14 PROCEEDINGS ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



scriptions of the two species distinguished in the series, were 

 based upon a total of five examples. 



The idea is forced upon me that the occurrence of the two 

 species in one orchid house in New Jersey accompanied as it is 

 by great variation in size and in prothoracic markings in cattleyae 

 (these markings always being more or less complete elements of 

 the design which is constant in forbesii) and the occurrence of 

 but one of the species (cattleyae) practically without variation 

 in the Milwaukee orchid house indicate the possibility of a more 

 or less recent hybridization under the artificial conditions, which 

 might not be possible in their native habitats, and which may 

 have superimposed the pronotal vestiture of forbesi to a varying 

 degree upon the supposedly more dominant form and sculpture 

 of cattleyae. Until some breeder can make the experiment this 

 supposition should not receive more than casual attention but the 

 probability of such occurrences is constantly confronting us. 

 The native habitat of neither of the two species is definitely 

 known. 



Cholus cattleyae Champion (September, 1916) 1 



In this species of which C. cattleyarum m. (November. 1916) is 

 undoubtedly a synonym, the variation in vestiture consists in the 

 appearance on an otherwise entirely black prothorax, of various 

 of the elements of the white squamose areas so conspicuous in the 

 following species. Of the fourteen examples before me eight 

 specimens are from the orchid house at Milwaukee, and six of 

 these as well as the specimen found by Mr. Heidemann in 1 '13, 

 have no pronotal markings; the Milwaukee specimen reared iy 

 the writer displays # pair of postocular squamose patches, 01. 3 

 from the New Jersey orchid house and one from that in Mil- 

 waukee have only a small prescutellar spot as described by 

 Champion; one specimen (in Dickerson collection, received from 

 Weiss) displays the prescutellar spot, the pair of postocular 

 spots and also a pair of small discal squamose areas; the pre- 

 scutellar spot and only one of each of the discal and postocular 

 spots are present in another specimen in the Weiss collection, 

 and only the prescutellar and one of the postocular spots in tli 

 specimen Mi-. Weiss gave to Mr. Leng; finally a specimen re- 

 ceived by the American Museum of Natural History (the first 

 one found by Mr. Weiss and the one which he illustrated, Ento- 

 mological News) which has two pairs of squamose areas in addition 

 to those just mentioned, one before the humerus, and another 

 above the coxae, all being connected with the prosternal squa- 



1 See Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash., XVIII, Plate XIII, facing p. 178. 



