LEPIDOPTERA, BUTTERFLIES

a wing’). Owing to their size and beauty, butterflies and moths are amongst the best known of insects, c. 50,000 species being scattered over all the world. The name ‘Lepidoptera’ signifies the presence of scales exceedingly minute and dustlike, but often brilliantly colored, which cover the four large, moderately veined wings. To actual pigment in the scales, which, as in Morpho, may number 2 million and a half, or to close ribbing on their upper surface, are due the beautiful colors and metallic sheen so familiar in the group. But other features are very characteristic. Adult lepidoptera feed on vegetable matter, sucking the juices from: plants and flowers, and for this purpose some of the mouth parts (first maxille) form a long ‘tongue’ or proboscis, which in the hawk moths may be 10 in. in length but which can be coiled up like a watch. spring when not in use. With this is ees a pumping apparatus in the ead. The changes which pa in the history of the individual are great and abrupt. The eggs, marvelous in variety of shape and sculpturing in different species, are laid singly or in patches either on a chance object or on the particular plant on which the larvee are to feed—a complete brood numbering from a few dozens to many you sands. In a few days or months, as the case may be, the larva or caterpillar appears and sets about its life-work, which is simply to feed ravenously, to grow, rest, and moult. In shape it is wormlike, often hairy, with a large head and biting mouth parts, three thoracic segments, each with a pair of clawed limbs—corresponding to those of the adult—and ten abdominal segments, with usually four or five pairs of clasping pro-legs. ‘When the caterpillar has collected much reserve food material in its ‘fatty body’ it enters a trance, the pupal stage, the chrysalides butterflies being suspended from a leaf or branch, often by a silken girdle, the pups of moths lying generally concealed in the ground or under bark, or hidden in a cocoon, such as those of the largs Bombycid moths, which furnish the world’s silk-supply. Within the hard pupal skin great changes foreshadow the limbs, wings, and organs of the adult, and finally the imago bursts forth, and after resting a few moments to dry its wings, soars into the air, The length of the life-history is very A variable, some species having only one generation in three years, while others have five generations a year. Butterflies (Rhopalocera) are mostly day-fiiers; antenne: with a_club-like or swollen tip; hind-wings with a shoulder which edges under the fore-wing, but without a bristle or ‘frenulum’. Of the butterflies examples are: the purple emperor (A patura iris), the tortoiseshells | and the peacock (Vane a), the fritillaries (Argynnis, Melitoca), the blues (Lycoenidoe), and the cabbage butterfly (Preris bra icoe), whose caterpillars are so destructive in the garden. But none of these compare in brilliancy of coloring or size with the gigantic Morphos of tropical Asia and America, sometimes _ with a wingspan of close on 10 in, Moths (Heterocera) are mostly nightlike at the tip. Hind-wing is without a distinct shoulder, but with a bristle (‘frenulum’) which engages with a projection or tuft of scales on the fore-wing, for purposes of support. In some cases a frenulum is absent, but never where the antenns are butterfly-like. Familar examples are: the hawk moths (Sphingidoe), including the death’s-head, the clear wings (Sestidoe), resembling Hyand the clothes moths (Tineidoe). But those which most concern man are the large silk spinners (Bombycidoe), of which the true silkworm moth (Bombyx mort) has been introduced to Europe, its larval cocoons supplying the finest silk of commerce, }