THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 203 



A FURTHER NO FE OX EUCH(ECA COMPTARIA AND THE 



AIJ.IED SPECIES. 



BV GEO, W. lAVLOR, WKLMNGTON, IS. C. 



I am glad that Dr. Dyar has given us a note on the Euchodca 

 comptaria problem, and that up to a certain point he supports my view. 



Without a doubt, he is right in insisting that the type species of 

 JVomenia must be called 12-lineata, Packard. 



I am pleased, too, that he has associated Mr. Pearsall's name with 

 another part of the I2-Iifieata of authors. I should have suggested this 

 course in the present paper had I not been anticipated. 



We are now, I think, all agreed that E. comptaria, Walker, is the 

 correct designation for the insect which has hitherto been considered to 

 represent 12-lineata in the east, and not for the one commonly known as 

 perliiieaia, Pack. This is what I asserted in my first note,^ and is 7iot the 

 view taken by Hulst in Dyar's Catalogue. But Mr. Pearsall now claims, 

 and apparently Dr. Dyar takes it for granted that he is right, that this 

 supposed eastern form oi iilineata is really the perlineata, Packard, and 

 he brings forward as evidence two specimens now in the Packard collec- 

 tion at Cambridge, bearing labels ^'periineaia'' "type." 



But, in the first place, it is quite evident from the locality labels on 

 these insects that they are not really types at all. The original types of 

 perlineaia^ were $ and 9 from "Albany, New York, Lintner." These 

 specimens have disappeared. The specimens now in the collection, and 

 which Mr. Pearsall has examined, are two males, "West Virginia, Mead." 



In the second place, if these two moths are really comptaria rather 

 \\\:xr\ pcrlineata, which I cannot yet feel quite sure of in my own mind, 

 and if we accept them as genuine types, which, as I have just shown, they 

 cannot be, even then we cannot allow them to have any weight as against 

 the excellent description^ and the two capital figures^ published by 

 Packard. 



It is naturally very satisfactory when a type specimen is available to 

 confirm an original, perhaps too meagre, description, but if description and 

 type conflict, then the rule is, or, at any rate, the practice is, to give the 

 weight to the description. It is the description, and that only, that is 



K Can. Ent., XXXVII., 239. 



2. Proc. Host. See. Xat. Hist., X\'I., p. 20. 



3. Mon. Geom. Moths, Plate \'III., rtgs. 2^ and 68, 



June, 1906 



