THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 331 



WHOM SHALL WE FOLLOW? 



BV RICHARD F. PEARSALL, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



The recently-published article from the pen of Rev. Geo. W. Taylor, 

 giving a rearrangement of the species now included under the genus 

 Venusia, Curtis, under the same caption used by me in a previous paper, 

 (^ives me, I think, a right to protest. He refuses to accept the separation 

 of i2-lineata, Pack.? under a new genus, as given by me ; but if the two 

 male specimens, which were sent through the kindness of Mr. Geo. 

 Franck, reached him safely, I think he will be satisfied on this point. 

 I2-Iineata, Pack., was described from specimens taken in California by 

 Mr. Hy. Edwards, and eastern specimens credited with this name were 

 really the species I described as Euchoeca salieiita. I grouped with this 

 latter the western species mentioned by Mr. Taylor, not having at hand 

 enough material upon which to base a separation, yet as more of it comes 

 to me, I am tending toward the conclusion that it is worthy of a specific 

 name, but this can wait. Now, as to perlineata, Pack., if the plate pub- 

 lished of it (Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., Vol. 1 6) is to be relied upon (I 

 have not seen the type), then it is clearly the species we have been calling 

 comptaria, Walk., as determined by Dr. Hulst. But comptaria is not 

 comptaria any longer, according to Mr. Prout, and so, vide Mr. Taylor, 

 it becomes perlineata, Pack., and my salienta becomes comptaria, ^Valk. 

 It is, then, a question of whose authority we shall accept, that of Dr. Hulst 

 or Mr. Prout. Until some one well drilled in the various American 

 geometrid forms, carrying abundant material with him, shall go to Europe, 

 and compare the types there with it, Mr. Taylor, for instance, I am not 

 ready to change the decisions arrived at by Dr. Hulst. He had studied 

 this group many years before he journeyed across twice, carrying material 

 with him, for the sole purpose of establishing the types, and his decisions 

 are entitled to stand, unless they go down before the weightiest authority. 

 He may have made mistakes in determinations, and did, in naming off 

 hand, later on in his life, but 1 claim that having an object clearly before 

 him, the sole performance of which took him abroad, he would be less 

 likely to fall into error, knowing also that his was pioneer work, and so 

 much depended upon its correctness as a basis for the future worker. I 

 can show to Mr. Prout specimens of E. comptaria, Walk., from this 

 region (Catskill Mts.) which almost anyone would call E. Incata, yet in 

 all the fifteen years of my collecting here I have never taken the latter 

 species. I make this statement, not to discredit Mr. Prout's judgment, 

 but to point out how easily one may be misled unless thoroughly familiar 

 with the range in variation in each species, and the appearance which such 

 variations present when rubbed, suffused or melanistic. This year I have 



September, 1905. 



