Ca«atliai( |Iutont(rlafibt. 



Vol. XXXVII. LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1905. 



No. 9 



NEW GORTYNAS. 



BY HENRV H. LViMAN, M. A., MONTREAL. 



The forms treated of in this pa[ier would naturally fall in the group 

 for which Dr. J. B. Smith proposed the name Papaipema,* and which Dr. 

 Dyar in his catalogue accepted as a generic name, but as it was not so 

 intended by the proposer, I do not know that it is necessary to accept it 

 as such. 



In 1902, while paying a brief visit to the White Mountains, from 6th 

 to lolh August, I noticed that the plants of the Tall Meadow Rue {Thal- 

 ictrum Cornuti, L), growing by the side of the road which runs from 

 Fabyan's to tl'.e base of Mt. Washington, gave evidence of having been 

 attacked by some borer. I slit a number of the stems, but in every case 

 the borer had gone down into the root. I therefore set to work to get up 

 some of the roots, but as I had neglected to bring a trowel or spud, and 

 had only a large jackknife, and as the rootlets were very fibrous and 

 matted, the task was very laborious. With considerable difficulty I suc- 

 ceeded in gelling up three roots, with \vJiich I contented myself, thinking 

 that as the plant was so common the species boring in it must be almost 

 as common, as almost every plant examined had been attacked. 



One of the larvK was injured in getting up the roots, but the two 

 others seemed all right, and were carried home to Montreal, but one died 

 almost immediately afterwards. These larvye were while, with hardly any 

 colour, and quite unlike any Gortyna larva which I had previously seen, so 

 that I doubted their belonging to that genus. The one surviving larva 

 duly pupated, and the moth emerged on r2th Sept. It was a $, and 

 slightly deformed, but seemed to be distinct from anything that I had 

 previously seen, but on showing it to Mr. Bird, of Rye, when on a visit to 

 New York, he pronounced it to be undoubtedly a dwarf and slightly 

 deformed specimen of Cerussata, and as he had frequently bred the 

 latter, I accepted his dictum. 



In 1903 several of the members of our Montreal Branch looked for it 

 in this locality, and had no difficulty in finding it, almost every Meadow 

 Rue plant seeming to be attacked. Moths were reared by Messrs. D. and 



*Trans. Amer, Ent. Soc, XXVI, 2. 



