580 ZOOLOGigAL LITERATURE. 
pp. 36-38. This paper includes notices of the food-plants of ^several 
species. 
H. Birchall’s notes on collecting Lepidoptera in New Granada relate chiefly 
to the Rhopalocera. Zoologist, 1865, pp. 9638-9641. 
According to Stainton (Entom. Annual for 1866, pp. 19-40) the additions 
made to the list of British Lepidoptera during the last eleven years have 
been 167 in number, distributed as shown by the following statement : — 
Sphingina 5 ; Bombydna 5 j Noctuina 21 j Geometrina 14 } Pyralidinci 13 \ 
Tortricina 11 j Tineina 85 j and Pterophorina 3. 
Hodgkinson describes the general results of his collecting Lepidoptera in 
the spring of 1865. Ent. M. Mag. ii. p. 169. 
Knaggs has continued his instructions in collecting and managing Lepi- 
doptera, in Ent. M. Mag. i. pp. 193-196, 217-220, 240-242, 266-268, and ii. 
pp. 38-42, and, 109-114. In these articles he treats of the mode of collecting 
and rearing larvae, and in the last cited gives a list of allied genera of plants 
for the guidance of collectors in finding substitutes for the knpwn food of 
larvae, when this is inaccessible. 
Barrett publishes some further notes on collecting Lepidoptera from 
thatch. Ent. M. Mag. ii. pp. 17-19. 
The Entomologist, vol. ii., contains numerous notes on the best methods of 
destroying Lepidoptera and other insects, and on the preservation of larvae. 
Peale describes the means by which he preserves specimens of Lepido- 
ptera from the attacks of insects, &c. Before putting them into the perma- 
nent cases, he subjects them to the action of heat in an oven heated by boil- 
ing water j the cases themselves are made of two plates of glass, united by a 
wooden frame and closed on all sides by tinfoil. Upon the inner surface of 
one of these plates small cylinders of cork are cemented to support the in- 
sects, and beneath each of these a small disk of paper with a number. The 
insects may thus be examined on both surfaces without opening the box, 
and when put into covers the boxes may stand on shelves like books. 
Smiths. Instit, Report for 1863, pp. 404-406, cumjiyg. (1864). 
Hhopaloceea, 
In his paper on the Malasian Papilionides (Linn. Trans, xxv. 
pp. 1-71), Wallace discusses the question of the position of this 
group in the series of Rhopalocera, and adopts the old notion 
that they should occupy the highest place, in opposition to the 
views of Bates and Herrich-S chaffer, who remoye them to a much 
lower rank. He founds this view on the possession by the per- 
fect insects of two characters which are peculiar to them, namely 
the four-branched median nervule and the spur on the anterior 
tibiae (the latter shared, however, with some of the Hesperiides) . 
Adding to these the presence of the Y-shaped tentacle in the 
larva, an apparatus often of very complicated structure, found 
only in these insects, and considering all these characters in 
the light of the evolutionary hypothesis, the Papilionides must 
he regarded as constituting the most highly developed portion of 
the order Lepidoptera (p. 3). . ^ 
