182 THE CA.NAt)IAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Besides my own and the other Montreal collections, which now con- 

 tain a very good series of these moths, I have had the opportunity of 

 examining the collections of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at 

 Cambridge, Mass., the collection of the Boston Society of Natural His- 

 tory, the Harris collection, the collections of Messrs. Henry Edwards, 

 B. Neumoegen and Herman Strecker, and last year the British Museum 

 collection. I am also indebted to Mr. A. G. Butler, of the British 

 Museum, for colored drawings of Walker's type specimens which he sent 

 me in 1882, and to Mr. B. P. Mann and Mr. Scudder, for a copy of the 

 original description of Boisduval's Lecontei. I have therefore not 

 approached this difficult subject lightly, and it is only because I feel con- 

 fident that I can clear up some of the errors which have so long prevailed 

 that I now venture to publish the results of my studies. In any attempt 

 to unravel the tangle into which these forms have been thrown by the 

 leaders of entomological science, the first thing to be done is to find out 

 what Callimorpha Lecontei of Boisduval really is, instead of jumping to 

 the conclusion that any white and black specimen, or even a pure white 

 one for that matter, is that form. The description of Lecontei given in 

 Guerin's " Iconographie du Regne Animal de G. Cuvier," may be trans- 

 lated as below : 



Species with White Secondaries. 



Callimorpha Lecontei, Boisd. Guerin, Iconographie, etc., p. 518, 



plate 88, fig. 4- 



(Figures 1 and 2.) 



" Body white, with the top of the head of a pale yellow and a black 

 or brown Hne extending from the prothorax to the extremity of the abdo- 

 men. 



" Primaries black or brown, according to the more or less fresh con- 

 dition of the insect, each having five large rounded and irregular white 

 spots, touching each other sometimes as in the specimen figured, in which 

 the two spots in the middle are united, while in another it is the two spots 

 at the apex which are confluent. 



" Secondaries immaculate. 



" The under side resembles the upper, but having the black parts very 

 pale. Legs lightly tinted with yellow. 



" Expands 52 milli. Hab. — North America. 



This description, taken in connection with the figure of which I pre- 

 viously had a drawing, but which I had the pleasure of seeing for myself 



