268 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



IN RE SPILOSOMA CONGRUA, WALK. 



BY A. RADCLIFFE GKOTE, A. M., ROEMER MUSEUM, HILDESHEIM, GERMANY. 



In reference to the present controversy my testimony is as follows : 

 I examined, in 1867, Mr. Walker's material. This represented a form 

 unknown to me, undoubtedly a Spiiosoma, not a species or form of 

 Hyphantria. I was so struck with this that I drew up a description and 

 carefully compared the palpi and antennas. From these and the slightly 

 larger size, I felt confident that it was a Spilosoma unknown to me at the 

 time. The description is published in Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, 1868, but I 

 have no copy, unfortunately, at this writing, of the paper. My memory 

 is vivid that I compared it with Hyphantria cunea, and it was not that 

 species nor any form of it. I conjectured even, at the time, that the 

 material might be European with a wrong locality, so dissimilar was it 

 from S. virginica or S. latipennis, the latter form being known to me 

 from Stephen Calverley's collections from Long Island before, long before, 

 its description by Stretch. Years afterwards, Dr. Thaxter sent me speci- 

 mens from the East, which I at once recognized as ^S". congrua from 

 my memory and my notes. These specimens belonged to S. antigone, 

 which I set down accordingly as a synonym of S. congrua in the pages 

 of the Canadian Entomologist. 



There is, finally, one point to which I call attention. In 1867 Mr. 

 Walker was arranging the collection. I directed his notice at the time to 

 the fact that he had quite often mixed up different species under one 

 name. It may be, then, that there were two species under congrua, but 

 I think not. Mr. Walker adopted, at the moment, some of my sugges- 

 tions, but the time was too brief to allow me to overhaul the whoJe of the 

 American materia), about which, as a whole, I knew besides, at the time, 

 too little. But I knew Spilosotna and Hyphantria sufficiently as to give 

 my determination weight. Now, it is a fact that Mr. Butler sorted over 

 the collection^ and as to this work Prof Smith's Cat. No. 44 gives us, 

 incidentally, valuable information. And it is a fact that I found in the 

 Nociuids, in 1867, more mixing of species than comes out after Butler 

 and Smith's sorting and taking or fixing of Mr. Walker's types. This was 

 done without sufficient study of Mr. ^Valker's text in the B. Mus. Lists. 

 Mr. Walker's material bore no type label ; it was in 1867 (and, I think, 

 again in 1880) simply stuck above the printed name, cut out of the B. M, 

 Lists, as I remember. Misidentifications of Walker's description 

 or determination occur in the genera Apatela, Hadena, Mamestra, 

 Hypena, etc. See my papers in the Canadian Entomologist and in the 

 Proc. of the American Philosophical Society. 



