tHE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 253 



of Diurnal Lep.," 187 1, uses no form of division of the genera. Mr. 

 Edwards, as we all know, divides the genera into groups and numbers 

 the groups. 



This is enough to show that the custom among the best writers in the 

 various departments of natural history varies. Quite a large majority 

 divide the large genera into some form of groups, indicating the relation 

 of the species to each other in this way, while a (ew shirk all responsibiUty 

 of showing such relation by arranging the species in large genera alpha- 

 betically. Of those given above who divide genera, about twice as many 

 use subgenus names as divide the genera without using names, several 

 using both methods in the same work, and occasionally in the same genus. 

 I noticed, further, that most of these subgenus names are the names that 

 have been used by some former writer for genera, the one using them for 

 subgenus names having either united the genera himself, or taken the 

 work of some one else in that line. This is in line with what Mr. 

 Cockerell suggests. 



A NEW FORM OF CERURA FROM CALIFORNIA. 



BY HARRISON G. DYAR, RHINEBECK, N. Y. 



Cerura cinereoides n. var. or n. sp. Head, collar and tegulge light 

 cinereous ; throax above largely mixed with orange and metallic blue 

 scales, below somewhat paler cinereous ; tarsi ringed with black ; 

 abdomen concolorous with the thorax, the segments banded behind with 

 paler cinereous, the last segment in the female sprinkled with black scales, 

 the anal tuft in the male nearly white. Antennpe white, the pectinations 

 dark brown, long in the male and diminishing toward the tip ; short in the 

 female. Primaries pale, almost whitish cinereous, paler basally, much 

 the colour of Cerura occidentalis Lintn., and marked after the pattern of 

 C. cinerea Walk. A minute black basal spot on the submedian, a little 

 further on another on the subcostal ; an extra basilar row of six small 

 black spots on the nervules in a curved line, three on the costa close 

 together, but separable by a lens, one on median, one on submedian vein 

 and one on internal margin, the latter, in one female, faint. The median 

 band composed of black and a few orange scales is faint, much the colour 



