NOTODONTIDAE. General Topics. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
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18. Family: Notodontidae. 
The family of the Notodontidae undoubtedly numbers among those families the forms of which have 
become known mostly in the last 3 or 4 decades. Although the number of the species known, which according 
to Kirby’s Catalogue was 626 at the end of the last century, decreased at first owing to the fact that not all the 
forms quoted there are regarded as genuine Notodontidae today, the number of species has now increased 
extraordinarily by new descriptions, so that already in 1914 their number was stated to be 1900, and in the 
“Macrolepidoptera” even more than 2100 species and besides them several hundreds of named subspecies have 
been dealt with. It is especially the Inclo-Australian and American faunae that have supplied most of the 
species lately described, so that the total number of forms commented upon here has enormously increased; 
in the Indo-Australian region the number of 200 quoted by Kirby in 1891, and of 300 quoted by Rebel in 1913 
has reached more than 450, thus 50 percent more than was estimated last. The number will grow even larger, 
if this family will become elaborated as thoroughly as the Papilionidae, Sphingidae, and few others have been 
studied of late. 
The reason why so many Notodontidae have remained unknown for such a long time is that they are mostly 
very difficult to discover. In Europe their biological and bionomical peculiarities are well known and thus 
it is rather easy to trace most of their species in the open air, whereas in the tropics it is sometimes hardly 
possible to discover these remarkably well hidden insects, and considering the general monophagy of the larvae 
it is also very difficult to breed them. If we think of the great difficulties of procuring specimens e. g. of 
Ptilophora pluniigerci which, in most of the districts, can only be discovered on Acer campestre and the imagines 
of which copy so marvellously the tiny pendent winged nut of the food-plant, that a non-connoisseur is only 
by chance able to notice the insect, we understand that the capturing of Notodontidae in foreign faunae is almost 
exclusively confined to the lantern. In the eastern tropics, where we are uninitiatedly opposed to the deceptions 
by means of adaptation, they are most effective; 1 refer to my observation quoted by Grunberg in Vol. II, 
p. 317, concerning a Norraca longipennis ; holding in my hand the branch with the imago dangling from it, I 
could only ascertain by fingering it that it was not a small yellow bamboo-leaf swinging in the wind, but a 
well developed insect. 
It is a most striking fact that the distortions of shape of the Notodontidae copying fruits, barks etc. are 
almost exclusively produced by a certain way of holding and placing their wings, without influencing the shape 
itself of the wings. On the contrary, the shape of the wings is rather uniform in the whole family; the inner- 
marginal lobe of the forewing, from which the family has derived its denomination, is at the same place in 
nearly all the species, and it is merely an atrophy of it or an elevation, often only produced by more developed 
fringes, which forms the difference between numerous genera or species. Many of the resting Notodontidae 
are distorted more by hair-tufts of the b o d y, especially of the abdomen, than by the shape of the wings. 
In India the Tarsolepis (79 a) and Dudusa, in America the Crinodes, exhibit in the male a penicilliformly branched 
anal tuft which can be spread out and which, on being raised, projects out of the wings, which are closely 
appressed to the body, and together with the inner-marginal lobe of the forewing increases the irregularity of the 
exterior shape of the resting insect. Seen under the microscope the elements forming the tuft prove to be 
prolonged bristle-like scales, the stalk of which being as long as % cm terminates into a plate shaped like a 
tennis racket, distinctly showing the morphological equivalence of the hair of the body and the scales of the 
wings. These rackets may (in the tail-pencil of Crinodes besckei) exhibit as many as 100 fine longitudinal veins 
and whilst most of them terminate with a smooth edge, others end in 2 or 4 sharp notches or points, thus showing 
the very same structure as the hair-scales which form the tower-like thoracal tuft of the Crinodes. 
When the wings are opened, the Sphingid shape of the larger Notodontidae , already mentioned in Vol. XIV 
is unmistakable. The long, lanceolate forewings, the relatively small hindwings, the exactly circular, rather long 
