MEMOIES OF THE FATIOiTAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
71 
and limbless. It is very plain that they are an offshoot from the Tineoids, and especially from 
the Taheporidic, which have no tongue and whose females are wingless and sack-bearers. 
Bemarlxs on the Famihj HepiaUdcv , — This group is assigned by Comstock, from the venation 
alone, to a position at the bottom of the lepidopteroiis scale, even below the Microptery guise. 
By Cliapinan it is more correctly placed above the latter gToup. He even places it above 
the Nepticulidie, Adelkte, and Tischeria. The family evidently branched off from tineid-like 
forms. 
Since receiving and studying Chapman’s paper it has become very plain to me that Heinalus 
and its allies are simply colossal Tineoids, and that 
Speyer was right in 1S70 in suggesting that the 
Hepialidie stand very near to the tiueids.^ 
These views, arrived at independently by these 
authors, are coufli-med by the trunk characters and 
also by the larval characters, as pointed out by Dyar,- 
and which I have been able to confirm by an exa*nina- 
tion of the freshly hatched larva of Hepiahis mxiste- 
linits and fully grown larva? of the Australian Oncopera 
iniricnta Walk., as well as those of Hej)ialus Inimxdi 
and ][, liectus of Europe. 
In 1863^ 1 pointed out the similarity in the head 
and thorax oiJIeiyialus{8tli€noi)is) argenteo-macnlatns to 
those of the neuropterous Folystoechotes, and referred 
to the elongated thorax of Hepialus, esj^ecially “the 
unnatural length of the inetathorax, accompanying 
w’hich is the enlarged pair of wings, a character 
■essentially neuropterous.” Eeference Avas also made 
to the metascutum, which is divided into two hah^ea, 
being separated Avidely by the very large triangular 
scutellum. I also drew attention to the transverse 
venule or spur of the costal A^ein and to the great 
irregularity in the arrangement of the branches of 
the cubital uerAuire, also to the elongated abdomen, 
and finally L remarked, “ the ITepiali are the lowest 
subfamily of the Bombyces.” But in those days I did 
not fully perceive the taxonomic value of these gen- 
eralized characters, which haA*e so well been proved 
by Chapman from imaginal and pupal characters to 
be such as to place the Hepialidie at or near the base 
of the Tineoid series. Chapman, unaware of the 
existence of mine and of Speyer’s paper, says: 
Tho metathoracic structure of Ifepinlus came as a very 
unexpected conaruiation of the idea that of the Tortricoid group 
it was tho nearest to the lower Adclids, and despite its special- 
ization was near tho line hy which Tortrix was derived from 
■some Adelid form (p. 113). 
1 In his suggestive paper (Knt. Zeit. Stettin, 1870), Speyer refers to tho shnil.arity of tho venation of Hepialidie 
and Cossida‘,and remarks that they resemble tho Trichoptera no less than theXIioroptorygidie, though the Hepialidie 
exhibit other close analogies to the Trichoptera. Ho adds that the middle cell of the wing in the Phrygonei(Ke is 
not fundamentally dift’erent from that of tho Hepialidu’, Cossidie, and Micropteryx, also the hind wings of IXv^-'hidie. 
On page 221 he associates tho Zygaenidie with tho Cossidie, Cochliopodida^, Heterogyuida*, Psychidie, and Hepialidie, 
and remarks that all these families are isolated among the Macros; tho Cofhliox)odid {0 and Zygaenidro alike in the 
pupa state hy tho delicate intoguinent and the partially loose sheath, these groups standing nearest to tho Tineidio 
with complete maxillary palpi, forming the oldest branch of the Icpidopterous stem, and having been developed 
earlier than tho Macros. 
^ A classification of lepidopteroiis larva*. Annals X. Y. Acad. Sci., viii, 1894, p. 196. 
® On '^Synthetic types in insects,” Boston Jour, of Nat. Hist,, 1863, im* 590-603. 
