The Moths and Butterflies 
439 
Fig. 5) is the most abundant Eastern species, although H. diffinis, with 
bright-yellow hairs in place of brownish yellow on thorax and abdomen, is 
common. In Colorado and Utah is found a smaller species, II. brucei , 
with yellowish thorax and abdominal band, and in California are one or two 
varieties of H. diffinis. The larva of H. diffinis (Fig. 631) feeds on honey¬ 
suckle and snowberry-bush and is pale green above, darker green on the 
sides, with three brown stripes on the under side; the caudal horn is yellow 
with blue-black tip; some of the caterpillars, as is common among the larvae 
of this family, are brown instead of green. It is two-brooded. Moths just 
issued from the chrysalid have scales over all of the wing surface, but these 
scales are so loosely attached on the discal area that the first few flights 
dislodge them, so that the “clear-wing” comes about. The larvae of 
H. thy she feed on viburnum, snowberry, and hawthorn. 
BUTTERFLIES. 
Taken all in all the butterflies are the most familiar and attractive insects 
to people in general; their size, beautiful color-patterns, and daytime flight 
Fig. 633.—The Parnassian butterfly, Parnassius smintheus, which lives in the Rocky 
Mountains and Sierra Nevada at an altitude of 5000 feet and more. (Natural size.) 
chiefly account for this. Six hundred and fifty butterfly species (compare 
with the six thousand species of moths) are accredited to this country in 
the latest authoritative catalogue of North American Lepidoptera. These 
represent, according to this catalogue, thirteen families; a more usual classi¬ 
fication, however, groups all these species into six families. As this latter 
arrangement is in use in most of the insect manuals, it will be adopted in this. 
Comstock, who has given the classification of the Lepidoptera much attention, 
gives the following key to families: 
