346 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



have also the Cossidae, and of the impending removal of the latter to the 

 " Micros," it is quite fifteen years since I first heard the suggestion. In the 

 present list I have attempted considerably more in the way of study than 



I did in the butterflies. I have made more comparisons and exchanged a 

 far greater amount of correspondence. In one instance, that of Cosmia, I 

 have taken the liberty of differing from the authors of all our recognized 

 standard works, and believe a revision of the synonymy, by some- 

 one who has seen the types of Grote and Walker, to be necessary. 

 This decision is only af^r a close inquiry into the matter, a study of 

 a considerable quantity of material from the old world as well as from the 

 new, and correspondence with several specialists who were able to give me 

 information on the subject. It may be, however, that in this, as well as 

 in other points concerning identity, I have come rather too hastily to 

 conclusions. I am indebted to Prof. J. B. Smith and Drs. Ottolengui and 

 Dyar for the names of my Sphinges, Bombyces, NotodontidcTe, and a few 

 other families allied thereto. The list of these is not a long one, but I am 

 rather inclined to think that their apparent scarcity may be due to the fact 

 that, in this district at any rate, they are of quiet and retiring habits, and do 

 not often show up. It is to the Noctuidae that most attention has always 

 been paid, and Prof. Smith has been unceasing in his assistance to me in 

 this group. I am also most fortunate in being in correspondence with Sir 

 George Hampson, of the British Museum, where, of course, a very large 

 number of types are to be seen, and the sending to him of a number of 

 species, with the names by which I have known them, has resulted in the 

 detection of many errors which would probably have otherwise still been 

 overlooked. The first instalment of the Noctuidae has quite recently been 

 published in Vol. IV. of his " Catalogue of the Lepidoptera Phal?en?e in 

 the British Museum," and as a very large number of North American 

 species are therein figured, many of them for the first time, it proves a 

 valuable aid in the determination of species. Dr. Holland's "Moth Book," 

 too, has supplied a long-felt want. In all works of the above kind, how- 

 ever, the practice of sometimes figuring the male of one species and the 

 female of another very closely allied to it, is rather to be deprecated, as it is 

 apt to give the impression that a merely sexual difference is really specific, 

 there not unfrequently being less difference in facies between two species 

 ill ilie same sex than there is between the two sexes of either. It must be 

 home in mind that in making comparisons between closely allied species, 

 my opinions are based on superficial characters, and I have almost com- 



