210 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



In this connection I may refer to a recently published query by the 

 Rev. G. W. Taylor, concerning Agia eborata, Huht.,and its supplemental 

 note by Dr. Dyar. They cite viridata, Packard, as the type of 

 Cysteopteryx. This species was not used by Dr. Hulst as the type of 

 Cysteopteryx (see Trans. Am. Ent. Soc, Vol. 23, p. 250), for Agia eborata, 

 Hulst, is undoubtedly a synonym of Lobophora viridata, Packard, and its 

 structural characters are widely at variance with Dr. Hulst's generic 

 description of Cysteopteryx. In founding the genus Cysteopteryx, he gives 

 as the type viridata, Grote (not Packard). 1 have been unable to find 

 any description of such a species (it would probably be called a 

 Lobophora), nor does it appear in the old Brooklyn Check List, or in 

 Grote's Check List of 1882. In the Brooklyn Institute collection there is, 

 however, a male specimen from New Hampshire, labeled Cysteopteryx 

 viridata, Grote, in the handwricing of Dr. Hulst. It is a varietal form of 

 Nyctobia limitata. Walk., and though the end spurs and tarsi are broken 

 off, in the one hind leg remaining it still bears the hair pencil so curiously 

 occurring in this group, referred to by Dr. Hulst under his detailed generic 

 description of Nyctobia. It has two accessory cells in the fore wings, not 

 one, and in this agrees also with Nyctobia as defined. In the Hulst 

 collection at Rutger's College is a single male specimen labeled Cysteo- 

 pteryx, which is also, in my opinion, one of the varieties of Nyctobia 

 limitata. Walk., but it has the hair pencil and one accessory cell. Now, 

 in my collection, seventeen specimens of the latter species divide in this 

 respect as follows : 



One accessory cell — 2 males, 8 females. 



Two accessory cells — 5 males, 2 females. 



The genus Cysteopteryx therefore should fall. That this showing 

 should make it necessary to abandon the use of the accessory cell as a 

 means to generic division, I do not admit. It only proves in this species 

 to be a variable quantity. Nature follows no hard and fast lines. I 

 recognize that it is no light matter thus to upset an established order of 

 things, but facts must be recognized and dealt with, even if they create 

 temporary disturbance. 



Note. — Since writing the above, I have sent to Mr. Samuel Hen- 

 shaw, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass., a specimen of 

 Agia eborata, Hulst, which he has kindly compared for me with the type of 

 Lobophora viridata, Packard. He writes : " Your specimen is identical 

 with Packard's ty[)e oi Lobophora viridata'' 



