as to the position of " plumes " in general, I came across the veteran 

 standing over a plant of horehound (Marrubhim vulgare), and after a few 

 minutes at a similar plant, I flushed my first specimen. Shaking the 

 plant and herbage around was quite sufficient to disturb them, and as we had 

 evidently just hit the time for the species, spilodactyla, for about an hour, 

 had a rather bad time of it, and we boxed a fair number, the species 

 evidently being just out and in fine condition. A search for the pupa 

 resulted in finding many empty pupa cases but only one or two living ones. 

 The empty pupa cases were conspicuous enough, but the lull ones 

 assimilated so well to the leaf on the midrib of which on the upper side they j 

 are placed, that it was difficult without a little practice to detect them. The 

 natural time of flight appears to be about five to seven p.m., but they 

 appear to be rather sluggish, and at the most flit from one part of a plant 

 to another. In the daytime a fair amount of shaking is needed to disturb 

 them." 



