. Natural history. Zoology. 588 INSECTA—ORDER LEPIDOPTERA. Family Hesperiidce (Sldppers). The last family of butterflies, the Hesperiidce, has six perfect legs in botli sexes, but differs very much from any of the preceding groups. The head is broad, the antennae are set widely apart, and are generally hooked at the tips, the body is rather stout, and tlie flight is short and jerlcy. Our species have somewhat triangular fore-wings, and rounded hind-wings, and are brown and tawny ; black, tesselated with square white spots- or brown, with dull greyish andrather indistinct spots. The Hesperiidce
. Natural history. Zoology. 588 INSECTA—ORDER LEPIDOPTERA. Family Hesperiidce (Sldppers). The last family of butterflies, the Hesperiidce, has six perfect legs in botli sexes, but differs very much from any of the preceding groups. The head is broad, the antennae are set widely apart, and are generally hooked at the tips, the body is rather stout, and tlie flight is short and jerlcy. Our species have somewhat triangular fore-wings, and rounded hind-wings, and are brown and tawny ; black, tesselated with square white spots- or brown, with dull greyish andrather indistinct spots. The Hesperiidce are very numerous in South America, but less so in the Old World. They are mostly of small size, the largest being a dull blue West African species, Rhopalocainpta iphis (Dru.), which measures about four inches across the wings. They form a transition to the moths ; many species sit with the whigs expanded, instead of raising them over their p.^ Skippek backs; and they often make a rough sort of cocoon in (Hesperia malva). Nat. size. a leaf. The Grizzled Skipper, Hesperia maltiw (Linn.), here figured is a small black and white butterfly not uncommon in England. The Heterocera, or moths, are divided into a great number of families, which are loosely classed together under various headings ; but the classifica- tion of moths is still in an unsatisfactory state, and though Heterocera, or many groups of families, large and small, are perfectly Moths. natural, others are ill-defined and unsatisfactory. The pld group Sphinges is now quite given up, including, as it did, three totally distinct sections, the hawk-moths, clear-wings, and burnets. The Bombyces include a number of very discordant families, for which no definite collective characters can be found, such as the tigers, footmen, eggars, emperor moths, swifts, etc. The Noctuce, or night-flying moths proper, are more compact, though even here there is a difficulty in determining whether many genera belong to thi
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