320 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



spread, I can detect none. Even if their existence is not a variable char- 

 acter, their prominence most certainly is, on both continents, and s?nit/iii 

 must be dropped. Sir George Hampson makes it a synonym. 



204. N. patefada Smith. — Sir George Hampson treats jimda as 

 distinct, figuring the male type from Nova Scotia. It has head and 

 thorax paler than the wings, and collar still paler tipped. I have seen no 

 other specimens like it. The wings are paler than the average run of 

 patefada, but they are pretty obviously faded, as Grote says it resembles 

 treat a in its "dead black primaries." The type was a unique, taken by 

 and received from Mr. Roland Thaxter, and is badly rubbed. I have 

 out patefada almost as dark as most treatil, and they vary to as pale as 

 Hampson's figured funda. In one of my specimens the spots do not 

 join on one side, and scarcely so on the other. But in all the thorax is 

 unicolorous with primaries, though the tip of the collar is sometimes ap- 

 preciably paler. Their distinctness from Grote's species is perhaps a 

 doubtful point, but, as Sir George Hampson thinks, they may as well be 

 kept apart, pending the discovery of more specimens from Nova Scotia, or 

 thereabouts. There are two specimens of patefada from Yellowstone 

 Park in the American Museum of Natural History. 



205. N. cynica Smith, var. perumbrosa Dyar. — I took several speci- 

 mens of this form on the wing after dark and at treacle between July 31st 

 and August J5th, 1909, and conclude that it is correctly named. I have 

 a Kaslo series, some of them co-types, and have seen about thirty co-types 

 at Washington, besides the type of cynica, which seemed a paler form of 

 the same species. Prof Smith states under his description of cynica that 

 his specimen came from Albany, N. Y. The only type I have recorded 

 having seen is a male at Washington which is labelled "Bailey, /St,." It 

 was described as distinct from riibifera in being broader winged, lacking 

 a median shade (which it was suggested might not be constant), and hav- 

 ing totally different male genitalia. These are shown of both species, and 

 certainly indicate somiC strong differences. 



My Calgary specimens are darker than most seen from Kaslo, and 

 have darker secondaries. Some of the Kaslo specimens are not a bit 

 darker than any of a series of six females that I have from Ottawa as 

 rnhifera, and look the same. One of the latter is almost exactly like 

 Hampson's figure of rubifera female type, noted in the key as a male 

 from New York, but merely labelled "U. S. A." This type he calls 



