GRYPOCERA. General Topics. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
1029 
same place described the way how they know to soften dry substances by moistening them with water they 
squirt out on them. This has been proved for all faunae; for the American by Zikan, for Europe by Dietze, 
and for the Indo-Australian fauna by Kuhn. 
As to the larva and pupa we may refer to what has been said about American Hesperidae in Vol. V; 
the same is also applicable in all its details for the Indo-Australian Fauna. A lepidopteral type being as old 
as the Hesperidae are, has become rigid long ago in its long existence and can offer no surprising peculiarities 
in its present stage of development. As homogeneous as the Hesperid family is in its external shape, it is also 
in its biological conditions. We find nowhere any extravagances, nowhere any special adaptation to produces 
of modern times, nowhere associations with Hymenoptera; few cases of parasitism *) which in many species 
seems to occur hardly or not at all, nowhere symbiosis with ants; the shape and habits are in no visible way 
influenced by any co-inhabitants of the habitats, except at most that the Hesperidae flying in the day-time 
conceal themselves under leaves when they are at rest, such as Coladenia dan, some Celaenorrhinus etc. The 
old families of plants are also preferred as food by the larvae. A great number of species live as larvae on 
Monocotyledons: the Parnara and Adopaea on gramineae (grain), the Telicota etc. on palms, the nocturnal 
species frequently on bamboo, the Erionota on Musa, the Australian Hesperilla on Cladium, the Taractrocera 
on palms. Although we know a number of species the larvae of which also feed on plants from modern times 
of creation, on mallows ( Carcharodus ), on camphor (Plioenicops) etc., yet the very peculiar fact that such 
species frequently visit beside certain Dicotyledons also Monocotyledons tells in favour of the assumption that 
this is a renewed phase of adaptation which we can often observe directly. Thus the larvae of Pamphila palaemon 
live on Plantago (Dicotyledon) but also on brome-grasses (Bromus); the larvae of Erynnis comma live on the 
highly developed Coronilla, but in their free life also on Festuca; Hesp. alveus was found on thistles, but its 
food is also stated to be hair-grass (Aira), etc. We have therefore here the otherwise not common case that 
the same species of larvae feeds on Dicotyledons a n d (judging from the majority) even chiefly of) Mono¬ 
cotyledons, so that this may be taken to be the attempt of an old animal family to adapt itself to modern creation. 
The remarkable homogeneousness among the members of an animal family being composed of thousands 
of species brings about also a similar behaviour. The few differences with regard to the attitude of the wings 
have already been pointed out in Vol. V. The flight itself is very similar in all the Hesperidae, swiftly dashing 
along in a rather straight direction, short whizzing movements alternating with occasional skips, the wings 
being lengthways appressed to the body. 
It is also a rather common rule that the flight of the Hesperidae does not last long, but that it is mostly 
renewed after a short rest. This can be easily followed up with our eyes in the snow-white species being very 
far visible, such as the Leucochitonea ; the imagines swiftly visit several blossoms one after another, whereupon 
they hasten away for a large distance, often 50 to 100 m, in order to repeat the same again and again; I observed 
species of the genus Tagiades most peculiarly performing a kind of dance, executing distant swings of 20 to 
30 m length in pairs, oscillating to and fro with the greatest swiftness in flat bows. 
The copula seems to take place in the sunshine with all the species flying in the daytime, but to be 
mostly very hastily executed, for continuous copula belongs, at least in the Indian Region, to the rare exceptions. 
Little is stated in literature about the deposition of the eggs. Several times I could observe Parnara 
in rice-fields; the $ settle on the stalk on which they glide down backwards, preferably pushing the egg into 
the axillae of the leaves. The larvae almost invariably live in a roughly framed leaf-shelter, the leaves of the 
foodplant being mostly only superficially held together with the edges by a few silk-threads. Also this habit 
subsisting unchanged in more than 100 genera expresses the biological homogeneousness of the whole Hesperid 
family, which is besides distinctly manifested by the great resemblance of the larvae. A very great number 
of Hesperid species have plain green larvae with a black head. The larvae of the remotest genera, such as the 
Padraona, Scobura, Celaenorrhinus , Hidari, are so similar that they are very difficult to distinguish, often only 
by the shape of the head. All are just like Udaspes folus green with a black head. Nearly all the larvae of 
Parnara have an exterior similar to the corn-stalks on which they live: grass-green, with lighter longitudinal 
stripes across the dorsum. Very beautiful are only the larvae living well hidden of Rhopalocampta, Hasora, 
and Lsmene, the former being zebrinely cross-striped, the latter with peculiar saddle-markings. The larva of 
Erionota thrax living in cigar-shaped leaf-tubes is snow-white with a black head, that of Er. lebadea with a 
white head, and the stout and unwieldy larva of Can gar a thyrsis is besides surrounded by a long white fluff 
which is easily destroyed. 
*) Among more than 60 larvae of Calf odes ethlius recorded in Buenos Ayres there was not one being infested 
by parasites. 
