Note 10 — Chapter III

The butterflies themselves may be subdivided into five main groups or families[10] according to the structure of the first of their three pairs of legs. In the Papilionidae or "swallow-tails," the first pair of legs is well developed in both sexes (Fig. 8). In the Pieridae or "whites," the front legs are also similar in both sexes, but the claws are bifid and a median process, the empodium, is found between them (Fig. 7). In the remaining three families the front legs differ in the two sexes. The females of the Lycaenidae or "blues" have well-developed front legs in which the tarsus is terminated by definite claws (Fig. 5), whereas in the males the terminal part of the leg, or tarsus, is unjointed and furnished with but a single small claw (Fig. 6). This reduction of the front legs has gone somewhat further in the Erycinidae (Figs. 3 and 4), a family consisting for the most part of rather small butterflies and specially characteristic of South America. In the great family of the Nymphalidae the reduction of the front legs is well marked in both sexes. Not only are they much smaller than in the other groups, but claws are lacking in the female as well as in the male (Figs. 1 and 2).