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1955
The Lepidopterists' News
215
I think that the girth of Papilio and Pierid pupae is not the vestige of a cocoon, for both coexist in many Skippers, if not perhaps all. I was interested to discover a few years ago that Papilio has all the instincts of a Nymphalid in shedding its skin without losing its hold on the silk button. I had a P. philenor larva fail to spin the usual girth. It pupated perfectly, hanging by its tail like a Vanessa.
Cocoons are stated to be a protection against damp and mould. No doubt they are in a highly humid country like England, but I am sure that in more of the world they are a protection against drought, which is the chief killer when an entomologist over here gets careless. This is certainly true of our Cecropia, Promethea and Polyphemus, which soon dry up if removed from their heavy cocoons, and I think equally if a Sphinx is dug up without precaution. I think species from the humid tropics are much more likely to have open-mesh cocoons like the Cingilia group of geometers and Urodus.
For the record, the Gypsy Moth was not "accidentally" introduced to America, but brought in purposely by TROUVELOT, who thought it might produce a useful silk (not need such delicate treatment as the Chinese silkworm). The story is that a maid swept the cocoons with egg-masses out the window, and not all were recovered. In any case there seems to have been only a single introduction, and we never have the flying females that Ford mentions.
As Panaxia dominula is not a Hypsid but a somewhat aberrant Arctiid, one can say of the group of moths listed on p. 11 which have the same scent: "all Arctiidse".
As to light-perception in insects, shouldn't the Diptera be mentioned as having a range of visibility much like our own, which is stated curiously as approximately 4000 to 7800 A; I think 3800 to 7000 is closer to an average person's range? On the last line of p. 15, apparently "repulsion" is accidentally written for "attraction"; of course the repulsion sphere is the smaller, since most moths approach a light pretty directly until close, and only then begin to circle or even fly away.
The same reversal of our experience appears again on the next page; and I can only wonder if moths may not actually behave differently in the Old and the New World. If one seeks a reason why they might, there is always the problem of the effect of primitive man and his fires. He certainly existed and used fire untold millenia in the Old World, before he got over to America perhaps only some ten thousand years ago. The European moths that should have behaved like American ones about the lights, may all long since be extinct.
Well, this is my reaction to only a few pages of this fascinating Ford book. My copy has many more notes on its margins, and I wish I might write a book of comment; but our editor would certainly behead this review if I did (and justly). So I will end by saying it is a "must" for any one interested in moths beyond the pinned collection, even though it has kept almost too strictly to the limitation of "British Moths" and Macrolepidoptera.
WM. T. M. FORBES, 16 Garden St., Cambridge 38, Mass., U. S. A.
NOMENCLATURE NOTICE
An application for suppression, for purposes of type selection, of A guide to an arrangement of British Insects (1837), by J. Curtis, has been received by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature. Any specialist who may wish to comment on this application should write the Commission Secretary, FRANCIS HEMMING, 28 Park Village East, Regent's Park, London, N.W. 1, England, as soon as possible and no later than July 1956. The application may be seen in full in Bull. Zoological Nomenclature, vol.9: part 12 (January, 1956).
C. L. Remington