38 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS [Jan., '14 



"Daddy-long-legs"? 



It is evident that the newspapers of other countries are no more 

 seekers after truth than those of our own, especially regarding scien- 

 tific facts. In the Entomological Record for October 15, 1913, under 

 the heading "Newspaper -Entomology" one reads of a notice of an 

 article relative to daddy-long-legs published in a London newspaper. 

 It is utterly useless to question the truth or the validity of the facts 

 as given in such newspaper articles, unless written by a competent 

 scientist, as doing so only holds one up to ridicule by the ignoramuses ; 

 for it is seldom that a newspaper acknowledges its mistakes or misin- 

 formation, or offers any but childish excuses for publishing such 

 articles. 



Regarding the article in question, it may be noted that to an Ameri- 

 can, or, at least, to some of us in the eastern part of the United 

 States, "Daddy-long-legs" refers to "harvest spiders" or "harvest- 

 men," members of the Arachnid order Phalangida. At first glance 

 one might think the author of the article referred to these animals, 

 but in England the name "Daddy-long-legs" is given to some of the 

 members of the dipterous family Tipulidae which of course have 

 "six pairs of legs (evidently meaning six legs), long body and wings." 

 The assertion that "at one time he was classed as an insect, but 

 Lamarck separated him from them, and now he is catalogued along 

 with scorpions and mites" is obviously rubbish, manufactured out of 

 the whole cloth of ignorance. 



Incidently it may be noted that species of Tipulidae are known to 

 be very injurious to pasture lands in the western United States. E. T. 

 C, Jr. 



Schinia gloriosa Strecker (Lepidop.). 



During the past summer I obtained a fine specimen of the beautiful 

 Schinia gloriosa in Boulder, Colorado. The species was described from 

 Texas, and appears to be new to Colorado. The species is larger than 

 S. sanguinea, with much paler hind wings ; the figure purporting to rep- 

 resent it in Holland's Moth Book, pi. XXVII, f. 27, is evidently 

 sanguinea. Hampson (Cat. Lep. Phal., IV, p. 89) did not know glori- 

 osa, and his table is not satisfactory for its separation. It might be 

 amended as follows : 

 Fore wings with terminal area without longitudinal white or whitish 



streaks ; hind wings pale rcgia Strecker. 



Fore wings with terminal area conspicuously longitudinally streaked 

 with white or whitish. 

 Larger ; hind wings creamy white, darkened at apex 



gloriosa Strecker. 



Smaller; hind wings fuscous .... sanguinea (Geyer). 



T. D. A. COCKERELL. 



