Fossil Butterflies: Memoirs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I.Scudder, Samuel Hubbard
Science
Fossil Butterflies: Memoirs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I.
Scudder, Samuel Hubbard
Butterflies, Fossil
With Lethe (Pl. II, fig. 6) and Debis (Pl. II. fig. 10) the fossil genus
can better be compared, as far as the form of the wing, the dilated
costal vein, and the position and direction of the straight vein closing
the cell are concerned; but in both these genera only a single superior
subcostal nervule is emitted before the apex of the cell; the form of
the cell again shows rather closer affinity between Lethites and these
genera, although the difference in these respects is but slight. It
is by no means distantly related to Enodia, in which two subcostal
nervules are emitted before the tip of the cell, but differs from it in
the much greater and more abrupt swelling of the costal vein, and in
the much greater distance beyond the second divarication of the median
nervure at which the vein closing the cell meets this nervure. It even
exhibits no small affinity to Cercyonis, and especially to those species
in which there is little dilation of the median nervure; the costal
nervure is swollen in precisely the same way, and the superior nervules
of the subcostal nervure are much the same; but the form of the wing is
strikingly different, and the lowest subcostal interspace much wider at
the base, in comparison with the width of the base of the subcosto-median
interspace, in Cercyonis than in Lethites; and this seems to be a
character of considerable importance. It may be noted in this connection
that the markings of the fossil must have closely resembled _Cercyonis
Pegala_.
Its nearest ally among living European types would seem to be _Maniola
Hermione_, in which the costal and median veins are about equally
swollen. The neuration of Lethites agrees with this genus in much
the same way as it does with Cercyonis, the comparative width of the
interspaces beyond the cell being very different in the living genera
from what it is in the fossil. In the form of the wing Maniola agrees
much better with Lethites than Cercyonis does, but the costa is much more
arched, and the cell is much the longer in Maniola; were there no obscure
spot in the lower median interspace in the male of _M. Hermione_, the
markings of the fossil would agree with it almost perfectly.
LETHITES REYNESII SCUDDER.
Plate I, figs. 2, 5.
_Satyrites Reynesii_ SCUDD., Rev. et. Mag. de Zool., 1871-72,
66-72, pl. vii (1872); IB., Descr. Pap. Foss. 1-7, pl. (1872);
IB., Geol. Mag. ix, 532-33, pl. xiii, figs. 2, 3 (1872); IB.,
Descr. Foss. Butt. 1-2, pl., figs. 2, 3 (1872); BROD., Distr.
Corr. Foss. Ins. [_Satyrites Reynesii_], 8-9 (1873).
I give below the original of the first paper cited above, excepting the
portion which was quoted under the genus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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