398 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



276, Afiytus obsatrtis Sm, — In my former notes I expressed my 

 inability to distinguish this horn prof 7indus, described by the same author 

 from Brandon, Man., on the lower half of the same page. Sir George 

 Hampson, on the strength of one male from Brandon, and two from 

 Calgary, separates them in the table : . . . " Fore wing with the 

 dominant colour fuscous brown — profufida,'' and "fore wing with the 

 dominant colour black — obscura,''^ altering the gender of the specific name 

 to concord with that of the genus. Prof. Smith publishes a paper on the 

 genus in Psyche, XVII, 206 209, Oct., 1910, expressing his views as to 

 their distinctness from each other and from privatus, and publishing a 

 plate showing figures of genitalia. He says : ^""Obscurus is really well 

 named, and in the male differs obviously from pi'oftmdiis in a distinct 

 brownish tinge, in the lack of contrasts, especially in the s. t. space, in the 

 much more even, powdery suffusion over the whole wing, and in the lack 

 of definition to the median lines." He states that all the obscurus, and 

 no profundus, were from Calgary. The decision was based on an exam- 

 ination of 65 specimens of the two forms. The colour differences are at 

 variance with the separation attempted by Hampson, and with the original 

 description, in which a "seal brown tinge" is ascribed \.o profundus, but 

 brown not mentioned at all under obscurus. I have 45 specimens from 

 Alberta and Manitoba at present under examination, and have at times 

 studied hundreds more. As a rule, Alberta specimens are darker than 

 those from Manitoba, but by no means constantly so. A brown color- 

 ation is variable in either series, and I entirely fail to make a separation 

 by this or any other character or combination of characters. The 

 genitalic differences illustrated by Prof Smith are, as he himself expresses 

 it, "slight, and perhaps not important," and I do not now, nor did I ever 

 before, see any reason for believing in the existence of two species. The 

 form will probably eventually prove to be merely a dark, though incon- 

 stant variation oi privata Walk., described from New York, though I 

 should be too arbitrary in making the reference definitely at present. 

 Dr. Dyar, in the Kootenai List, unites the names obscurus 2iw6. profundus 

 as a dark variation of sculpta ( ^privata), though as a matter of fact, of 

 the three B. C. specimens there referred to, that from Sandon lacks tibial 

 spines, and is not closely allied to these at all. 



277. Fishia sp. — This species is r\o\. yoseniitce Grt., of which the type 

 is a California female in the Henry Edwards collection, and which is a 

 prior name to exJiilarata Smith, described from Pullman, Washington, 



