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XII, A7i attempt to correlate the results arrived at in recent 
Papers on the Classification of Lepidoptera. By 
James William Tutt, F.E.S. 
[Read Feb. 20th, 1895.] 
The very interesting paper by Mr. George F. Hampson, 
^' On recent contributions to the Classification of the 
Lepidoptera^ by Prof. J. H. Comstock* and Dr. T. A. 
Chapman/^ t which appeared in The Annals and 
Magazine of Natural History for October, 1894, has 
led me to pen the following notes. 
The great advance which entomological, in common 
with other branches of natural, science has made during 
the last quarter of a century has revolutionised our ideas 
on the subject of classification. The old methods, in 
which the characters presented by the imago, were 
almost the only data utilised, have long been recognized 
as unsound. The great progress which has been made 
in the study of the immature stages of Lepidoptera, 
and the recognition of certain characters present in these 
stages as essential and important data, have brought 
about what may be called quite a new era in classification. 
The object of classification, I take it, is to place to- 
gether those species which have most recently developed 
from the same stems ; to work back, as far as may be, 
through the more recent stems to those less recent, and at 
last to that primeval form from which all have arisen. A 
system of classification, if it is to be a natural one, ought 
to be, when thoroughly worked out, a genealogical tree 
of the objects classified. 
The embryological conditions {i.e., those which precede 
the imago) are those which point out to us the past 
history of the insects, the changes through which they 
have passed in the course of their evolution, and, it must 
be evident, that such characters as may be found there, 
must be utilised if a scientific classification is to be 
" Evolution and Taxonomy," Wilder Quarter Century Book, 
Ithaca, N.Y., 1890, pp. 37-113. 
t Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1893, pp. 97-119 ; 1894, p. 335. 
TfiANS. ENT. soc. LOND. 1895.— PART HE. (SEPT.) 
