40 
its astonishing persistence in these characters, which we class as 
vestigial. 
In conclusion I would ask our members to bear the question of 
heredity more earnestly in mind in connection with our favourite 
hobby, and I think if all of us utilised all the information that we 
come across in our entomological studies, we should see more of the 
part played by this important factor in the natural world, and be better 
able to understand some of the results which we see around us. 
THE RE-CLASSIFICATION OF THE LEPIDOPTERA. 
(Read Feb. 6th, 1900, by W. J. KAYE, F.E.S.) 
I am afraid I am not on untrodden ground in the subject that I 
have chosen for this paper. Messrs. Tutt, Chapman, Meyrick, and 
others, have all given us very valuable papers on the subject but in 
none of them I think is the subject treated from the families, genera, 
and species point of view simultaneously. In using the term re¬ 
classification perhaps some ambiguity may arise as to the probable 
drift of what I have to say. Ever since the days of Linne, who 
started the scheme, the lepidoptera have been almost in a constant 
state of re-classification. At some periods the original work has been 
more prolific than at others. But it is highly probable that a year has 
never passed in which some re-arrangement in the position of families, 
genera, and species has not taken place. This as we shall see repre¬ 
sents progress, and however difficult and increasingly difficult it will 
be to keep pace with the times as fresh work and in different directions 
takes place, we must take it as a maxim that the more stereotyped we 
make our classification the less knowledge do we acquire. It is of 
course only during the past few years that the greatest revolutions have 
taken place, and our eyes opened to the almost childish arrangement 
that has existed in the past, of the position and nature of families and 
genera. But it is not my intention to entertain or amuse you with 
our forefathers’ ideas of classification, but to give you an epitome of 
the present day results with some comments on their validity. 
The very first piece of classification is our defining of two large 
divisions, the butterflies and moths. These have been scientifically 
named the Rhopalocera and Heterocera, but the names are not very 
fortunate as we find we have insects with clubbed antennae which do 
not fulfil the general conditions that hold for the butterflies or Rhopa¬ 
locera. We, however, do not meet with the other extreme, as butter¬ 
flies are unknown that do not have some sort of a thickening at the 
termination of the antennae. It might be supposed that, as the rule of 
clubbed antennas does not hold everywhere for making the subdivision, 
failing the life-history it would be impossible from the imagines 
to form a correct conclusion. But it has been discovered that in the 
connecting group with the moths, the huschemonidae and Castniadae, 
