364 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



7ieoielis look to my eye very nearly exactly alike, and co-types of some of 

 the names seem equally like types of the others. 



It is necessary that I should here refer to that much maligned type, 

 Ma?nesira ijisulsa Walker. It is of course, as all are agreed who have 

 seen it, not a Mamestra at all, but of the Agrotid genus called Euxoa by 

 Hampson and Smith. It was first referred by Smith in his Catalogue to a 

 species apparently very widely distributed and common throughout the 

 temperate portion of this continent, which has long stood under that name 

 in probably all carefully named collections, but which should henceforth 

 be known as declarata Walk., of which decolor Morr., probably, and cam- 

 pestris Grt., certainly, are synonyms (No. 261 of this list). But Sir George 

 Hampson in his Catalogue, Vol. IV, puzzled some of us much by quoting 

 insuha as a synonym of jfiessorta Harr. Prof Smith, in Journ. N. Y. 

 Ent. See, • XV, 142, reviewing Hampson's work, states that, after 

 reexamination of the type he concludes that his own reference to the 

 cainpestris-decolor series was correct, and that " insuha has nothing to 

 do with messoj'iay The reference of the name by two different men to such 

 distinct and dissimilar species led me to conjecture that either the type 

 must be a badly rubbed specimen, or the available daylight in the British 

 Museum bad. During my visits there in February and March, 1909, I 

 was much surprised to find that neither was the case. The light at the 

 table where I studied was, on a clear day, distinctly good, as is also the 

 specimen, a female, labelled " W. Canada, Oriila, Bushe," from which the 

 description was presumably taken in 1856. Bearing Prof. Smith's notes 

 in mind, I studied it long, in diff::rent lights, at different angles, on 

 different days, and even re-examined it after an interval of several weeks. 

 I never for one moment could associate it with either messoria ox declarata. 

 But what I did associate it with, both at very first sight and always subse- 

 quently, was the species at present under discussion, my numbers 256, 

 264 and 265, which I have long been in the habit of calling the '" focitms 

 group." Yet I felt sure I had never seen anything to quite match it, but 

 believed, and still believe, that it will ultimately be declared to belong 

 here, in which case of course it will have preference. I have been on the 

 lookout ever since for something to match the type, according to the 

 impression it made on my mental vision, and have hunted specially 

 amongst Ontario material of the tesseUata series, but without success. My 

 notes taken on the spot say : " It looks to me much more like foc'mus 

 Smith {? ^ tesseUata Harr.), of the uniform type, with no black at all, and 

 pale s. t. line. It is a good specimen, and perhaps best matched with 



