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
It is rather extraordinary that the upper Miocene beds of Œningen,
Bavaria, which, if we except the amber, have furnished almost more
insects than all the other beds of fossil insects of the world together,
and which are more recent than any of those in which butterflies have
been found, have yielded scarcely any remains of Lepidoptera (one
species) and none whatever of butterflies.
PROBABLE FOOD-PLANTS OF TERTIARY CATERPILLARS.
Of the five butterflies from Aix, two belong to the Oreades (_Neorinopis
sepulta_ and _Lethites Reynesii_) the food of whose caterpillars at
the present epoch has invariably been found to be either Gramineæ or,
occasionally, Cyperaceæ. Both of these groups are present in the deposits
of Aix, the former being represented by ten species of Poacites, and the
latter by a Cyperites;[AG] and it is in the highest degree probable that
these formed the sustenance of the Oreades of that epoch. A third species
(_Pamphilites abdita_) belongs to the Astyci, a group whose principal
food is the same family of plants, Gramineæ, although some species have
been found also upon Althea, Malva and Lavatera (Malvaceæ), Trifolium,
Coronilla and ?Lespedeza (Leguminosæ), Plantago (Plantaginaceæ), and
Maranta (Scitamineæ). Of these families the Leguminosæ only are found
at Aix, and in abundance, even including a plant doubtfully referred to
Trifolium. It is, however, far more probable that Pamphilites lived upon
grasses; and it is not a little strange that the Gramineæ, the probable
food-plants of three of the five butterflies known from that fauna, were
among the rarest of the plants; that is, their proportion to the whole
phanerogamic flora was about the same as now obtains in New Guinea
or New Grenada, countries the least favored in this respect.[AH] The
proportion of the Gramineæ and Cyperaceæ to the whole of the Phanerogamia
in Europe of to-day is, probably, about the same as in the United States
(more than seventeen per cent.) and much greater than in the East
Indies. The limited number of known fossil butterflies does not give
great weight to any general considerations based upon them, but it may
at least be worth while to remark that Aix, in Eocene times, had, in the
point referred to, an assemblage of plants much better comparable with
the East Indian flora of the present day than with the modern European
flora, the proportion of known Gramineæ, etc., to the Phanerogamia being
five per cent., while the proportion of its grass-feeding butterflies to
the other rhopalocerous Lepidoptera is sixty per cent. To judge simply
by the catalogue of the East India Museum, the only authority upon East
Indian butterflies extant, the present proportion of gramnivorous to
non-gramnivorous butterflies is as 1: 5·2, while in Europe it is as 1:
3. Eocene Aix, then, had a European proportion of Satyrids, composed,
as will be seen, of species of an Indian aspect, feeding upon plants
essentially temperate, but, as in tropical countries, numerically
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