NOTODONTIDAE; GENERAL TOPICS. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
903 
because owing to the habit of living on trees, the larval stages of but very few species of the enormous 
number of neotropical Notodontidae have been ascertained. 
On the whole the Notodontidae are regarded geologically as a rather old group from which the more 
modern Sphingidae and Ceratocampidae have probably sprung. We have already stated their extremely minute 
adaptation in Vol. X, p. 607, and Vol. XIV, p. 401. It refers to both the larvae and the imagines and is per¬ 
fected to such a degree that the absence of any protection by internal saps, smells or acid-bearing organs. 
There are but few genera that have hairy larvae (such as the Melalophinae), most of which are green, smooth, 
or with a minimum of bristles, but somewhat disguised by their shape; this disguise is often enhanced by a 
strange quiescent position. A red larva from the genus Crinodes bends its head upwards with the first segments 
in a Sphingid-like way, and at the same time it raises its anal part which is thick and swollen and covered 
with a peculiar yellow plate, in such a way that its brightly coloured upper surface stares backward like a 
second head. The larvae of the genus Datana bend very similarly, whereas the Schizura bend their heads down¬ 
wards, so that a protuberance on the 5th segment with a sting, which is more than a centimetre long in South- 
American species, projects in front beyond the larva. The shape of the Cerura and Harpyia , which is likewise 
raised in front and behind, is known to us from the European species which are exactly like the American 
ones in this respect. 
The varied shapes of the Notodontid larvae by no means correspond to those of the imagines. More 
than 90 per cent of these lepidoptera are of a very common, inconspicuous shape, the only —- though by no 
means general — peculiarity being the previously mentioned little lobe or hair-tuft at the inner margin of 
the forewing, from which the whole family derives its name. On examining the sides of the abdomen, an organ 
was discovered on the 4th segment, which was named Gteniophore by its discoverer (K. Jordan). It is a kind 
of movable sting which is siqiposed to serve for impregnating the long hairs on the hindlegs or also the pecu¬ 
liarly transformed scales on the hindwing beneath with the secretion of an invariably ju'esent gland, presumably 
emitting a certain small. But these are most inconspicuous formations; the shape of the members of different 
Notodontid genera does not vary nearly so much as, for instance, the Sphingid genera Hazmorrhagia and 
Gelerio, Amorpha and Deilephila, or even the Saturnidae do, which are sometimes without tails, sometimes 
with the apices of the hindwings as long as a hand, or the Mimallonidae in which, for instance, Mimallo amilia 
exhibits wings with gnawed-out distal margins, while Adalgisa croesa has a long falcated apex of the forewing, 
and Tarema macarina has quite regularly shaped wings. 
A striking peculiarity of the Notodontidae is the fact that quite similar larvae which are sometimes hard to 
differentiate, yield most dissimilar and very distinctly separated imagines, while on the other hand imagines 
which might be regarded as very closely allied come from absolutely different larvae. The former case — along 
with which a real larval polymorphism as in Pheosia — is known to us in Europe from the species Notodonta 
ziczac and torva which as imagines are quite dissimilar, while their larvae are only separated by a slight dif¬ 
ference in the shape of the middle protuberances. In the same way as the larva of the quite differently coloured 
European Not. dromedarius may, by a frequent violet-brown variation, become more similar to larvae of ziczac 
and torva than to its own brothers and sisters, also American larvae of Dicentria may resemble certain Schizura 
in their early stages to such a degree that even an expert will find it difficult to identify them. This is the 
case for instance in the species Schizura concinna and Dicentria lignicolor which represent regular zigzag-larvae 
in their early stages having tubercles on the 4th and 11th segments which, by an angular position, reproduce 
the image of a larva of Not. torva or phoebe. The growing larva gradually loses every resemblance to the latter, 
the posterior protuberances increasing in the Schizura, while they are reduced in Dicentria. 
In contradistinction to this peculiarity, the great difference of the Notodontid larvae is not only noticed 
in the colouring, but still more in the shape of species the developed imagines of which are evidently very 
closely allied. Thus for instance the North-American Pheosia rimosa resembles most minutely the palaearctic 
Pheosia tremula (Vol. II, pi. 45 f). But the American larva has a caudal horn like a Sphingid larva, whereas 
the European species has a pyramidal elevation on the 11th segment *). 
We have already mentioned in Vol. X (p. 606) that the Notodontid larvae, many of which are of a 
very strange shape, do not always put up with their terrifying positions, but often defend themselves very 
rigorously. The American species even surpass the European ones considerably in this habit; for while the 
palaearctic Dicranura are only able to spurt fine drops from the slit in the neck towards their foe, the larva 
of the neotropical species Anurocampa mingens receives its enemy with a well-aimed jet of caustic liquid; for 
*) Packard mentions this case in his monography of the North-American Notodontidae comparing it with the be¬ 
haviour of the larvae of Acronicta psi and A. occidentalis, where likewise quite different larvae yield very similar imagines, 
as it also occurs in the palaearctic species Acron. psi and tridens. Packard mentions that the European adult larva of the 
Notodontid genus Pheosia has a shape similar to that exhibited by the young larva of the American species. 
