members exhibit no appreciable change. The wings of Butterflies, as Mr. Bates has well put it, "serve as a tablet on which Nature writes the story of the modifications of species;" they enable us to perceive changes that would otherwise be uncertain and difficult of observation, and exhibit to us on an enlarged scale the effects of the climatal and other physical conditions which influence more or less profoundly the organization of every living thing.

A proof that this greater sensibility to modifying causes is not imaginary may, I think, be drawn from the consideration, that while the Lepidoptera as a whole are of all insects the least essentially varied in form, structure, or habits, yet in the number of their specific forms they are not much inferior to those orders which range over a much wider field of nature, and exhibit more deeply seated structural modifications. The Lepidoptera are all vegetable-feeders in their larva-state, and suckers of juices or other liquids in their perfect form. In their most widely separated groups they differ but little from a common type, and offer comparatively unimportant modifications of structure or of habits. The Coleoptera, the Diptera, or the Hymenoptera, on the other hand, present far greater and more essential variations. In either of these orders we have both vegetable and animalfeeders, aquatic, and terrestrial, and parasitic groups. Whole families are devoted to special departments in the economy of nature. Seeds, fruits, bones, carcases, excrement, bark, have each their special and

dependent insect tribes from among them; whereas the Lepidoptera are, with but few exceptions, confined to the one function of devouring the foliage of living vegetation. We might therefore anticipate that their species - population would be only equal to that of sections of the other orders having a similar uniform mode of existence; and the fact that their numbers are at all comparable with those of entire orders, so much more varied in organization and habits, is, I think, a proof that they are in general highly susceptible of specific modification.

Question of the rank of the Papilionida.

The Papilionidæ are a family of diurnal Lepidoptera which have hitherto, by almost universal consent, held the first rank in the order; and though this position has recently been denied them, I cannot altogether acquiesce in the reasoning by which it has been proposed to degrade them to a lower rank. In Mr. Bates's most excellent paper on the Heliconidæ, (published in the Transactions of the Linnæan Society, vol. xxiii., p. 495) he claims for that family the highest position, chiefly because of the imperfect structure of the fore legs, which is there carried to an extreme degree of abortion, and thus removes them further than any other family from the Hesperidæ and Heterocera, which all have perfect legs. Now it is a question whether any amount of difference which is exhibited merely in the imperfection or abortion of certain organs, can establish in the

group exhibiting it a claim to a high grade of organization, still less can this be allowed when another group along with perfection of structure in the same organs, exhibits modifications peculiar to it, together with the possession of an organ which in the remainder of the order is altogether wanting. This is, however, the position of the Papilionidæ. The perfect insects possess two characters quite peculiar to them. Mr. Edward Doubleday, in his "Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera," says, "The Papilionida may be known by the apparently four-branched median nervule and the spur on the anterior tibiæ, characters found in no other family." The four-branched median nervule is a character so constant, so peculiar, and so well marked, as to enable a person to tell, at a glance at the wings only of a butterfly, whether it does or does not belong to this family; and I am not aware that any other group of butterflies, at all comparable to this in extent and modifications of form, possesses a character in its neuration to which the same degree of certainty can be attached. The spur on the anterior tibiæ is also found in some of the Hesperidæ, and is therefore supposed to show a direct affinity between the two groups: but I do not imagine it can counterbalance the differences in neuration and in every other part of their organization. The most characteristic feature of the Papilionidæ, however, and that on which I think insufficient stress has been laid, is undoubtedly the peculiar structure of the larvæ. These all possess an extra

per

ordinary organ situated on the neck, the well-known Y-shaped tentacle, which is entirely concealed in a state of repose, but which is capable of being suddenly thrown out by the insect when alarmed. When we consider this singular apparatus, which in some species is nearly half an inch long, the arrangement of muscles for its protrusion and retraction, its perfect concealment during repose, its blood-red colour, and the suddenness with which it can be thrown out, we must, I think, be led to the conclusion that it serves as a protection to the larva, by startling and frightening away some enemy when about to seize it, and is thus one of the causes which has led to the wide extension and maintained the manence of this now dominant group. Those who believe that such peculiar structures can only have arisen by very minute successive variations, each one advantageous to its possessor, must see, in the possession of such an organ by one group, and its complete absence in every other, a proof of a very ancient origin and of very long-continued modification. And such a positive structural addition to the organization of the family, subserving an important function, seems to me alone sufficient to warrant us in considering the Papilionidae as the most highly developed portion of the whole order, and thus in retaining it in the position which the size, strength, beauty, and general structure of the perfect insects have been generally thought to deserve.

In Mr. Trimen's paper on "Mimetic Analogies

among African Butterflies," in the Transactions of the Linnæan Society, for 1868, he has argued strongly in favour of Mr. Bates' views as to the higher position of the Danaide and the lower grade of the Papilionidæ, and has adduced, among other facts, the undoubted resemblance of the pupa of Parnassius, a genus of Papilionidæ, to that of some Hesperidae and moths. I admit, therefore, that he has proved the Papilionidae to have retained several characters of the nocturnal Lepidoptera which the Danaida have lost, but I deny that they are therefore to be considered lower in the scale of organization. Other characters may be pointed out which indicate that they are farther removed from the moths even than the Danaidæ. The club of the antennæ is the most prominent and most constant feature by which butterflies may be distinguished from moths, and of all butterflies the Papilionidæ have the most beautiful and most perfectly developed clubbed antennæ. Again, butterflies and moths are broadly characterised by their diurnal and nocturnal habits respectively, and the Papilionidæ, with their close allies the Pieridæ, are the most pre-eminently diurnal of butterflies, most of them lovers of sunshine, and not presenting a single crepuscular species. The great group of the Nymphalidæ, on the other hand (in which Mr. Bates includes the Danaidæ and Heliconidæ as sub-families), contains an entire sub-family (Brassolide) and a number of genera, such as Thaumantis, Zeuxidia, Pavonia, &c., of crepuscular habits, while a large