March, 1898 ] GROTE I CLASSIFICATION OF LEPIDOPTERA. 
15 
and Psychidae as standing in a connection with the ancestral line of the 
Emperor Moths, which may be merely noticed in passing. 
Bearing in mind the two directions in which the evolution of the 
wing is chiefly displayed, we find in the Attacinse their fullest develop¬ 
ment. In fact the wing of Rothschildia jacobcea represents almost the 
ideal apex of the movement. In the first direction, the Media and its 
system, as such, has completely disappeared. The crossvein has 
vanished. Veins IV2 and IV1 form part of the system of the Radius, 
vein IV3 forms part of that of the Cubitus. That portion of the cross¬ 
vein, belonging to it morphologically, lying between IV2 and IVi, has 
become physiologically the base of vein IV2*. In the second direction, 
the radial branches are reduced to three from five. Added to this, the 
concave inner margin of the secondaries has lost vein VIII. By this 
latter character we are reminded of Papilio , and that the concave margin 
is a specialization is made clearer in this case by its more excessive de¬ 
velopment, attended by a shrinking in the length of vein VII, in the 
more specialized Parnassius. 
There will come a time, to speak after the fashion of Mr. Strecker, 
and the ancient Greeks, when the uncritical classification which thrusts 
the Papilionides between the Blues and the Skippers (these latter two, 
as we believe, nearly related) will be read with amazement. The fable 
that the Papilionid wing is the most generalized must give way to the 
view that it is peculiarly specialized by the suppression of vein VIII of 
secondaries. Generalized it is, as compared with Parnassius , but it 
should not be compared with the other butterflies, since it has had a 
different line of development. Undoubtedly, the irritable defense of 
Mr. W. H. Edwards that Papilio has six walking legs and Nymphalis 
only four, was not sufficient to dispel the illusion clinging to the system 
of Bates. It was also felt that the more ideal championship of Wallace, 
that Papilio was so large and complete, could not excuse its being 
placed “ at the head of a phalanx in reality, a phalanx spreading over 
the plain of the present without a leader. All this was perceived, and 
other similar attacks upon a system adopted by my friend Dr. Scudder, 
and thus made part of the supreme cult of Boston, fell equally power¬ 
less. So that newcomers, rising from obscurity, felt themselves obliged 
to confess the creed as a matter of “ my opinion,’’ and to follow up the 
futile expression of credo quia ineptum by the statement that “ the 
sequence is in accord with the more conservative modern classification.” 
Where this more conservative modern classification leads to we may see 
* Compare Mittheilungen aus d. Roemer-Museum, No. 8, p. 24. 
