General Topics. By Dr. M. Draudt. 
565 
Family: Lasiocampidae. 
The most essential characteristica of this family being represented in all the faunal regions have already 
been dealt with in the volumes 2, 10, and 14, to which respective passages we refer our readers. The American 
Fauna containing far more than 600 species probably supplies the greatest number which is by no means 
yet exhausted, since among every return from rather unknown districts a great number of new species are 
always discovered again. Schatts, for instance, only from his stay in Costa Rica brought along about 60 different 
species from the genus Euglyphis (Claphe ), more than half of which proved to be new! On looking through 
the collections of the Berlin Museum almost 60 new Lasiocampid species were found, a great number of other 
species in the Senckenberg Museum, among the stock of species most kindly put at our disposal by Mr. Bang- 
Ha as, and in the collections of W. Hopp, Charlottenburg, and of H. Wernicke, Dresden. Thus nearly every 
important collection of exotic Heterocera still contains many species not yet described. Moreover, this fact 
shows how sporadically most of the species are taken, except of course some of the very common and widely 
distributed species. Most of the American species probably fly in the dark hours of night and are only to be 
captured by the lantern, except the CS of the genera allied with the Tolype, which partly seek for their $$ 
also in daytime, rapidly flying in the sunshine, in a similar way as the palearctic Malacosoma alpicola-tftf 
do. For this reason, the said CS are mostly represented in the collections by specimens that are almost unrecogni¬ 
sable owing to their wings having been too much damaged in flying and exhibiting merely hyaline rudiments, 
as for instance the Titya proxima, nigrescens, and pallida, which are difficult to capture in an undamaged con¬ 
dition. In daytime, Lasiocampidae may rarely be found; most of the species of the enormously large genus 
Euglyphis for instance, often exhibiting a bark-like exterior, are well protected and, in the confused jumble 
of the primeval forest, they are mostly very difficult to discover even for experienced collectors. 
The distribution of the American Lasiocampidae on the continent is very characteristic. The North 
American faunal character is entirely like that of the palearctic regions. Above all we find here a group of 
large species allied to M. rubi and similar insects, then the smaller species of Malacosoma entirely corresponding 
to the European forms, and also a representative of the Epicnaptera- group; moreover, a few smaller species of 
the genus Tolype occur, which probably represent forms parallel to our Taragama. In the southern and tropical 
latitudes the Tolype form a very great contingent of partly also brighter coloured and particularly sexually 
very dimorphous forms. The greatest part of the forms, however, are distributed among the genus Claphe 
or, as it is now called: Euglyphis, which is unparallelled in any other faunal region. The more we go to the 
south, the more all these forms disappear in the same way as they do in the opposite direction towards Mexico. 
Far down in the south, in Chile, another group of forms appears showing numerous representatives, the species 
of Macromphalia which may be best compared with the Chondrosteginae which are otherwise entire stranges 
to the American Continent, although the structure is quite different. Some forms of the Macromphalia, being 
rather different from the generic type, extend up to Colombia. 
We know but very little of the early stages of the tropical forms; we are much better informed of those 
of the North American forms. Also here we may refer to what has been said in the volumes of the other faunae. 
The larvae exhibit a highly developed structure and spinning capability, being mostly densely clothed with 
hair, besides tubercles with single hairs, and very frequently on the first ling with a short obliquely porrect 
fleshy cone, and on the rings 2 and 3 with the well-known decorative spot. Pencils are also occasionally found 
on several rings. Particularly in more southern latitudes we also meet with insects with genuine burning hairs. 
Of the larvae of the Eutachyptera psidii, from which the old Aztecs obtained their famous ,,Mizteca- 
silk“, we are very accurately informed; Humboldt already supplied a detailed description of them, and Carlos 
C. Hoffmann dealt with them at large in the Humboldt Publication of 1910, p. 149. This author, however, 
