THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 309 



NEW HISTORIES AND SPECIES IN PAPAIPEMA (HYDRCECIA). 



BY HENRY BIRD, RYE, N. Y. 



(Continued from page 276.) 



Few will appreciate better than the author that the working 

 out of life-histories in this genus is a greater contribution to entomological 

 knowledge than the mere description of new forms. One gets quite a 

 different idea as to what is truly representative from breeding the various 

 species than from the random imago that is occasionally captured. These 

 moths are unusually secretive, their flight and life being very short 

 normally, so that their appearance in cabinets is rare compared to their 

 number in nature. For example, cerussaia is commoner, locally, than 

 niteia, yet the former appears in a short interval, while the latter's 

 emergence is for a lengthy, protracted period, and it is on the wing during 

 the whole of September and October. So one will take at light fifty of 

 nitehi to one ceni^saia per season. With species having a concentrated 

 appearance there is good evidence that a female never spreads her wings 

 unfertilized, and it is known that their life after oviposition, which con- 

 sumes three or four days at most, is hardly longer. It is a fact, too, with 

 many specimens in collections which were taken in flight, that we find 

 them undersized and ill-marked, being examples whose emergence was 

 protracted past the normal date, or whose larvae left their original burrows 

 and completed their transformation in a more or less starved condition, 

 and they little show what the species really should be like. A good 

 illustration occurs with eupatorii, the itw undersized specimens which 

 happened to be in collections were identified as nelita. So soon as the 

 former is bred and a representative specimen comes to hand, no one for a 

 moment would assign it to any previously-described form. And even with 

 tielita, it has remained for breeding to definitely settle its identification. 



These arguments are advanced to show cause for still another name, 

 indicative of a species very widely distributed and which has been under 

 observation in its early stages for seven years, and which finds in Pteris 

 aqiiilina a plant commensurate to all its desires. So close, however, does 

 it come to Harrisii as larva, and to purpurifascia as imago, with a 

 balance of suggestion pointing to the former species, that to raise it to 

 specific rank appeared superfluous. Yet efforts to prove it a variety fail, 

 and the evidence in the field ofters not the remotest clue to that end. The 

 slight discrepancy from Harrisii seemed easily attributable to the differ- 

 ence in food-plant, and the question was closely studied. The latter 



September, 1907 



