The Moth Book

ORDER LEPIDOPTERA

SUBORDER HETEROCERA (MOTHS)

FAMILY I.

THE SPHINGIDÆ (HAWKMOTHS)

"The Sphinx is drowsy,

Her wings are furled."-EMERSON.

THE moths composing this family vary greatly in size. Some African species are very little more than an inch in expanse of wings. Those which occur in North America are medium-sized or large.

The body is relatively very stout, the abdomen conic, cylindric, or flattened on the ventral surface, always protruding far beyond the hind margin of the secondaries, sometimes adorned with lateral or terminal tufts capable of expansion. The thorax is stout and often advanced beyond the insertion of the wings. The head is large and generally prominent. The eyes are often large, prominent, and generally naked, never hairy. The palpi are well, but never excessively, developed. The proboscis is generally long, sometimes much longer than the body, but in a few genera among the Ambulicinæ greatly reduced and even obsolete. The antennæ are well developed, stouter in the male. than in the female sex, thickening from the base to the middle, or in some genera to nearly the end, usually hooked at the extremity, sometimes merely curved. The joints of the antennæ in the case of the males

FIG. 20.-Greatly magnified view of the under side of three joints of the antenna of P. quinquemaculatus.

of some of the subfamilies are equipped at either end with peculiarly arranged fascicles of projecting hairs, or cilia, the arrangement

of which, as examined under the microscope, is seen to be quite different from that which prevails in any other family of moths. The accompanying illustration (Fig. 20) shows this arrangement in the case of the common Five-spotted Hawkmoth, (Protoparce quinquemaculatus).

The wings are small in comparison with the body. The front wings are very long in proportion to their width, and the costal veins are always very stoutly developed. The tip of the wing is usually pointed, and the margins are straight or evenly rounded, though in some genera, principally belonging to the subfamily Ambulicina, they have undulated or scalloped margins. The hind margin of the fore wings is always much shorter than the costal margin. The hind wings are relatively quite small. The venation of the wings is characteristic. The primaries have from eleven to twelve veins, the secondaries eight, reckoning the two internal veins, veins a and b, as one. Veins eight and seven are

connected near the base of the wing by a short vein, or bar. The discal cell is relatively quite small in both wings. There is always a frenulum, though in the Ambulicinæ it is frequently merely vestigial. The general style of the venation is illustrated in Figure 21, which represents the structure of the wings of Sesia tantalus Linnæus. The hawkmoths have prodigious power of flight. A few genera are diurnal in their habits; most of them are crepuscular, flying in the dusk of evening, a few also about dawn.

FIG. 21. Neuration of wings of Sesia tantalus Linnæus.

The larvæ are usually large. There is great variety in their color, though the majority of the North American species are of some shade of green. They usually have oblique stripes on their sides, and most of them have a caudal horn, which in the last stages in some genera is transformed into a lenticular tubercle. In a few genera the anal horn is wanting. The anterior segments of the bodies of the larvæ are retractile. When in motion the body is long and fusiform, but when at rest the head and the anterior segments are drawn back, the rings

EXPLANATION OF PLATE II

(The specimens figured are contained in the collection of W. J.

Holland.)

Hæmorrhagia thetis Boisduval, ♂.

2. Hæmorrhagia tenuis Grote, .

3. Hæmorrhagia axillaris Grote & Robinson, ♂.

4. Hæmorrhagia axillaris Grote & Robinson, .

5. Hæmorrhagia thysbe Fabricius, ♂.

6. Hæmorrhagia cimbiciformis Stephens, .

IO.

Hæmorrhagia brucei French, ♂.

Proserpinus flavofasciata Walker, .