THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



THE GENERA IN THE NOCTUID^. 



BY A. R. GROTE, A. M., BREMEN, GERMANY. 



It must be conceded that there is a want of correspondence between, 

 authors as to the generic names emi)loyed in the Nocttiidce ; perhaps a 

 greater than in other famihes of Lepidoptera. The main cause appears 

 to lie in the two systems of classification. The old system, under which 

 the species were assorted into genera from their superficial characters, 

 found its highest expression in the works of Guenee. The new system, 

 commenced by Stephens and Lederer, deals with the ultimate structure 

 of certain parts, and is yet working out its results in the direction which 

 all systems must pursue, that of perfectly reflecting in our books the order 

 which obtains in nature itself. 1'o this end the new system must extend 

 itself, and is extending itself, witness the work of Packard and Dyar, to a 

 study of the insect in all its stages. Here a narrow insistence on any one. 

 character must defeat the general aim. 



The want of correspondence above spoken of in the generic titles of 

 the Noctuidce is, then, greatly owing to the different systems which 

 underlie the arrangement. Perhaps, in the one case, I ought to say the 

 want of system. While, in the butterflies, there exists a more distinctly 

 expressed correspondence between superficial characters, form, colour, 

 pattern, size, and structural characters, this correspondence is greatly 

 wanting in the moths, where series of very similar appearing species are 

 found to be structurally very different. While, then, ancient and modern 

 genera in the butterflies more nearly cover each other, and the generic 

 types are more easily fixed upon as a whole, there is a wider divergence 

 in the Noctuidce. For instance, I will take the genus Xylena, Hiibn., Tent. 

 The type and sole species (therefore the type) of this genus is X. litJioxylea. 

 This insect belongs to Stephens's later genus Xy/op/iasia, a genus recog- 

 nized variously as either distinct from or as a group oi Hadena, or, again, 

 as not being really separable by valid characters. The genus Xylena, 

 Hiibn., iSo6, is then, a Hadenoid genus, proposed for a Hadenoid species. 

 In 1816, Ochsenheimer, 4, 85, adopts the spelling and cites Habner for 

 the genus Xylena- But now conies the old system, and Ochsenheimer 

 arranges 30 species under his genus Xylena, most of them strongly 

 dissonant in structure. The modern system separates Ochsenheimer's 

 species of .Yy/f//rt!, and breaks up his genus under some 12 different 

 oenera, and places these in different groups uj) and down in tlie family. 

 The type of Xylena {lithoxylea) is also included by Ochsenheimer, and, 



