the Classification of Lepidoptera. 
357 
1 liave no doubt that when Mr. Hampson works out 
the neuration of the Butterflies in detail^ he will find 
sufficiently important characters to supplement and 
confirm the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Dyar and 
Dr. Chapman from larval and pupal characters. 
Mr. Hampson does not tell us the reason for the irre- 
gularity of Nos. 10, 11, and 12 (pp. 258, 259) in his list. 
I would only mention with regard to 12 that the 
Endromidse, as exemplified in the British Endromis 
versicolor f are an exception to the general definition which 
Dr. Chapman gives, viz., that, as pupae, the Obtectj: 
have no power to emerge from the cocoon or to progress 
in any way, for the pupa of this species systematically 
forces itself out of the cocoon before the imago emerges. 
As a pupa, therefore, it comes (as regards this character) 
under Dr. Chapman^s division Incomplete ; whether it 
fulfils the further conditions required to establish itself 
in this group, I have as yet failed to observe. 
The vast amount of patient work necessary to produce 
a proportionately small show, should make us very 
thankful to those Entomologists who have recently paid 
attention to the subject of classification, and who have 
attempted to point out to us the natural lines on which 
it should go. Every scientific man has felt for many 
years that we really have had no system of classification 
except the hotch-potch, off'ered as such in synonymic 
lists j the authors of which have conscientiously done their 
best with a matter entirely outside their province. An 
attempt to compare the results already obtained by 
independent workers from the study of larvse, pupge, and 
imagines, and to show that the apparently revolutionary 
ideas enunciated by Dr. Chapman in your Transactions '''' 
for 1893, have been confirmed by other observers, are 
my only excuses for bringing this paper before you 
to-night. 
