THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 133 



OBITUARY. 



The following particulars respecting our late correspondent have 

 only recently been obtained : — 



Oliver Jacob Sta/ey, of Marshall, Saline Co., Mo., died July 6th, 1894 

 while on a collecting trip near home. His body was found by searching 

 parties, in a creek, face downward. A sultry day induced him to 

 bathe with fatal result. He was born in Princetown, Schenectady Co., 

 N. Y., and removed with his parents to Marshall, Mo., thirteen years ago. 

 He practiced law for about four years, and was in the twenty-fifth year of 

 his age. A member of the Y. M. C A., he was much respected by every- 

 body. He published in the Canadian Entomologist, Vol. XXIV., p. 201, 

 "A List of Butterflies found at Marshall, Missouri, and vicinity." During 

 the last six years he had been actively collecting Lepidoptera. 



R. E. KuNZE. 



NOTE ON THE PLATYPTERYGID^. 



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



In the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for 1874 

 is published a list of certain family groups of Bombycine moths, and I 

 retained there the term Fiatypierices, of Hubner, 1806, for the group to 

 which now a distinct family value is given, and which should therefore 

 bear the name Platypterygidce. Already in 1868, Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, 

 I had proposed the subfamily termination to the corrected original term 

 of Stephens : Platyptericidce. The question as to which of the two terms 

 should be employed, Drepanidce or Platypterygidce, should, I think, be 

 decided in favour of the latter form of the plural use of the name by 

 Hubner and Stephens. Schrank's original genus Drepatia is the first 

 generic term used in the group. The genus is a mixed one. It contains : 

 I, D. sicula; 2, D. falcula ; 3, D. flexula (not belonging here); 4, D. 

 hamula; ^, D. lacertula; 6,D.spinula. Schrank's definition is "Sichel- 

 spinner." Laspeyres's restriction (1803) of the group under the name 

 Platypteryx is the first to be made, and Hubner, in 1806, still further 

 restricts Laspeyres's name to the single type P. hamula. To this structural 

 type should the name Platypteryx be henceforth confined, and with this 

 type our North American species, arcuata, genicula and siculi/er appear 

 to agree. From the description I have shown there is a probability that 

 Stephens's Drepatia fasciata was based upon one of our Geometridoi 

 belonging to Drepanodes. So far, then, as our fauna is concerned, the 



