46 



The Natuealist. 



LyccenidcB^ and JSesperidcB ; but since the first family, according to 

 Dr. Scudder, lias close affinity with the last, the method is only 

 plausible on the principle of extremes meeting, the better arrangement 

 every way being Nymphalida, Eryciviidce, LyccBnida, Fapilionidce, and 

 Hesperida. If physiological reasons again could ever be got to 

 prevail over the fancy for having the butterflies first, I would like- 

 wise suggest a further arrangement of five groups of lepidoptera, 

 showing the development of a structure at the base of the abdomen 

 attributed with the faculty of hearing, that highest of insect senses, 

 thus : Noctuina, Bombycina, Geometrina, Butterflies, and Sphingina. 



At the best, however, must it appear that any such linear system 

 is to be inferior to the Darwinian method of theoretical descent, for 

 if lines are not to meet somewhere, what can be made ,out of case- 

 bearing Bomhycina, and case-bearing Tineina that harmonize, like the 

 species of Incurvaria, and why is the ghost moth such a strange 

 anomaly ? One warm, still evening at the commencement of last July, 

 wandering out butterfly-net in hand to watch for the comet, I came 

 on a spot where an elder bush stood clearly defined against the full 

 harvest moon, over whose ivory blossoms several males of this moth 

 were dancing sideways, little fans full of whimsicality glowing on the 

 wing like whiting on the hook or calico caught 'by the sunshine. It 

 was a beautiful and saintly apparition that held me long before 

 courage was mustered to catch a couple for the cabinet. Two ghosts, 

 however, were eventually boxed, and as I spread these out on the 

 setting board I became much struck by the circumstance, how little 

 they gave me the idea af a moth, and how little they harmonised 

 with the moths of the group to which they are accredited. Their four 

 wings all alike wanting the hook and eye to link them, suggested 

 most those of a dragon-fly, and seemed to point to a greater develop- 

 ment of the mesothoracic muscles to sustain their increased exertion. 

 Their expansile fans on their hinder femora and their subterranean 

 larvse brought one back to the owl moths of the Brazils and the red 

 undcrwings ( Catocala), which in their great wing expanse, semi-looping 

 caterpillars, and scent pencils, bridge over the gap between the 

 Noctuina and Geometrina. Yet as their wings want the hook, so 

 their fans want the pouch that conceals them in these moths. Indeed 

 ghost moths, and the family of the Repialida to which they belong, 

 want so many of those characters that characterize lepidoptera, that? 

 one is led on to the supposition that their progenitors never acquired 

 tliem, and that they belong to an older race that in time past has 

 disseminated itself from Europe to the antipodes of the Maories. 



