"WILLIAM PENN PROPRIETARY AND GOVERN OF YE PROVINCE OF PENNSYLVANIA AND Y TERRITORIES THEREUNTO Belonging. "To ye members of ye Provincial Councill of yo Province of Pennsilvania & ye Territories thereunto belonging.

"Since it hath pleased God so to dispose of me as to call me by his Providence into England and 'y it is requisite that ye Power I have should be left to maintain & exercise Govern for ye Good of the Province and Territories: To ye end that ye People may be sensible of ye Intire Confidence I have in them weh which I hope will begett the like in them, to me & mine, I doo hereby committ ye Power vested in me to you their chosen Provincial Councill & do hereby Nominate & appoint my Trusty & Loving Friend Thomas Lloyd President of ye same, he & you to Act & doo all things, that by Law and Charter you may doo for ye Good of ye Province, & not to y° Detriment of me my Heirs & Assigns, which power shall remain as Granted, till further Ord. Given at Philadelphia y Sixth day of ye Sixth Month One Thousand Six Hundred & Eighty-four being ye Thirty-Sixth Year of ye King's Reign & ye Fourth of my Government.

"WM. PENN."

On the back of the commission is the following inscription in a different handwriting:

"Memord

"By the Power within expressed & mentioned I understand ye use of the executive power cheifly as chuseing officers &c. Intending y all law y' shall or may be made should receive and have my further determination, confirmination and consent or else to be voyd in themselves.

"Given ye day of ye within date on board the Ketch Endeavour.

66 6th 6th mo. 1684.

"WM. PENN."

A facsimile of the commission and of the memorandum endorsed thereon is appended:

Stated Meeting, January 20, 1899.

Vice-President SELLERS in the Chair.

Present, 12 members.

The death of Major Jedediah Hotchkiss, of Staunton, Va., a member of the Society, was announced.

A verbal communication was made by Mr. Wadamori, of Japan, upon "A New System of Mnemonics."

A paper entitled "Photometric Researches," by Prof. Hugo Seeliger, of Munich, Bavaria, translated and edited by Prof. A. W. Myers, of the University of Illinois, was offered for the Transactions, and on motion was referred to a Committee consisting of Profs. E. C. Pickering, C. L. Doolittle and M. B. Snyder.

A communication for the Proceedings from Mr. A. Radcliffe Grote, on "Specializations of the Lepidopterous Wing; the Parnassi-Papilionidae. I," was read.

Dr. I. Minis Hays was elected Librarian for the current

year.

Pending nominations Nos. 1477, 1478, 1480, and new nominations Nos. 1481, 1482, 1483, 1484, 1485, 1486, 1487, 1488 and 1489, having been read, the meeting was declared adjourned.

SPECIALIZATIONS OF THE LEPIDOPTEROUS WING; PARNASSI-PAPILIONIDÆ.

I.

BY A. RADCLIFFE GROTE, A.M.

(Read January 20, 1899.)

This communication embodies results obtained from a study of the neuration of the types of genera proposed in literature in the Papilionides. It may be considered as a contribution to phylogeny in the group, from the fact that it exhibits the characters of specialization recognized by me in the structure of the wings, while the inference is accepted that the more specialized are also the younger

forms. It may also be looked upon as a contribution to taxonomy, because the differences noted may find their place in generic descriptions and serve to regulate the extension of minor groups of the species.

I have divided (February, 1897) the Butterflies, or diurnal Lepidoptera, into two major groups, which may be thus defined:

Vein ix of fore wing present; not more than

one internal vein on hind wing . . . . Papilionides. Vein ix of fore wing absent; at least two in

ternal veins on hind wing

Hesperiades.

The characters given above to the Papilionides seem, at least in combination, exclusive of all other hitherto discovered Lepidoptera. The opposed characters will not exclude larger groups of the Moths from the Hesperiades. With the latter the present study is only incidentally concerned. Following modern classificatory notions, I have given to the names of these two major groups of the Butterflies an accepted termination (ides), and I would attach to each the taxonomical value of a superfamily. This course seems to be additionally warranted if we accept my assumption that the two groups are not immediately connected, their phylogeny distinct and that no nearer blood-relationship exists between them. These two major groups of the Butterflies have, I am led to believe, developed themselves independently, so that the obvious characters which would unite them have been secondarily acquired, and constitute a parallelism in development. The absolute character of a primary nature which separates the Papilionides from the rest of the diurnals is the presence of vein ix on primaries. The neurational characters, used here to divide the Papilionides into family and subfamily groups, are in their nature. secondary, gradational and recurrent; in other words, characters of specialization only.

CHARACTERS OF SPECIALIZATION.

The first direction in which specialization shows itself lies in the suppression of the media on both wings. In this generally expressed direction the Papilionides show a course parallel with that undertaken by the Pieridæ, with the difference that the middle