THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 16* 



MR. GROTE'S CRITICISMS. 



BY HENRY H. LYMAN, MONTREAL. 



As Mr. Grote has done me the honour to make certain criticisms on 

 some of my recent papers, I would ask space for a brief reply. 



In regard to Gortyna Airata, I have no doubt that it has an 

 alternative food-plant, but possibly it may never be discovered. Mr. 

 Bird has made the same point, that as burdock is an introduced species 

 it could not be the original preferred food-plant of any American species. 

 But, while I admit that an introduced species could not be the original 

 food-plant of an American insect, I see no reason why it should not be 

 the preferred food since its introduction, just as Doryphoia Decemliiieata 

 prefers the potato to its original food-plant. 



If the difference between Nitela and ALrata was not made 

 sufficiently apparent in my description, it was because I never thought of 

 the two being confused, as the difference in colour is so marked, while 

 Dr. Dyar had, as stated, expressed the opinion that my specimen was 

 only a variety of Necopina, and Mr. Bird, to whom I also showed it, 

 never suggested any close relationship to A T itela, but said that if the 

 larva proved to be distinct, from that of Necopina I would be warranted 

 in describing it as a new species, and 1 am quite sure that had I not bred 

 the species no one would have believed that a flown specimen of it was 

 anything but an example of Necopina. 



In regard to the names Nitela and Neon's, I must confess that I was 

 a little amused at being chided as to i strict a stickler for the rigid 

 enforcement of the law of priority, especially in view of the fact that I 

 have already expressed the opinion that the law of priority should not be 

 maintained in favour of the variety as against the prevailing form of the 

 species*, but if I am going to extremes in carrying this law back two 

 inches, and that is all the priority I claim for the name Neon's, what 

 should be thought of Mr. Grote in carrying it back to primeval times, 

 long before there was any entomologist to criticise his fellows, to say 

 nothing of studying these creatures. 



If, as conjectured by Mr. Grote, the form N~ite/a was the primitive 

 form, and the form Neon's is a more specialized form which has been 

 evolved from it, it would seem probable that in course of time the latter 

 would become the dominant one, in spite of the varietal name which Mr. 



*Can. Ent., XXIX., 256. 



