524 
SPHINGIDAE. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
Even a beginner, on the antenna of any Sphingidae being shown to him, might most certainly and directly 
identify this organ to be that of a Sphinx. 
In the same way as the antennae, which exhibit differences only in the finer details of their structure 
and often only in the apical joint, the wings also show a great consistency in the veins and their robustness 
or shape. It is only the adaptation to dry leaves, which the resting imago imitates in some groups, that has 
produced denticulations and indentations in the distal margin, which are completed by the way the wings are 
held. Moreover, nearly all the Sphingidae, known have lanceolate, narrow forewings and triangular hindwings 
with convex or curved distal margins. 
As the large eyes, the palpi (being stretched out into coniform snouts), the strongly spined legs, the 
uniformly smooth and appressed clothing of the body, are common to nearly all the Sphingid forms, the authors *) 
of the most exhaustive treatise on the Sphingidae were forced to make use of a great number of histological 
and micro-anatomical momenta for the sake of the argumentation and support of the system applied by them. 
As to these details we must refer the readers to the said fundamental monography. This work, however, has 
been accomplished in such a model way, and such vast material has been employed in it, that probably no 
revision is to be exiiected before long and we may follow here this fundamental work even to the details. 
The close internal relationship of all the Sphingidae is evinced not only by the homogeneity of their 
coarse structure but also by a great similarity of the larvae, frequently even in their behaviour and way of 
moving. The uniformity of the presence of a caudal horn in all the species of Sphingidae hardly reoccurs in any 
other lepidopteral family composed of so great a number of members. The few cases in which this horn is absent 
show, by the remains of it, that it was lost only in the very latest epochs. 
f 
It is solely the protective adaptation and mimicry that have to a certain degree influenced the differen¬ 
tiation of the Sphingid larvae, and since a great number of larvae have imitated the same model — green leaves 
of trees —, the adaptation has not even led to great changes of the external appearance. Numerous species 
from very different Sphingid groups have bare, green larvae with lateral oblique streaks copying the ribs of 
a leaf. By these streaks as well as by the exact copy of the green shade of the food-plant, the larvae of some 
species such as Marumba dyras cannot be seen at all by human eyes, and as we already stated with the larva 
of Mar. quercus, the twdg on which the larva must be sitting according to the traces of their feeding and 
excrements, has to be gently felt for with one’s fingers in order to find the insect. 
Another disguise exhibited by the resting larva which is not protected by interior saps, is the very 
characteristic carriage of the Sphingidae. The front part of the body is raised, though in very different ways 
by the various species. But few Indian Sphingid larvae, such as Compsogene panopus (61 a), take up a position 
characteristic of Sphinges, i. e. they raise the front body to about a right angle. Acherontia lachesis and medusa 
mostly only bend down the head. Larvae of Polyptychus trilineatus bend the front body downwards and stretch 
the vertex forwards. An extreme of this carriage is shown by the larvae of the Australian Coequosa triangularis 
which, without the caudal horn, bend over the anterior half of the body hindwards, so that the vertex, ending 
in a long point, is stretched forward like a horn. In doing so the head is hardly discernible from the rest 
of the body; but as the larva has eye-like spots at the anal end, it looks as if the head were at that place, 
or a head at each end, so that these larvae are commonly called ,,double heads“ in their patria. Some larvae 
curve the anterior half of the body inward, but extend the head and neck upward, thus producing an S-shaped 
curve. Others inflate their chest without thickening the dorsal segments; the head of the larva is stretched 
forward (not downward as in Pergesa ), however not with the vertex as in the preceding ones but with the mouth 
in front, as for instance in the larva of the palaearctic Acosmeryx sericeus (63 c). The larva of Macroglossum 
passalus lays back the anterior part of the body over the dorsum like the larva of the palaearctic Lophopteryx 
camelina, so that the vertex rests on the 6th ring, whereas the larva of Rhodosoma triopus (64 e) raises its bod} 7 
to the 8th segment and bends it over hindward in such a way that the 7th ring touches the apex of the caudal 
horn which is enormously developed here. 
Quite different is the behaviour of those Sphingid larvae which are mimetically changed, by copying 
an animal. V\ ith the origin of this mask and the transition-forms to this mask in African larvae I have already 
dealt at large in Vol. XIV (p. 355). I have also written there about the larva of a Theretra, which I discovered 
in Singapore and which not only exhibited the exact marking of a snake on its body, but the lateral false eye 
of which had the lustre of a snake’s eye; it glittered like enamel, so that also a structural mimetic change of 
*) ROTHSCHILD <£• JORDAN, A Revision of the Lep. Family Sphingidae, London, 1903. 
