4«tt,iriicin llntant^JlajH 



Vol. XXXVIII. LONDON, JUNE, 1906; No. 6 



STUDIES IN THE GENUS INCISALIA. 



BY JOHN H. COOK, ALBANY, N. Y. 



Incisalia irus. (Continued from page 144.) 



Hyjueiiopterous parasite. — On April 13th, 1906, chrysalis No. 112 

 gave birth to an ichneumon fly, which Mr. D. B. Young has kindly 

 identified for me as Anomalon pseudargioli. 



An error corrected. — In 1881, Mr. W. H. Edwards published in 



Papilio (Vol. I, pp. 150-152) a "description of the preparatory stages of 

 T/iecia Henrici^' a specimen of which he succeeded in raising from one 

 of a number of eggs laid on plum by an imprisoned female. Dr. Scudder, 

 who failed to find characters warranting the separation of inis and 

 Z^;/r/V/, quotes this description in his "Butterflies of the Eastern United 

 States and Canada" as referring to irics^ and, strangely enough, this error 

 has been copied in all subsequent literature, even where the author 

 recognizes the specific validity <d{ Henrici. For example, in Dr. Holland's 

 "Butterfly Book" we read that '"'an epitome of all ihat is known {pi irus) 

 is to be found in 'The Butterflies of New England.' The caterpillar feeds 

 on young plums just after the leaves of the blossom have dropped away." 

 And in the next section, "these (the early stages of Henrici) have been 

 described by Edwards in the 'American Naturalist' (Vol. XVI, p. 123), 

 The habits of the larva are identical with those of the preceding species." 

 It so happens that the short note in the "American Naturalist" is merely 

 a second statement of the facts published in Papilio (noted above), from 

 which Dr. Scudder quoted his description and applied it to irus. Thus 

 has arisen much confusion as to the propriety of regarding Henrici as a 

 species, and misapprehension concerning the larva of irus and its food.* 



Let it then be understood that the only published account of the early 

 stages of this species, except Scudder's description and figures of the egg, 

 is that found in the "Le'pidopteres de 1' Amerique Septentrionale" (Paris, 

 i<^33)j tome 1, p. 102. 



*The foot-note on page 142 of the current volume of The Canadian Ento- 

 mologist (May) is, therefore, a misstatement. 



