THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 137 



Dicranota rogersi is named in honor of my friend, the collector, Mr. J. 

 Speed Rogers. It is most closely allied to D. cucera O. S., in the elongate 

 antennae of the male sex. From this species it differs in the normal presence 

 of cell Ml, the dark stigma and the details of structure of the male hypopygium, 

 as the subequal pleurites. 



4 NEW PAPAIPEMA FROM DELAWARE ( Lepidoptera, Noctuidae', 



BY HENRY BIRD \ND FRANK MORTON JONES. 

 ' -I-ATE VT) 



Although a collecting trip through peninsular Delaware and Maryland 

 in July 1920 did not have the genus Papaipcma as its primary object, the pos- 

 sibility of turning up interesting material in this group was well in mind, so that 

 when our car stopped in a nromising bit of low woodland along the DuPont 

 Boulevard, a dried stalk in the roadside herbage attracted immediate attention. 

 Investigation showed it to be not one of the recognized food plants of the group, 

 and as the contained larva was not of that almost ubiquitous species, cataphracta, 

 a vigorous search was begun for more. In half an hour, more than thirty in- 

 fested branches had been gathered, and it was apparent that we were dealing 

 with a species whose life history had been unrecorded, and which possibly was 

 new to science. All this was done at very considerable expense to clothing and 

 bodily comfort for the ff)odplant is that thorniest inhabitant of our woods, 

 Aralia spinosa, wliich as a small tree along the edges of woods and in thickets 

 bordering woodland streams, with its great frond-like leaves and immense flower- 

 panicles, is a conspicuous feature of the flora ot southern Delaware. We had 

 too, the unique experience of gathering Papaipciiio larvae from high over our 

 heads, instead of grubbing them out of root-stocks or the fleshy stems of per- 

 ennial herbs. The tunnels of this insect, in the thick branches of Aralia, are of 

 large diameter, beginning at or near the terminal Inul and extending downward 

 through the pithy annual growth, often into the older wood below ; gummy 

 exudations mixed with blackened frass mark the entrance to the burrow, and 

 the terminal shoot usually dies and shrivels, a hanging cluster of dead leaves 

 often further advertising its location ; adventitious shoots from below the point 

 of injury sometimes bear stunted flower-panicles. 



In our breeding-cages, pupation occured more frequently in the larval 

 burrows, rather than in the ground, and another trip was made in early Septem- 

 ber, in the full expectation that pupae would be found in abundance. Dozens 

 of the typical burrows in the branches of Aralia were found, but not one of them 

 contained either larva or ])upa. and we were forced to conclude that under nat- 

 ural conditions pupation takes place in the soil, not in the branch of the food- 

 plant. A tabulation of our eastern species of the genus, together with the large 

 size of the Aralia-ieeding larvae, indicated Dyar's nephrasyntlicta as the probable 

 identity of our find; but the emergence of the first moth showed that we had, 

 not the anticipated nephrasyntlicta, but an undescribed species. In this genus, 

 where foodplant association has apparently been a prime factor in the different- 

 iation of so many closely related species, a name derived from that of the food- 

 plant is especially appropriate, and we therefore propose for this insect the name, 



Papaipoma araliae n. sp. 



Head smooth on fons, anteiina simple (minutely ciliate und,er magnific- 



