Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Butterflies Vol 1).djvu/9



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Lepidoptera or scaled-wing insects comprise the Butterflies and Moths of popular Entomology. These, under the respective names of Rhopalocera and Heterocera, in allusion to the difference in the form of the antennæ, were regarded as suborders. Of late years, however, it has been recognized that not only are the distinctions between the divisions, as above indicated, not sharply defined, but that differences exist among the groups of the Heterocera quite as, if not more, important than between the two Suborders. In consequence, various revisions of the Order have been proposed.

Comstock (‘Manual for the Study of Insects’) divides the Lepidoptera into two Suborders:—

A. The Jugate Lepidoptera.—“Moths in which the two wings of each side are united by a jugum”.

B. The Frenate Lepidoptera.—“Moths, Skippers, Butterflies, in which the two wings on each side are united by a frenulum, or by its substitute a large humeral angle to the hind wing.”

In the lesser divisions of the Frenates, the Skippers and the Butterflies form two groups, Hesperiina and Papilionina.

Much can be said for the separation of the Skippers from the rest of the Butterflies, and there is no doubt that in the existing fauna the former stand as an isolated group, in some respects very different from the true Butterflies.

Meyrick (‘Handbook of British Lepidoptera’) divides the Order into nine main groups, of which the (= Papilionina + Hesperiina of Comstock) forms one. Accepting this arrangement, the forms in the group of the can be distinguished from the rest of the Lepidoptera, (1) by the