144 TUB CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



TAENIOCAMPA RUBRESCENS, Walk. 



BY J. ALSTON MOFFAT, LONDON, ONT. 



This interesting species has at last been added to the collection of 

 the Entomological Society of Ontario, by the industrious collecting of Mr. 

 J. W. Bice, who look it at electric light in the season of 1898, and was 

 recently identified for me by Dr. J. B. Smith. Taeniocampa alia, Giien. 

 — incerta, Hubn. — was in remarkable profusion during the early part of 

 that season ; and ranging through an extent of variation that was quite 

 confusing. Three good specimens of rubrescens were taken at the same 

 time, each differing from the other in colour, and were picked out as 

 possibly another variety of alia, but when seen by Dr. Smith, he ])ro- 

 nounced my Nos. 3, 4, 5 to be T. rubrescens, and his remark on them 

 was, " A very pretty series, No. 4 being a new form to me." 



It seems to be a somewhat rare moth. I find that it was first 

 described and named by Walker in 1865, from a specimen in Dr. 

 Bethune's collection, and from there it has been transferred to the 

 U. S. National Museum, where it is now deposited as the type of the 

 species. As late as 1890, Dr. Smith redescribed it in Eniomologica 

 Americana, Vol. VI , p. 123, as T. venata, from a single specimen taken 

 by Mr. Bruce many years before, and concludes his remarks upon it thus : 

 " I have never seen anything to match this species, and do not think it can 

 be leadily confused with any of the described forms." But he afterwards 

 discovered that Mr. Walker had been there before him. Dr. Smith 

 regards it as distinctly a northern species, it never having been taken as 

 far south as New Jersey. In his 1893 Catalogue of the Noctuidae found 

 in Boreal America, he gives its habitat as '' Canada, New Hampshire, 

 northern New York." One would suppose that a northern species would 

 have far less difficulty in spreading southward than a southern one would 

 northward, unless severely restricted in its food plant. Henry Edwards 

 gives the food plants of T. incerta, Hubn., as " Quercus, Salix, Priinns." 

 That of T. rubrescens may be similar, but I have not found any reference 

 to it, and collecting at light is not conducive to the discovery of food 

 plants. 



A fine pair of T. subterminata. Smith, was added to the collection 

 at the same time, and in the same way. 



