THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 187 



been unknown, and no record of them made. It occurred to me, there- 

 fore, that a brief statement might be interesting. 



The eggs are laid, not in the ground, but on the surface of the ground, 

 and preferably under some shelter, as a stone or a piece of wood. In the 

 vivarium pieces of crockeryware have been made use of In nature the 

 shade afforded by the dense, more or less recumbent foliage of Yucca 

 filamentosa doubtless' furnishes a desirable situation. The eggs are laid 

 in clusters, some of them as large as an ordinary pea. They are very 

 pale yellowish, almost white, highly polished and faintly rugose. They 

 are nearly globular, or but very slightly ovoid. I have counted over 300 

 eggs in a single mass, and each egg measures 0.25 mm. in length and 

 0.27 in diameter. The newly hatched larva is pure white but otherwise 

 has the same form and general appearance as when full grown. 



THE SPECIES OF MAMESTRA. 



BY A. R. GROTE, A. M. 



By favour of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I have 

 received a copy of the " Revision of the species of Mamestra by John B. 

 Smith, Professor of Entomology, Rutgers College, Washington, 1S91 ". 

 There are one or two points only upon which I desire here to comment. 

 As a whole the determinations agree with my own. The genus 

 Diajithoecia is merged with Mamestra, as I at one time proposed from 

 the variability in the same species of the ovipositor. But, as I pointed 

 out in my last Check List, p. 13, the characters of Dianthoecia, Bdv., are 

 taken from the habit of the larva, the button-like termination of the wing 

 cases in the chrysalis and the extended ovipositor in the moth. The 

 American forms have been only incompletely studied for these characters. 

 The genus is universally adopted in Europe, and our " cabinet opinions " 

 will doubtless be modified when we come to know the preparatory stages 

 of our species. 



So far as the Revision is concerned, I may discuss the following 

 synonymical points. And first, on page 218, my M. vittula is very fully 

 described from my type, shown to the author of the Revision by Prof 

 Snow. Yet, on page 268, this same species is stated to be " unknown ", 

 and is further unfavourably commented on as too near to 4-Iifieata, while 

 on page 219 the type is said to be " much more nearly allied to capsularis 



